You're confusing the Volt with the Hy-wire that the article links to. The Volt isn't close to that design because its large T-shaped battery pack and engine force a particular layout: 4-seater with a hump in the back.

CO2 levels have not been as high as they are now for 800,000 years. Go read the papers cited here, and view more graphs

Good, now we're getting somewhere.

I think it's a tradition. Maserati showed the old 1980s Italdesign one in chocolate brown with tan leather interior (tons of leather). It's the anti-Benz/BMW, non-Ferrari. I saw a current Quattroporte in a medium blue and it was really distinctive.

Why will the EV hype "wear off"? Only a few of the dozens of research innovations already announced have to pay off for batteries to continue to get, conservatively, 10% better each year. That means in 8 years the same size battery pack will send the car twice as far, and more importantly for car fans will be able to…

Fantasizing about dropping a different powertrain in a car is just that. This car is designed around its skateboard chassis, re-engineering it to fit a transmission tunnel and catalytic converter and muffler under the car would be a huge operation. The design is worthless to other companies.

False economy doesn't mean what you think it does.

Because if you connect an Atkinson-cycle engine up with a motor and a motor-generator through the Ford/Toyota e-CVT, the engine can run most of the time at optimum load, and the efficiency benefits of diesel are marginal. And the low-end torque of a diesel doesn't add much when you have one or more motors providing…

1. Anthropogenic CO2 emissions (burning stuff) is the prime cause of global warming.

Not quite. Karmas are assembled by Valmet in Finland, but were engineered in the USA; part of Fisker's loan from the DoE was for that work. The Delaware plant was to be used for the follow-on Project Nina/Fisker Atlantic, but Fisker has yet to get that part of the loan.

People never seem to take the production (and destruction) process into account.

It really helps to have objectively the best car by some metric, then your pricing and production control demand The Prius is phenomenal, still the only 50mpg car you can buy and yet it's a practical reliable mid-size car. The Prius C is expensive but again the only 50mpg compact car. The Highlander Hybrid is…

Ahh, OK. The 918 Spyder's engine cranks out 580 horsepower (430 kW), so if you could route all that power to its 6.8 kW·h battery you could recharge it in under a minute. In reality its main 125 kW motor also acts as the generator and there will be losses in the power management electronics and battery recharging, but…

Look at Karma. Now look at Volt. End of story. In the flesh the Karma is a gargantuan voluptuous beast that makes a BMW 6 series look like a Hyundai, it's a Hot Wheels vision of the future that some rich people will buy for the looks alone. That they will be able to drive around a lot of the time gas-free in their…

Besides the cheapness Dreadcthulhu mentions (every penny helps to pay for that $63,000 Liquid Metal paint job!) , it's also less polluting to plug in, and it's convenient and fun to skip the gas station for your regular 15 mile commute. Those benefits also apply to much cheaper cars than this flagship.

You're dreaming if you think standards produce the best engineering solution. CHAdeMO requires a separate plug for DC fast charging. The SAE "design by committee" solution sticks two extra fat pins on the bottom of the AC standard to make a Frankenplug. And neither is "first", they're preceded by the Magnecharge…

@alex lloyd

I offer three: the The 80 mpg diesel-hybrid General Motors Precept, the 72 mpg diesel-hybrid Ford Prodigy, and the 72 mpg diesel-hybrid Chrysler ESX-3. All from the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles. America could have lead the world in fuel-efficient cars, instead "On track to achieving its objectives, the…

Because they're all different shapes, sizes, electrical characteristics, and chemistries, and require different complexities of cooling.

Please cite a source for "dramatically more fuel to manufacture and gather parts for the batteries" (Jezza on Top Gear doesn't count). Heavier cars take more resources to produce, and batteries are heavy. But I repeat, the extra weight is minor compared with the TONS of fuel saved, here's the irrefutable math. That's…