“The Volt should cost less than 2 cents per mile to drive on electricity, GM said, compared to 12 cents a mile on gasoline at a price of $3.60 a gallon.”(via muppetpants, and sds.)
There is a bit of a catch on this one. It can run 40 miles on a charge. After that, a gas-powered generator turns on, which can take it another 400 miles on a tank. While it uses gas to generate, the car is truly an electric car. The gas tank and generator are sort of like a large battery.
Based on Squashed’s description of this (haven’t bothered to research it myself) this isn’t an “electric car” as much as it is a plug-in hybrid. Current hybrids are basically electric cars in that they are run by electric motors. The gas motor drives a generator rather then directly driving the wheels.
Electric cars are still not viable due to current battery technology. The Li-ion batteries used in laptops (and the Tesla) have fairly short life spans and are made with very dangerous materials. Until we can solve the problem of modern batteries we can’t have a viable truly electric car.
