GM started taking orders for the Volt in July. The General Electric company has promised to buy twenty-five thousand electric vehicles. This includes one thousand Chevy Volts next year and thousands more to come.
SHIRLEY GRIFFITH: The Volt is designed to run as an electric car for more than sixty kilometers. After that, a gasoline engine powers the car. The battery and the gas generator let the Volt travel a total of about five hundred sixty kilometers on one charge and tank of gasoline.
What is different about the Volt is that its electric motor always runs the car. Gasoline is used only to generate electricity. GM engineers say they chose this design because it is ten to fifteen percent more efficient. They also used a new, lithium-ion battery that is expected to last longer than batteries in current hybrid cars.
GM is selling the Volt for about forty-one thousand dollars. This is more than two times the cost of other small GM cars. But buyers can get a seven thousand five hundred dollar tax credit from the government for buying a Volt.
In the past, fuel-efficient cars have been small cars that Americans have rejected -- at least when gasoline prices are low. High school and college students are a big market for such vehicles. But a change has taken place in the world of environmentally friendly cars. Several are sports cars.
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STEVE EMBER: Tesla is a new carmaker based in Palo Alto, California. The company's chief executive is Elon Musk. He is also known for leading SpaceX, a space travel company. Tesla's goal is to make more affordable all-electric cars. The Tesla Roadster, however, has attracted a lot of attention for being a fast sports car that costs over one hundred thousand dollars.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25