Chevy Volt gets cozy with iPhone and BlackBerry

The Chevy Volt
electro-carriage will roll out for drivers next year, and when it does it’ll be iPhone and BlackBerry friendly. The image above was shown off at the L.A. Auto Show, revealing a BlackBerry
displaying the Chevy Volt’s battery charge status.

The iPhone and Blackberry apps will start off with the ability to control when the Chevy Volt gets charged. The Volt will alert your cellphone when it’s fully charged. Chevy also hinted that other cellphone platforms will be compatible with the Volt eventually as well.

Chevy Volt to go on sale in California

General Motors says the Chevrolet Volt electric car will go on sale late next year in California.

GM said Wednesday at the Los Angeles Auto Show that it will announce other markets later.

The Volt, which is expected to cost around $40,000, can be charged in a conventional outlet and is designed to drive up to 40 miles on electricity. When its lithium-ion battery runs low, an engine kicks in to extend its driving range to more than 300 miles without refueling.

GM also said it's teaming up with three California utilities as part of a demonstration project. Using a $30 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, the project will distribute 100 Volts to various fleets and will install 500 charging stations for residential, commercial and public use.

2011 Chevrolet Spark

Well, how small is it? The hatchback Spark is tall for its 143-inch length, to permit four six-foot people to fit inside. You can assume the U.S. version will be 12 feet long, give or take an inch.

That's an inch shorter than the 2010 Mini Cooper, which has a back seat that's really not suitable for adult humans, but a full three feet longer than the two-seat 2010 Smart ForTwo.

Chevrolet Captiva Xtreme at 2010 New Delhi Auto Show

Chevrolet Captiva Picture

General Motors India will be putting its best foot forward at the 2010 New Delhi Auto Show, displaying the Chevrolet Captiva Xtreme with turbodiesel power alongside its Volt and Spark EVs.

Riding on the success of the Captiva here, Chevrolet's Captiva Xtreme will come with an automatic gearbox, new foglamps, chrome inserts on the mirrors and roof bars. The Captiva Xtreme will feature the 148-horsepower 2.0-liter turbodiesel engine that also powers the current model.

GM India has taken a firm step toward going green, and at the Delhi show the company will display the Chevrolet Spark Electric, the first product of a recently signed joint venture between Reva and GM India. A compressed natural gas variant of the Aveo will also find its way to GM's green stall, along with the eagerly awaited Volt hybrid.

In addition, GM India's latest entry to the Indian market, the Chevrolet Beat, will also be on display.

2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS

2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS Pace Car Picture

The 2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS will be the pace car for the 2010 Indianapolis 500.

2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS Pace Car Picture

This will be the sixth Camaro to pace the Indy 500.

2010 Chevrolet Camaro SS Pace Car Picture

The 2010 Camaro pace car is inspired by the one from the 1969 Indy 500, GM said, right down to the rally stripe.

This will be the sixth time that a Camaro has paced the race. The first Camaro to pace the Indianapolis 500 was in 1967, followed by 1969, 1982, 1993 and 2009, said GM.

This year's pace car is inspired by the 1969 Camaro pace car and features an Inferno Orange Metallic paint job with White Diamond rally stripes. "The design is a modern interpretation of the original rally stripe that debuted on the 1969 Indianapolis 500 pace car," GM said in a statement.

The 2010 Camaro pace car is equipped with a stock 400-horsepower 6.2-liter V8 engine, an RS appearance package and a leather interior with Inferno Orange touches. The pace car also features a new front grille insert that Chevrolet said it plans to offer as a future Camaro accessory.

Other details include amber lens taillights, special logo badging on the headrests and front fenders, and a safety strobe light system with custom interior light bar in the rear window.

What is new with the Chevy Volt

Earlier this year, I did a preview article on the first of the next generation of hybrid vehicles, the Chevy Volt. The Volt differs from a normal hybrid because the gasoline engine never directly drives the wheels of the car. Instead, the engine acts as an electric generator and charges a bank of batteries that power an electric motor. The batteries can be charged each night by plugging them into an outlet in your house and provides 40 gasoline-free miles each day. This method of drivetrains will soon be availability from other manufacturers as well.

We have learned some new things though. The Volt will go on sale towards the end of 2010, and it will cost about $40,000. It will qualify for a $7,500 tax credit which will help ease the sticker shock a little bit. GM has even recently announced iPhone and Blackberry applications that will notify you of the current charging status. A new higher-tech version of OnStar will empower the car to even choose the times to charge at night when the utility rate is the lowest. Talk about a smart car.

Although I haven’t gotten behind the wheel of a new Volt, several auto journalist have, and the impressions have been overall positive. Some said it’s a little unnerving when you are driving and the engine is charging the batteries because the RPM of the engine doesn’t change. You press the gas pedal further down, the car speeds up, but the engine will stay at the exact same RPM. I think this is something people would get over if they only had to pay $50/month to drive their car everyday.

The other new news is that the Volt will be built at a GM plant in Hamtramck, Michigan which is just outside of Detroit. GM will be spending $336 million to upgrade the plant.

These next generation hybrid vehicles are what’s next in the auto world and it will only help us to further reduce the dependency on foreign oil. They may not be for everybody at first, but expect one of your cars in the next 10 years to feature this new and exciting system.

2012 Chevy Spark First Drive

2012 Chevrolet Spark Picture

The Chevy Spark is the latest trendy minicar.
It was one of GM's most enlightened moves maybe ever when it decided back in the still relatively happy days of 2007 to introduce three bold minicar concepts at the 2007 New York Auto Show. The Trax, Groove and Beat appeared (perfect for New York, since urban citizens generally speak only in monosyllables), and a little contest ensued to pick a favorite.

And now we've just driven around Athens, Greece, in the production version of the Beat, apparently the winning entry. Eventually to be known to us as the 2012 Chevrolet Spark, the new mini-size car will go on sale in Europe this coming March.

We really love these proper European minicars in the context of stressed-out city streets. The 2012 Chevy Spark is not a revelation, but it is what one should expect for this market segment in European terms, and that's saying a lot for a car that must fit into a genre that has become a sort of art form.

But when it comes our way as currently planned in 2011, can the 2012 Chevy Spark excite Americans for more than one selling season? The appeal of the Smart Fortwo in America suggests that so far we see a tiny tot like this as a bauble, not a necessity.

Pressure To Be Hip
While we could sort of tell back in 2007 that GM really wanted Internet voters to choose the Beat from the selection at the New York show (the spotlights glowed a little brighter on its electric green paint), we recall actually pulling for either of the other two. The Trax had a really interesting face, while the Groove had a great body. But the prevailing "bold-fresh-edgy" thingy in green got picked as low-hanging fruit by the vast majority.

So now the Beat has morphed into the 2012 Chevy Spark. That face is just too big. And those eyes straight from an aggressive re-stretch at the plastic surgeon. Dunno, really. It's not bad, yet it still seems like something of a fashion victim. Both the new Ford Fiesta in its definitive North American form and the Ford Ka (sadly, plans have changed and it won't be coming to us after all) also use the disco-headlights trick to make a tiny car look bigger, and these headlights strike us in the same way. These are all designs that lose their freshness after two years.

All of these cars could learn a lesson from the Volkswagen Golf, a car with a look that never grows old. Chevy itself has done a much better job with this company facial expression on the 2011 Chevrolet Cruze.