GRM's new project car. No, really.

Am i the only one wondering how hard it would be to put an lsx in one of those? Say five years down the road when they start becoming just another used car.

I have seen severial in person lately and i really like how they look.

yeah, I've always like the styling of them. I can't say the same about most others with an electric drivetrain.

I'm in! I sent an email to Flyar Systems about integrating a KERS unit into the 68 Camaro.

--> 60,000 rpm

--> Twice as efficient as battery based EV.

--> Amazingly compact.

Steve Chryssos wrote: I'm in! I sent an email to Flyar Systems about integrating a KERS unit into the 68 Camaro. --> 60,000 rpm --> Twice as efficient as battery based EV. --> Amazingly compact.

I gotta say, there's something elegant about storing mechanical energy, to be used later as mechanical energy, in the form of...mechanical energy.

Hey, I just made my own volt!

Push to pass!

JG, love the concept and the courage to do it and write about it. Two issues with "electric" cars that always seem forgotten - miserable cold weather (which was already partially addressed by another poster) and lots of hill driving. I vote that you road trip to Deals Gap (or somewhere in the Smoky Mountains, Chimney Rock, anywhere in WV, etc) for a mileage test. Do one lap at "normal" speeds, like it was part of your commute. Then do another lap hoofing it to see how the car works and what happens to fuel use.

Joe Gearin wrote: Grassroots does not = cheap

Agreed.

It gets kind of tiring all the borderline insanity on the board of CHEAP, CHEAP CCHHHHEEEEEAAPPP. This idea if you do something for more than the cost of Challenge car, you're some kind of rich man.

Ugh.

Anyway looking forward to updates on this. This car could make a lot of sense for the wife once she is done working 65 miles from the house.

Steve Chryssos wrote: I'm in! I sent an email to Flyar Systems about integrating a KERS unit into the 68 Camaro.

Got a link or anything? Searching, Google assumed I mean FLIR systems, and then when I insisted, I got reams of unrelated stuff...

EDIT: This was probably a joke, wasn't it? Where's that red-faced emoticon. It took me a couple of years to not get stoked about stuff on the thinkgeek site on April 1, too...

Joe Gearin wrote: This car is very early in the electric car / hybrid family tree.....what will we be looking at in 20 years.... 40 years?

Umm ... electric "cars" have arguably been around since the 1830's. 1890's if you want to talk about production roadgoing automobiles.

I look forward to the GRM reports on all sorts of motorsports-related vehicles and technology - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

slantvaliant wrote:

Joe Gearin wrote: This car is very early in the electric car / hybrid family tree.....what will we be looking at in 20 years.... 40 years?

Umm ... electric "cars" have arguably been around since the 1830's. 1890's if you want to talk about production roadgoing automobiles.

Yeah, but much like gasoline powered cars, they have changed in that time period and so has the world in which they operate.

slantvaliant wrote:

Joe Gearin wrote: This car is very early in the electric car / hybrid family tree.....what will we be looking at in 20 years.... 40 years?

Umm ... electric "cars" have arguably been around since the 1830's. 1890's if you want to talk about production roadgoing automobiles. I look forward to the GRM reports on all sorts of motorsports-related vehicles and technology - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Yeah, yeah, I know there were electric cars 100 years ago. What I was alluding to is that for nearly the entire life of the automobile, we've been developing the internal combustion engine. Cars have progressed to an amazing extent in the last century. Imagine what we will be looking at 20 years from now if this technology takes hold.

I'd love to see a day where we all drive solar powered cars to work, and play with our "old fashioned" gasoline powered cars on the weekends and evenings.

I am interested in this in the same way that I am interested in Nik Wallenda crossing Niagara Falls on a tight rope or Megan Fox raising a child: I doubt that it will ever have any direct impact on me (pending a paternity test), but I can't look away.

z31maniac wrote:

Joe Gearin wrote: Grassroots does not = cheap

Agreed. It gets kind of tiring all the borderline insanity on the board of CHEAP, CHEAP CCHHHHEEEEEAAPPP. This idea if you do something for more than the cost of Challenge car, you're some kind of rich man.

Yup, that's exactly how I feel. On the survey, I said that we needed more <$10K cars in the magazine.

OTOH, though, I said earlier in this thread that I wanted to see if a volt with $10L of mods could keep up with a tesla.

Stealthtercel wrote: Having a Volt in the hands of a knowledgeable, articulate person we trust does not have a down side.

I thought JG had this car.

