2010 Chevrolet Camaro Ss 2 on 2040-cars

Auto blog

Nissan Leaf sales drop, new Chevy Volt climbs in November

This is probably just how things are going to be from now on. With the second-gen Chevy Volt available in some states and Nissan dragging its heels on getting a true new version of the Leaf onto dealer lots, it's no surprise that plug-in vehicle shoppers are turning to the Volt in a big way. Yes, we know that a pure EV and a PHEV are not the same and that the Volt and the Leaf are quite different cars, but after all of this time tracking the two plug-in sales champions, we feel obliged to continue our monthly look at who's selling how many of what. Here goes. We'll start with the mediocre news. That'd be the Leaf sales, which came in at just 1,054 units last month. That's the lowest monthly sales total for all of 2015 and, in fact, the lowest month of Leaf sales since February 2013. It's also a 60.8 percent drop from November 2014's sales of 2,687. This despite the fact that you can now get a new Leaf with a longer range of 107 miles (vs. 84) for a higher cost. The new Volt (along with the first-gen Volts that are still being sold out there), on the other hand, was up 49 percent, to 1,980 sales. That gave the Volt its best November ever, "on both a total and retail basis," GM says. The Volt beat the Leaf in October, too, and we suspect this is going to be the story until Nissan figures out how to get people excited about a five-year-old model or introduces the second edition. As always, we'll have a fuller wrap-up of US green car sales in our By The Numbers report soon. Green Chevrolet Nissan Electric Hybrid ev sales

Survey says $25k barrier is a problem for EVs

The majority of consumers are more or less priced out of the market.
Electric cars are gaining popularity with the general public, but are they still too expensive? According to a survey 1,084 consumers by Navigant Research, a consulting firm located in Boulder, CO, 71 percent want their next car to cost under $25,000, while 41 percent won't go a cent above $20K. Looks like people are even thriftier than we'd originally thought.

Take a close look at the guts of the Chevy Volt battery, powertrain

Just how intimate would you like to get with the powertrain in a Chevy Volt? If you're anything like YouTube user d55guy, then spending a half hour filming yourself taking apart the battery pack, motor, inverter and more for a look inside sounds like your idea of fun. After all, this way you get to see the cooling system, the heavy safety kill switch and count up the individual cells in the battery modules. Fun! Turns out, we also enjoy languidly paced Volt dissection video goodness, and we think you might want to see it as well. So, we've embedded two videos below and if you don't have a better understanding of how the Volt is put together after watching them, well, at least you can't say we never tried to show you anything. Given that what's really happening here is the organized 'destruction' of an expensive and potentially dangerous object, let's talk safety. There's a serious disclaimer at the beginning of the videos and on the YouTube description page, but we feel the need to repeat the gist of it here: do not try this at home. The creator of the video says he is a trained engineer and has been doing things like this "for the better part of a decade," so he apparently knows what he's doing. With that in mind, watch it all below. When you're done seeing the insides of a Volt powertrain up close, if you need more filmed EV dissection/destruction, check out this video designed for first responders approaching a damaged Tesla Model S. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings.