NASCAR Racer Weighs in on Chevy Volt

In addition to charging up cell phones, iPods and laptops, consumers now have the option to charge their car. The 2011 Chevy Volt, the world’s first Extended Range Electric Vehicle, was officially released before the end of the year, but now the question is out as to whether the Volt is the latest product to fall in line with the green movement.

The verdict, according to NASCAR racer Dale Earnhardt Jr., is that it’s not quite there.

Earnhardt said that while the Volt is a “good product,” the “technology isn’t there yet really,” according to CNSNews.com story.

CNSNews.com  asked Earnhardt at the National Guard Youth Foundation’s ChalleNGe Champions gala on Tuesday what he thought about the fact that the Volt, which is getting a lot of attention for going green, is actually being viewed as inefficient by some because it only gets 30 miles to a charge.

Earnhardt said, “I think that the Chevy Volt’s a good product. I think that the consumers need to understand how difficult it is to produce a car with the standards that they have, with the guidelines that they have today, that can actually do what the consumer wants and what the consumer expects.”

“The technology isn’t there yet really to provide the consumer with something that can go a little bit further than that [in mileage] and do a little bit better job with that,” he added.  “But as the technology gets better, batteries and such things like that get safer to where they can be more heavily charged and the mileage can be a little bit longer.”

The Volt runs on a chargeable battery for the first 30 to 50 miles and then can go an extra 300 to 350 miles working off the generator. For those consumers who have a set amount of miles they travel each day, the Volt could be just the ticket to countering rising gas rates and environmental hardships from gas emissions.

“The electric engine gets its power from a very powerful high-voltage battery pack that can store enough energy to drive the car up to 40 miles in standard driving conditions,” General Motors explains on its Volt blog website. “That battery pack is recharged by plugging the car into your home 110 (or 220) volt wall outlet, just like you do your iPod or cell phone.”

It takes about 10 hours to fully charge the Volt and while customers may fear that will substantially increase their electric bill – which it will – customers can charge overnight when the rates are lower. Moreover, “you will need NO GASOLINE” for drives from 25 to 50 miles, explains GM.

And with gas topping more than $4 a gallon this month, it may not seem like such a bad alternative.

For the first year and a half, production on the Volt has been limited and only five markets have received a handful of vehicles to sell: Michigan, California, Washington D.C., Austin, Texas and the metro New York area, which includes Fairfield County. Near the end of January, the hybrid electric car was named the 2011 North American Car of the Year at the Detroit auto show.

Currently, General Motors (News - Alert) is building 15,000 Volts this year. An assembly plant will be built in Michigan to build battery packs for the car so that more can soon become available.