Perhaps the ad is intended to placate GM stockholders, who are probably pretty annoyed right now.

Great. Let's get off the pipeline and onto the mountain-top removal bandwagon. Does anyone else remember that over half of our electricity comes from coal? You know, the worst fuel source of all from a climate change standpoint.

It is well past time for Americans to get their Suburban-sized hineys out of their fossil-fool powered wheelchairs and start behaving as though the future of life on the planet has some value to them.

I really don't understand the whole hybrid thing, especially when it's touted as a "cure" for our energy woes. GM certainly has no call to go preening about producing a hybrid when it tanked the EV1, the first available electric car, off the roads with no excuse. They're still claiming it was a "public relations disaster", which is and always has been utter bullshit. I was working at a Saturn dealership when the EV1 was available, and we couldn't keep those things in the showroom. When GM announced it was pulling them, we had people offering us up to $100K to let them keep their cool electric cars, but no dice. (The fact that they were available only on lease made me suspicious from the get-go, actually.)

So all this ya-ya about the Volt? Nope, I'm not swallowing it, sorry. GM were ten years ahead of the pack and chose not to pursue this market; I'm certainly not going to believe their hype now.

About a week ago, I was reading that GM extended an offer to Ford to enter into some sort of joint powertrain development arrangement. At the center of their discussions was an agreement for GM to share the Volt technologies to Ford. Last I heard, the Ford Bord of Directors authorized management to pursue discussions with GM.

Thrive or Fail? The Chevy Volt: GM's electric car. Predictions? [VOTE] - http://www.thriveorfail.com/c563c

I seem to remember hearing about how earthshattering the Segway was going to be a couple years before we were even told what it was - albeit not by advertising but by press release. I can't seem to find any evidence to back that up though.

As for the electric car bashers, please remember this: if your car is electric, you can plug it in at home. If it relies on *anything* else, you're still under the thumb of an infrastructure owned by people who can create artificial scarcity. Hydrogen might be wonderful, but you'll still have to pay whatever the pump at the hydrogen station says. Wanna bet that the Organization of Hydrogen Exporting Countries won't drive their prices up, just because they can?

If most of our electricity comes from coal, that's only because coal lobbyists made it that way. There's plenty of free, clean energy all around us -- but investment in them won't happen until we stop electing politicians whose campaigns are funded by dirty energy cartels.

My major clients (niche, very high-end automakers who are riding this economy out just fine, at least so far) have me read the press for them every day. So, I get to read all about everything from the gas-guzzlers to the Aptera (3-wheel, electric two-seater w/space for a surfboard, will probably have a range of 120 miles on a charge and will start selling in California for $29K in the next few years).

I wasn't sure the Volt was real but after I saw that GM had gone into partnership with 30 electric utilities in 40 states to make sure the grid was ready, I was certain the car itself was going to be ready - whether they will have as many batteries as they need is another question. That, btw, is a question for all of them - Toyota, Nissan, VW, etc., it's not just GM that's promising either plug-in hybrids in 2010, or all-electric, Nissan says not just fleet sales (fleet sales would make more sense because they would have the ability to change batteries or re-charge in many places), but they are promising mass market, fully electric cars with a range of 100 miles on a charge for $25K in 2010 in the US. They'll say they'll put cars w/50 mile range in Europe in 2010.

The partnership with the utilities means that if they work to prepare the grid and don't have the cars in 2010 and their competitors do, they've just done their competitors' work for them. That would be a great service for everyone else but for them would be, well, stupid. Not that they haven't been before but it's a very, very serious move for a car that doesn't exist.

If you are still pissed at them about the EV1, don't buy the Volt. Just don't buy it. I've looked at all the available options and unless I want to buy a Tesla, which I can't afford (it's more than I currently owe on my house), nothing else that's coming out makes sense for me. I have to drive about 160-180 miles one way, twice a month. I need a car that will do that. The Volt would allow me to do that, while, the rest of the time, I would not use gas because I drive less than about 40 miles (usually - although I occasionally drive more).

While it is odd to see them advertising this far out, it's not really this far out. The 2009 model year is upon us. Also, GM has just cut almost everything - except the Volt. They even cut the dividend. But, they didn't cut the Volt. They made it very clear that everything about the car is and continues to be fully-funded.

In terms of the coal for electricity problem, here's a thought for you - algae-based biofuel for cars that are still going to run on fuel. It needs carbon to grow. Hook the algae plants up to the coal plants and let the carbon from the coal grow the algae, until we have other alternatives in place.

Human Power is voicing the concern that, honestly, takes most cars out of the picture, let alone the Volt. I tend slightly towards that position as I see the Volt as yet another way to maintain the status quo of vehicles way too big for practical use, based purely on ego gratification. If we really only got the vehicles we needed, there would still be the point that we're over-consuming, but likely that would be much less so.

I will argue with that poster on the potential source of electricity, although not the actual - an important distinction. All the potential for green electricity doesn't matter if we don't do it, but that would require breaking the coal empire and I don't see that as easy. CA is keeping it's per capita down (although the capita is growing); whether or not that's doable elsewhere is not answered. Certainly I have < 1k miles/year on my guzzling Civic (35mpg) and power my EV by PV, but that's not a solution to everyone. My PV+EV cost as much as a bling'ed out F-250, roughly, but apparently doesn't have the same factors so many people seem to crave.

On the other hand, if in spot areas it could work now, at least on the left coast. Spare capacity at night, plus a certain amount of gas not being burned means less needs to be made from oil - using electricity - in the first place. I don't know precisely how many kWh are used to refine petroleum, but at ~4 miles/kWh it'd be an interesting comparison.

I remain critical of GM's actions, as they do indeed sound like an effort to placate stockholders. If the EV-1 catastrophe - and don't believe it was anything less - hadn't happened, I'd probably be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Now? When I start seeing Volts at the dealers, selling and delivering as promised on time, then they'll be back to how I saw them in 1996 - as potentially promising and worth watching.

All I can think of in the meantime is the subtitle paraphrased from Diamond's _Collapse_ - "How some choose to fail".