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Chevrolet Volt? This Is An Award Winning Car...Chevrolet Volt The Chevrolet Volt: The planet's first Electric Car with an extended range One of the benefits of the Volt is that it seats four people, whereas most current electric vehicles seat only two... Known in the UK as the Vauxhall Ampera, and Australia as the the Holden Volt... Also the vehicle has all of the comfort and safety features that are expected in a modern car, like air conditioning, airbags, power brakes, and even regenerative braking, where the batteries are charged when decelerating by the electric motor... Game Changer.. And Made In The U.S.A. The Chevrolet Volt is a new type of vehicle called a series hybrid, which means that it runs on electric power 100% of the time... It uses a small gasoline engine to charge the battery pack after it has depleted the lithium ion pack down to 25% or at 40 miles, whichever comes first... Called the E-Flex system, it gets around a major problem facing electric cars, that is, what do you do when the batteries are flat? In sales speak, this is also called Range Anxiety... The electric motor is a 120 kw unit, driven by a 16 kwh battery pack, and backed up by a 1.4 liter gasoline engine driving a 53 kw generator that will be on only when charging. Recharging can be done by simply plugging into a standard outlet in less than 8 hours at home... A result of the this design is the fact that the battery is allowed to be made much smaller than other electric cars, due to the gasoline generator onboard, allowing more room for the designers to add a rear liftback to the car... The gasoline motor also provides power to drive the vehicle when the battery is not charged enough, say on a trip more than the 40 miles that you get under electric only drive, via a power split device which splits the drive between the battery and ICE (Internal Combustion Engine) See this animated graphic explanation for more:
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