And the Chevy Volt becomes priced out of relevance. Dealers mark up to $61,000+

The Chevy Volt is one of those cars that manages to gain a fairly geeky image. While it’s green roots are what it’s most known for, electronics, gadgets, and complex science are never something to ignore. Unfortunately, GM utterly failed in delivering an “affordable” and dependable electric vehicle. Besides the actual price coming of of GM being a good $10,000 higher than what was expected, dealers themselves are showing their tried and true colors (read: Greedy green) by marking up the popular yet scarce hybrids by as much as $20,000, bringing the total after-tax-credit-price to $52,000.

I don’t know about you, but that has failure written all over it. Still, I have no doubt people will soak up the limited 10,000 vehicle run for this year. The situation is ironic given GM’s statements claiming they’d “watch for dealers overcharging customers for the Volt”. Too bad for GM it was overpriced to begin with. Adding more on top of it at the dealer level only makes it worse.

Anyone miffed/saddened?

It’s official: Chevy Volt costs $41k before $7,500 tax credit. Pre-orders now open!

Fancy saving a tree or two and happen to title yourself a nerd? There’s no doubt that Chevy’s ambitions Volt project has been a long time coming. Since the truck market bombed out a few years back, they’ve been scrambling to catch up to other manufacturers more fuel efficient and alternative fuel-powered vehicles. And up until now, the biggest mystery about the Volt was the price. Price it to high no one will buy it. Lucky for consumers, it looks like Chevy will make it relatively affordable, at a now confirmed base price of $41,000. Interested parties may even get a stab at the electric wonder vehicle for a far cheaper price, however. At stake is a tax credit totaling up to $7,500 as well as leasing options. Speaking of the latter, the leasing program looks like it’ll hit a little closer to more individuals’ homes with a $350 monthly payment and $2,500 due at signing.

But what good is a hot new geek car with relatively new and untested reliability without decent warranties and protection from the factory? Oh dear reader, jump on in and find out…

Chevy Volt app coming to iPhone and BlackBerry

My #1 passion is by far gadgets. Hands down. But one of my more minor hobbies involves following the automotive sphere. I love reading the various car magazines containing the up and coming latest and greatest in the mechanical world of cars. But because this is a gadget/technology blog, cars rarely make it on these pages. Every once in a while however something comes along that just so happens to appease the car side of my interest while pinging the gadget side long and hard. Regardless of how you feel about the Chevy volt — Too Expensive? Too ugly? Too average? — the level of sophistication being packaged inside is actually pretty geeky. Just how geeky didn’t become fully apparent to me until I saw news of a Chevy Volt iPhone and BlackBerry app (No Android love!?) The app at first appears to simply offer information as to the state of your Volt’s electrical and mechanical systems, displaying everything in an easy to read and graphically appealing layout. Hopefully it doesn’t stop there.

I say hopefully because we don’t know much else about this app. It was only briefly mentioned on stage without much description. Checking out car specs is cool and all, but I would like to see more useful features added as well. Simple things such as locking/unlocking the doors, starting the car to charge the battery, adjusting radio stations, and copying over GPS coordinates/map directions from your mobile device onto the in-vehicle navigation unit are but a few things that could make a novel and mildly useful app crucial in many eyes.

You may recall a similar app created by Hughes Telematics for Mercedes-Benz vehicles that gave some basic functionality such as door locking/unlocking. The only problem with the Mercedes app is that again it is rather basic with the UI in particular leaving much to be desired as well as a lofty annual price of $280. I’m sorry, but even if I had money coming out of my dog’s ass, I still wouldn’t spend almost $300/year just to see a few of my cars specs and perform a few other functions remotely. To each his own I guess.

Hopefully GM didn’t skimp on developers making the Chevy Volt app or those responsible for integrating it into the car itself. Such a misstep would likely hamper GM’s efforts to rebuild their image as a world class leading, technology minded company *chuckles*.

As an added treat for sitting through my ramblings, a video. We all like videos right?

CrunchGear

Chevy volt nabs 230 MPG rating…but how straightforward is that estimate?

Now, I’ll just get straight to the chase and say it; Chevy was given a rating of 230 MPG for their electric car, the Volt. Now, at first you my think holy cow, cross country trips on a single tank of gas. But hold it there boys and girls, the marketing that GM is going to push and has already shown to be taking the spotlight, the 230 figure, is kind of misleading. While the car can technically go 230 on one tank of gas, the test for that number assumes the driver drives roughly 50-60 miles per day. 40 of those miles won’t use a single drop of gas, the last 10-20 will only use .2-.4 gallons of gas giving you roughly a 220-250 MPG rating. The real downfall in fuel economy comes as you keep driving.

Chevy Volt = Vaporware?

While the GM “made” Chevy Volt isn’t technically a gadget as it is much larger and is usually be looked upon as a vehicle, it is still a fine piece of electroinc technology that will *hopefully* at some point grace the public at large. While GM has announced today their plans to go through and file Chapter 11 bankruptcy, already concerns as to whether the Volt will ever make it to market are beginning to surface. The Volt is now several years into promise after promise by GM to deliver the electric/hybrid vehicle in a respectable amount of time. Several years later and we are still looking at a late 2010 release at best. Is the Volt dead? What about GM?