Around the country in a Chevy Volt

5/26/2011 1:02 PM EDT

Sounds like a great trip with dates scheduled for reasonable weather along the way. Hopefully this will all go well and you'll get to see lots of folks along the way.

5/26/2011 2:38 PM EDT

Dave, are you up for a visit? Would love to stop by!

5/27/2011 11:08 AM EDT

OK. let's make this realistic. Take that Volt, and come to Michigan (you know, where GM is). Take a jaunt from the suburbs to the city (for example, north side of Holland to East Grand Rapids, a typical commute), in February, during a "snow event". That means 40 miles at 35 mph with defrosters at maximum, wipers on, radio on, outside temperature at 20F, and frequent ABS/TC activation. Electric vehicles are impractical for huge areas of the country; our electrical grid/infrastructure is overloaded already, and most of that electricity comes from coal. Is this the future? God, I hope not.

5/27/2011 6:44 PM EDT

http://www.illuminatimotorworks.org/
If you're near Springfield, Illinois,you're 15 miles north of these guys. Good luck in the mountains. Illuminati's car towed a trailer with a fancy bicycle from Springfield, IL to Champaign, IL on a single charge. 0-60 mph times are getting into sports car territory. 208 equivalent mpg. I think you guys should run 'em off, title for title. lol

5/31/2011 10:04 AM EDT

Hope you can get used to the Capacitive touch switches. When i test drove a volt i hated the switches because everytime i tried to use the touch screen i turned on or off the A/C system. It also took me 10 minutes to find the navi button. Good luck and enjoy the ride. I wasn't too impressed by it.

5/31/2011 10:37 AM EDT

Brian, Consider swinging north after NM and come up to Colorado. I could get a group of engineers together for you from the Boulder area.

6/1/2011 6:21 AM EDT

Let's see... we burn coal or natural gas, or deal with nuclear waste, in order to boil water to make steam, to turn a turbine, to produce electricity, which is distributed through lossy conductors, and stored in a battery, with some efficiency. To make the battery, we mine lithium and nickel, and other heavy metals, using fuel to extract them. And we transport them using fuel to a site where they are fabricated using fuel into the form of a battery. From whence they are further transported using fuel, to the place where cars are assembled. THEN they are further transported using fuel, to the place where cars are sold, in order that we might enjoy being able to move about the planet ... efficiently? At $.20/kwh, given all of the inefficiencies in this system... which is less expensive, electricity or gasoline?

OH...I forgot the cost of extracting and transporting that coal, too. Which is why natural gas is the favored fuel for 'peaking plants' in the electric industry.

And PV solar electric is not the answer. It costs 4-5 times as much as fossil generated electric, and that's WITH government subsidies. Without, it's much higher.

We need a national energy policy based on life cycle environmental impact and costing, and not on political polls.

6/1/2011 12:34 PM EDT

The bait-and-switch car.

I was promised an electric with great range, what I got was a hybrid.

How do I sell my stock in GM that my government purchased for me?

6/1/2011 3:51 PM EDT

The Pacific Northwest would likely be a better fit for electric or plug-in hybrid cars. We have mild weather so heater and AC won't get over worked. Most commutes are on the order of 25 miles or less each way.

We also have too much electricity because of all of the wind farms being built in central Oregon. The turbines are government subsidized and proliferating like wildfire. There isn't enough transmission capacity to get the power down to California where it's needed more, so when the rivers are up, the wind turbines often have to shut down to allow the hydro generating capacity to regulate the rivers.

Too much green electricity... Go figure.

7/21/2011 9:21 AM EDT

Hi Brian -- Max here -- I certainly hope you are going to stop by my stomping ground here in Huntsville when you are on the Alabama part of your trek.

First of all Huntsville is an oasis of high technology ("more rocket scientists per square foot than anywhere else in the world," or so I've been told). But more importantly I'm here and I'm sure that you owe me a beer :-)