than the Triac?

Yeah that is certainly part of it. But the Volt is about 1/3rd bigger than the Triac. So why is it nearly double the weight? And it is worth remember that the Selectria Sunrise was as big as the Volt, and got better miles per kWh with freaking nickel chromium as opposed to Lithium batteries!

but my impression is that the American car companies have always had heavier cars, maybe it makes them "feel" like more, I don't know.

I'm amazed at how arrogant some greenies are in
giving opinions about things they know nothing about. First, the Tesla uses first gen obsolete and impractical li ion batteries, while the Volt uses the best out there - from LG and guaranteed to last TWICE as long as those used by Tesla (all 6871 of them!!!). No one knows their exact cost, including you, so shut up already. Cuurent costs don't mean a whole lot anyway, since such large cell batteries (which the silly Tesla does NOT have) have never been mass produced. A123 Systems claims a price drop of over 50%. To demonstrate just how brainless this article is, I point out that the Volt's battery pack does have a capacity of 16 kWhrs, but only 8 of them are available, making your electric mileage calculations 100% incorrect. The Volt achieves exactly 5 miles per kilowatthour. I also note that using a smaller
pack would reduce the power output (power output nat the moment, of course, equals that from the ENTIRE pack).
I also note that electric mileage obtained is all about commuting distances and that a Volt with half the driving range would avoid far less than half the gasoline consumption. The math is so simple even our simpleminded President could figure that out.

Comparing a Chevy Volt to a Tesla does a disservice to both vehicles. The Tesla is a special-purpose vehicle designed to highlight the technology capabilities of the company, hence the very high price tag. Tesla intends to use the goodwill generated from this car to produce a more consumer-oriented vehicle.

The Volt, on the other hand, is a mass-produced vehicle designed to satisfy the needs of the consumer market.

The Tesla and other such performance vehicles come from a cost-is-no-object concept, whereas cost is very important to the Volt. Although Chevy will undoubtedly lose money during the initial run, as Toyota did with the Prius, they intend to make this profitable by the first redesign.

With this in mind, there are sacrifices that need to be made to keep the car at a reasonable price. I doubt anyone reading this site could afford to spend the amount of money to buy a Volt that would offer the same range, charging time, level of comfort, handling, yet also uses the most efficient and advanced materials on the market.

One could just as easily ask why the Volt is made out of commonly available materials instead of carbon fiber, kevlar, and aluminum honeycomb to reduce the weight. The answer, of course, is that it doesn't make sense for the market.

The argument that the Tesla is a high end vehicle would make sense if it were not for the fact that they are paying less per kWh for their battery pack than the Chevy Volt. (And John Bailo writing under your alternate ID of The Bike, the $10,000 figure is widely circulated in the media. The Christian Science Monitor reporter I linked seesm to believe it.) The Chevy is using more expensive battery packs. Incidentally, if they are only using half the capacity of their battery pack (to preserve lifespan) they could use fewer higher quality batteries instead.  

Hi,

I guess I should explain more, since I left some things out to prevent my response from being too long.

The first thing to be mentioned is that neither of us know exactly why GM has selected the vendor and battery they did--this is all supposition.

But, my understanding/guess as to the differences in cost between the Tesla and Volt come down to these points:

The Tesla is a technology showcase for an upstart firm. As a result, their vendors are willing to operate at a lower margin to "get in the door", so to speak.

It's possible that GM's vendor is reaming them a bit, but it's also possible that the batteries cost more per kWh because of the point you made about using half the capacity (or some variation) of their battery pack. Yes, they could use fewer higher quality batteries instead, but will that have the lifecycle of more batteries operating less efficiently? One need only look at the Toyota vs. Honda mindsets of engine design and lifespan of their respective engines to see that the Toyota approach of understressing reaps further rewards down the road.

Back to profit margins: Vendors for the Volt realize that this is a mass-produced vehicle and cannot afford to operate at a "get in the door" margin. I would guess that they are operating at a lower margin than usual to help make the Volt a success, but they can't afford to drop their price too far with the expected sales.

Tesla doesn't need their car to operate flawlessly for 100,000 miles for it to be a success, whereas GM absolutely does. To this point, GM requires a higher standard of QC than Tesla does.

Again, I can't say for certain (and no one except the bean-counters at these companies would be able to), but I think that Tesla and their vendors are making a lot of concessions to be able to demonstrate the viability of their product. GM, for many reasons, can't afford to make quite as many concessions.

I hope that explains my thoughts on this a bit better.

Gar,

Really, no one knows how much the batteries cost, including the CS Monitor.  The $10K figure is purely speculation.  

The batteries won't be produced in large volumes for several years.  They'll use less expensive materials than 1st Gen batteries; the larger format is much less expensive; and they'll have very, very large production volumes relative to most 1st-gen li-ion.

GM is pricing the Volt high purely to capture the early-adopter premium and the federal rebate - their official justification is that they're pricing in 100% replacement of the battery under warranty, which really isn't credible.  We can expect the Volt to cost less than $30K with large volume production.

Yes, they could be less conservative than their 50% depth of discharge, but there aren't any batteries on the market that are more durable as measured in charge cycles.  Tesla's batteries aren't expected to last more than 400 cycles, and the Volt will do 5-10x as many.

In theory, the Volt could have a smaller battery to more perfectly optimize costs, but then it wouldn't feel like a big step forward.  It wouldn't feel like a real EV, with generator backup - instead, it would feel like an incremental hybrid.  Both GM (for PR) and buyers want a large, step forward, I think.

Here's what the article says: "the race isn't over making a Chevy Volt battery designed to run 40 miles on a single charge that could (emphasis added) cost as much as $10,000."

That doesn't suggest that the reporter has any firm source for this info.

Elsewhere, the article says: "Still others say that the cost of new battery power for PHEVs may drop faster and already be lower than what has been widely reported at perhaps $500 per kilowatt-hour or even less, says Suba Arunkumar, analyst for market researcher Frost & Sullivan.

"I do expect the price will come down to perhaps as low as $200 per kilowatt-hour when mass production begins in 2010 and 2011," she says."

Tesla's cost is $400/KWH - it's very likely that GM will pay $200-$300 in volume.

What does "That means efficiency, and better battery choices, could save Chevy between 80-120 percent by halving the range before the gas tank kicked in" mean?  80-120 percent of what?  

I meant that proper battery choice could save a total of 80% to 120% of the cost of the batteries chosen. At the time I thought it was a use efficiency issue, kWh per mile. It turns out though that the Volt is very efficient in that respect, even beating the Triac (.2 kWh per mile instead of .23). Where the waste comes in is that to maintain a battery life of 10 years they are using 50% of battery capacity instead of the usual 85%. But if the $10,000 figure is correct they could have bought advanced batteries at a lower cost that would have lasted ten years with lower capacity. Maybe the speculation is wrong and their costs are under control and they are just raising the prices because they think they can. In the current recession I kind of doubt that though.

The EV1 used 179 wh/mi while the tzero (which the Tesla Roadster is based on) used 150wh/mi.

The GM Volt will use approx 200 wh/mi which is the average for most 'car' sized EVs that use regen.

Where you are mistaken is dividing 16 kWh by 40 miles. The top 20% and bottom 30% of the battery pack will never be used so they can get the entire 3000 cycles out of them while reducing potential warranty replacment costs.

So the Volt will only ever use 8 kWh between charges, not 16 kWh.

That's approx USD$377 kWh.