Tag Archives: volt

The Battle for the Plug:

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Volt vs. Prius Plug-In

Prius Plug-In Hybrid vs. Chevy Volt

Last year, we reviewed the 2010 Toyota Prius, and to our surprise it wasn’t an awful car. Sure the Prius is expensive for what you get out of the interior and quality of drive, but that’s not really the point of the Prius. The point is displaying Toyota’s hybrid technology in one of the worlds most fuel efficient cars. At the time of our review last year, there wasn’t much that could compete with the Prius in terms of overall fuel economy and technology. Today though, we have cars like the all-electric Nissan Leaf and the Chevrolet Volt. Both these cars are aimed directly toward taking sales away from Toyota and the Prius, and both cars have more advanced systems powering the car. So what is Toyota doing to combat these cars? In comes the Prius Plug-In Hybrid. Continue reading →

Main Street in Motion: DFW

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Main Street in Motion

Main Street in Motion


Sunday, we went out to Lone Star Park in Grand Prairie to check out the GM sponsored “Main Street in Motion”. The parking lot was full of all types of cars, trucks, and SUVs parked out in front of makeshift tracks using orange traffic cones. There were only a few vehicles that we were really looking forward to driving, but this was a great opportunity to test many vehicles in the same segment back-to-back. Really, that’s the point of this whole thing: to let consumers test vehicles back to back in a non-sales pressure environment. Continue reading →

Build it or Buy it? The electric car

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If you are a science/green nerd and care nothing about cars and the driving experience, disregard our comments on this article. If you like driving cars or care about your safety while driving, you might want to read on.

I was checking out this article on the Examiner, yet another way to “easily” and “cheaply” have an electric car. They compare the price of doing this to the price of buying a car like the Chevy Volt. These articles bug me, and I’ll let you know why.

It’s not safe, nor is it good for the car!

Converting a regular car to an electric car messes with the weight distribution of the vehicle. The battery packs and electric motors are heavy and placing them in an existing car that wasn’t made to hold them kills the handling of the vehicle. It also can disturb the braking system. Most cheap cars already do not have great brakes. Those not-so great brakes are rated for a certain amount of weight. Adding weight to the car can be dangerous, or at least wear the brakes much faster.

Cars like the Volt and the Leaf are dedicated cars that are built from the ground up to handle the weight and storage of the battery packs and electric motors. Thus, you still have trunk space, you still get good handling, and you get a warranty. Yes, it’s more expensive, but it’s much safer.

DALLAS (Jan. 31, 2011) – Electric car conversions have largely been a novelty for the rich because of lowcost and abundant gasoline.  Now, all that is changing.  The ability to convert an existing gasoline car to an electric car with a kit has become cheap and easy when compared to costs of new ones from today’s automakers.

Continue reading on Examiner.com:

Volt to hit the Streets of Austin First

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WHITACRE and the Volt

WHITACRE and the Volt


That’s right, GM chose Austin Texas as one of the three cities to launch it’s all new Volt into the marketplace. The Electric car, with a small gas engine designed to only recharge the batteries, will hit the streets of Austin first. Their has been lots of hype surrounding the Volt and we cant wait to get our hands on one to see whats what.
A select few had the opportunity to head down and check out the Volt including our friends at BurnoutRadio. Go check out what they have to say about the Volt in their unorthodox and funny podcast Here.