Volt Birth Watch 77: That Cd Won't Play
GM Car Czar Bob Lutz dropped quite the load of “Between the Lines” fodder (Justin’s working on it) in his i nterview with Charlie Rose. One real jaw-dropper: Lutz’s comment that the Volt has a Cd (coefficient of drag) of “between .28 and .29”. Folks, that is seriously bad. Was GM running the wind tunnel fan backwards, or did they put the model in upside down? My 1985 Mercedes 300E had a Cd of .28. As did a 1995 Mitsubishi Diamante. The current Prius scores a .26, and next year's model will undoubtedly improve on that. Lutz specifically said some months ago that the Volt would have better aerodynamics than the Prius. Oh well. Meanwhile, a whole raft of current sedans have a better Cd: Lexus LS430: .26; Hyundai Genesis: .27; Camry hybrid: .27; Mercedes W203: .27; the old B5 Passat: .27. Even the Saab 9-3 ties/beats the Volt with a .28. Keep in mind, that for an EV, aerodynamics plays a much more crucial role in highway range than for a conventional car. That’s why GM’s EV-1 had a spectacularly low Cd of .19. Nothing like progress in the span of fifteen years.
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Morea; I took it that folkdancer was sarcastically pointing out that the money spent on the war was not being removed from infrastructure expenses for which that the federal government has no authority but is being withheld from a plurality of other uses for which the federal government has no authority. I'm not one to argue that war spending is worthwhile but at least it's something the feds have the authority and responsibility to do. The rest of the crap (cited above) they're wasting my money on they have no business messing around with and any "savings" you'd like to generate should come from extra-constitutional activities.
cdotson, I get your point. I only wanted to clarify that budgets in these other areas are not going down.
don't forget the Honda Civic at a .27