Seriously, I'm interested to see how this comes out as well. I'm not exactly in their demographic so will likely never buy one but I'm always trying to keep track of new technology. I've seen a couple of the cars in person and I think they look pretty neat. (cue olpro in 3...2...1... )

I'm glad that GM at least saw the 'full EV not a real good idea' light and did their best to make it work for a wide range of real life drivers.

N Sperlo wrote: Hey, I just made my own volt!

Holy downforce, Batman!

sachilles wrote: I am curious what some minor changes will reveal about the car. You need to hit that kart track 100% stock. Then throw on a set of tires from an scca street tire class genre, then a set of r compounds. For reference, do it against a miata, and maybe some other appliance type of car, with the same tires and compare times. I'm thinking a smaller kart track like the ones you folks use on occasion may perfectly suit the car. Really it might be a case of decent tires and alignment really wake a car up.

This sounds about a perfect place to start, imho. The other appliance type should be a new/newer car that someone who this sort of hybrid makes sense for would be cross-shopping it against. Tom's 2 seems like the obvious answer, but maybe not. Also, if when testing the ST and R tires, you can fit bigger meats under the volt, that sounds like fair game to me. I see no point in artificially limiting it to a size that fits a miata or other for this type of comparo.

The Volt is a really good looking car IMHO, just a turbocharged SS package in the mid $20s away from being really great.

JG Pasterjak wrote: It pissed me off. So I started doing some research, and I found out that the only thing worse than the near-conspiratorial misinformation out there about the Volt was Chevy's utter incompetence to properly market it. I kind of came to the realization that if I really wanted to know anything about the car I'd have to go get one of my own. So I did.

I'm looking forward to reading about real world experience - there are so many heresay comments and rumors out there, it's hard to sort through them to find unbiased information.

ransom wrote: Got a link or anything? Searching, Google assumed I mean FLIR systems, and then when I insisted, I got reams of unrelated stuff... EDIT: This was probably a joke, wasn't it? Where's that red-faced emoticon. It took me a couple of years to not get stoked about stuff on the thinkgeek site on April 1, too...

No. Just a word-fart on my behalf. Here you go....

http://www.flybridsystems.com

JG said: the only thing worse than the near-conspiratorial misinformation out there about the Volt was Chevy's utter incompetence to properly market it.

Oh yeah. The Marketing. It has been tragically bad.

Anyone recall the early tagline? "More Car than Electric"? Assuming that means anything (what does it mean, really?), it assumes that the average person even wants an electric car. They were trying to distinguish themselves in a market that doesn't really exist to begin with. Why do I want an electric car? Why do I want More of one?

I can sympathize with GM a little bit here because if they put a lot of effort into saying how great EV is, they risk suggesting that all their regular cars suck but would it have killed them to have an ad or two that basically just said, "hey, this is a great car. you plug it in, drive silently most of the time, but it has a gas engine if you need to go really far"?

And the "this is the car we had to build" ad makes me want to punch an ad executive in the face. Any one of them will do. With the constant "obama car" rants ringing in GM's ears, they green-lighted that?

My dad and I spoke with the Flybrid rep for about 20 minutes at Goodwood last summer. It's a pretty compelling technology, but Porsche seems to be the only OEM even considering it.

Okay I'm going to lead with this to sum up my severe disappointment with the car.

Much of the reason I personally bag on the Volt is because the engine was never supposed to motor the wheels of this car (provided my half asleep memory isn't fuzzy.) The engine was supposed to operate the same way as a diesel locomotive or the Top Gear's Hammerhead Eagle i-Thrust if you prefer.

Instead it seems like, possibly due to poor marketing by GM, that it became a me too hybrid that didn't bring the huge improvement to cars that it was supposed to.

I'm interested to see where this goes JG.

Ideas from another magazine: Can tires alone help a Leaf match a 911 on the skidpad?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOIAk8TA6b4

cliffs notes: a car is a car and responds to the usual mods, regardless of the poweplant

The0retical wrote: Okay I'm going to lead with this to sum up my severe disappointment with the car. Much of the reason I personally bag on the Volt is because the engine was never supposed to motor the wheels of this car (provided my half asleep memory isn't fuzzy.) The engine was supposed to operate the same way as a diesel locomotive or the Top Gear's Hammerhead Eagle i-Thrust if you prefer. Instead it seems like, possibly due to poor marketing by GM, that it became a me too hybrid that didn't bring the huge improvement to cars that it was supposed to. I'm interested to see where this goes JG.

I need to look into that more, because while I remember it being presented the same way, I'm having a hard time finding official GM statements saying it was going to be that way. I can find journalist speculation based on Chevy info, but no real statement that that's how it was going to be. It could be amateur googling on my part, though.

jg