#ChevroletVolt

General Motors announced Tuesday that it would invest $449 million into the two plants responsible for assembling the Chevrolet Volt in preparation for the next generation of the plug-in hybrid’s arrival in 2016.

It’s a headline you might have seen in the past couple days: “Tesla Model S outsells Nissan Leaf (or Chevrolet Volt, you pick)”. To the layman, the story is that this amazing car from an amazing American upstart company is outselling lowly Chevys and Nissans to become America’s favorite EV. The angrier among us may wonder how a car that costs twice that of a Leaf or a Volt can outsell them both. TTAC just wants to know how any media outlet can make this comparison in the first place.

In 2005, ABC News Polls claimed the average daily commute in America was 16 miles, a number borne out in our own Facebook poll. If you have a commute like that and want an EV for commuting and a hybrid for road tripping, you’re the target demographic for a plug-in hybrid. Since I’m not a trust fund baby, and neither are most of TTAC’s readers, I’m going to forget about the Karma while we dive deep into Ford’s first (and interestingly spelled) Energi.

NHTSA is proposing to make it mandatory that hybrid cars and EVs have the ability to emit a sound when traveling below 18 mph on electric power, as a means of warning pedestrians and cyclists. The system is said to add about $30 to the cost of each vehicle, and will no doubt tie up bureaucrats for months as they debate just what kind of tone will best protect the public from the horror of low-speed injuries. So why don’t we make life easier for them and decide ourselves?

Swedish clothing store H&M offers a generous 30-day return policy that urges customers to Buy It Now, Return It Later. Looks like Vauxhall will be following suit.

A $25,000 EV with more torque than a Corvette? GM’s got it, and it’s not the Volt.

Earlier in the year, GE bought 12,000 Chevrolet Volts, and the company was promptly accused of “crony capitalism” and of “forcing its employees” into unwanted cars. The subtext was that the GE purchase propped up GM’s Volt sales. Now GE does the same with Ford, but at a smaller scale.

General Motors is looking to sell 500,000 vehicles with electrification technology by 2017, but the bulk of its focus will be on EVs or plug-in cars rather than conventional hybrids.

GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck plant will get a $35 million investment to build the Cadillac ELR, a luxury coupe that uses the Chevrolet Volt’s gasoline-electric drivetrain.

There’s been a lot of discussion following our “ The Volt Loses GM $49K/Car” article. Lost in all that hubbub was a little factoid at the tail end of the Reuters piece offered by GM VP Dave Parks, who now heads global product programs and formerly headed the development of the Volt. That factoid is at least a glimmer of hope for the Volt’s ultimate success. Parks said that the most common non-GM car traded in on the Volt has been the Toyota Prius.

A software glitch in the OnStar system caused GM to halt sales of certain models, including the brand-new Cadillac ATS.

General Motors will idle production of the Chevrolet Volt for four weeks in total, according to a report by Automotive News.

Browsing TrueCar’s top lease deals for July, 2012 yielded an interesting find; a lease deal on the Chevrolet Volt that specifically excludes HOV-lane qualified versions.

Now that the dust has settled, it’s time to take a look at our favorite automotive urination competition, the epic battle between the Chevrolet Volt, Nissan Leaf and the Toyota Prius Plug-In.