You Gotta Be Kidding -- I Did Not Know This -- It Must Have Been In the Small Print -- Absolutely Nothing To Do With The Bakken

Updates

One hour later: I'm still troubled by this. How does an electric vehicle fail to meet California emissions standards that would qualify it for state incentives? I was under the impression that electric vehicles had, like, no emissions.

Original Post

Link here.

The Chevy Volt did not meet/exceed California emissions standards which would have qualified it for state subsidies ....

General Motors Co. is revamping its Chevrolet Volt plug-in electric vehicle to meet California emissions requirements, aiming to juice sales after failing last year to qualify for state incentives that helped fuel the rise of Nissan Motor Co.'s rival Leaf.

Incredible.

Details, details.

In all of the hundreds of interviews and on-the-air discussions, Phil LeBeau, CNBC commentator, and GM spokesman, never mentioned that little bit of trivia.

And to think all those faux-environmentalists thought they were buying a state-of-the-art environmental automobile. Even Nissan had it figured out.

I wonder if they replaced the battery with a gasoline engine converted to run on natural gas ......

On another note, I happened to catch a video on the success of Apple and it had to do with the concept of thinking different(ly) - not so much the product, but the passion the product generated.

And I think that's part of the problem with the Volt -- to describe it as a "plug-in" isn't helping. Americans associate "plug-in's" with toys, and with computers that are tethered to the wall. Folks hear "plug-in" and their paleomammalian brain "thinks" tethered.

Ya gotta do away with "plug-in."

Nah, it just isn't gonna work. You still have the battery issue. I would bet that it is the rare American who has not experienced a dead battery in their "conventional" automobile, and changing a 12-volt battery for $120 is a real pain. Imagine a dead battery in your Volt. A really dead battery. [Or an exploding battery. Unsafe at any speed.]

How many times have you seen children open a Christmas gift only to be disappointed to see that it requires six AA batteries (not included)? That's the image folks have of batteries.

Somehow, Government Motors needs to change the image. It could start by calling them something different than "plug-in's." I wonder if they just called them what they are: coal-powered?

Plug-in = tethered. Plug-in = toy. Or toasters.