Chevy Volt dubbed a 'fraud'

From Red Alert.com - Last summer, General Motors, commonly called "Government Motors" since the Obama administration takeover last year, unveiled the first of its "Obamamobiles," the Chevrolet Volt, a compact electric car that is priced to sell at $41,000. At the end of July, Obama permitted himself a Dukakis moment, allowing himself at a GM plant in Michigan to be photographed looking somewhat nervous and uncomfortable behind the wheel of a production-line model of the Chevy volt. Now it turns out the GM promotion about the Volt being the first truly all-electric car was just a lot of hype. In its editorial, the daily Wall Street newspaper Investors Business Daily charged GM and the Obama administration with fraud over their promotion of the Volt. "Advertised as an all-electric car that could drive 50 miles on its lithium battery, GM addressed concerns about where you plug the thing in en route to Grandma's house by adding a small gasoline engine to help maintain the charge on the battery as it starts to run down," the IBD editors wrote. "It was still an electric car, we were told, not a hybrid on steroids." IBD objected: "That's not quite true. The gasoline engine has been found to be more than a range-extender for the battery. Volt engineers are now admitting that when the vehicle's lithium-ion battery pack runs down and at speeds near or above 70 mph, the Volt's gasoline engine will directly drive the front wheels along with the electric motors. That's not charging the battery – that's driving the car." IBD concluded the Volt is not an all-electric car, "but rather a pricey $41,000 hybrid that requires a taxpayer-funded $7,500 subsidy to get car shoppers to look at it." Read more

Chevy Volt dubbed a 'fraud'