The end is near on gas combustion! Repent! (or maybe just trade in)

ARTICLE: "GM: Live Green or Die," by David Welch, BusinessWeek, 26 May 2008, p. 036.

Waggoner's big bet on Volt, or basically a car run on giant cellphone batteries, is intriguing. He's promising a crash program that produces large numbers of cars available as soon as the 2010 season. It is described as a "nerve-shattering schedule" and an almost Apollo-like effort.

How well GM succeeds is not the point, the movement and the direction is the point.

The market signals, and businesses respond—not out of nobility but out of a survival instinct.

Comments

[stuart abrams]

I still don't understand how the Volt is viable for an urban driver, who has no place to plug it in overnight.

[Brad B.]

tpmb: I thought the same thing as you. Being in Detroit, there is a lot of talk about this. For all the talk of CAFE standards, government intervention or "sky if falling" predictions, it was fuel prices that really made this move happen. The market has a neat way of taking car of this type of stuff. Let's hope it leads to pressure for new nuke plants to make this really clean.

stuart - that's why we have so many different types of cars! No solution for all users. I do believe that the Volt is a "plug-in hybrid" meaning it can run off of gas or e85 as well. If enough of them get on the streets, I assume some creative solutions will happen. I can already see Starbucks offering pay per hour plug-ins for customers or even free plug-in service once someone uses it to attract customers.