There is NO fixed RPM engine that can convert the energy from gasoline to electricity more effectively than just driving a gas engine. The electricity from the Volt must come from from the grid, or in my case, solar panels to be cost effective. There is a conversion loss of ~30% when the electricity is sent to the wheels and then another 30% when you re-gen. The Volt gets ~36 mpg if you feed it gas alone. That's not a bad number but you can do better with other fuel cars, like a Volkswagen Jetta.

I own two Volts. I have two charging stations at home. My driving situation is that I get about ~40 miles per charge. Several times, I have gotten 60 miles out of a charge that was situational. Mechanically, the Volt seems to be very sound. With the exception of the center console electronics, everything is top notch.

An earlier poster compared the new Cadillac to an old Cimarron, My Volt, from 0-50 will smoke 95% of the vehicles out there. Electric motors don't have a torque curve, they have a torque line from 0 RPMs to 15000 RPMs in the Volt's case. I don't know this to be the case, but if they upped the battery bank, the Cadillac could have even faster take off than the Volt.

At work, we have chargers, again driven by renewable energy. My Volt was backed into the spot and right next to is, was a Tesla Model S. The front ends are remarkably similar. The back end of the Volt is nice. I find my Volt visually appealing with the exception of the black plastic body trim. But it is acceptable

The point is that electric cars can work, but you have to be in a position to make use of it.

Films should at all times should add scenes which show the consequences of those serious violations. Songs should at all times have a chorus that show the consequences of those serious violations. Books same thing. Of course, the media will get quickly boring when they are forced to follow a recipe.
 
I think that system has been tried...in socialist and communist countries. It seems that people are voting with their money. Games like GTA are fulfilling a need, or it would not sell.

Sure it does. Just like the torpedo, this board will single-handedly cause a market explosion by with all of the other trading platforms can target. It will be glorious.

Actually there is a concept of spirit of law and then another called the letter of the law. This is taught at the CHP academy. The spirit of the law is to stop people from texting while driving, i.e. they are moving; to keep them from hurting themselves or others. If you are at a stop light, there is no danger that you are going to hit someone. Also, the GPS ticket is splitting a very fine hair.
 
Cops who can't think follow the letter of the law. The letter of the law means they don't have to make any moral decisions. They are just following orders. These type of cops are not desirable. You want officers who follow the spirit of the law. Cops who see you speeding and have you dead to rights; they wag their finger at you to slow down, but don't pull you over because you were not a danger to yourself or others. They are the sort of people who follow a moral compass and understand the need for discretion.

I own two Volts. I bought mine a year ago in September. My wife liked mine so much, she bought one three weeks later. We both love the cars. I get 40-50 miles per charge. At home, my solar system charges the cars. I charge at work for free. The interior is adequate. I have usually drive 70 mph on the freeway, all electric.

From 0-50, there isn't much on the road faster than the car. There are a lot of sport cars that get surprised pretty fast that the Volt is a rocket and a tremendous amount of fun to drive. The handling going up the mountains to where I live is excellent. It sticks to the corners like a mountain goat.

My only nit with the car is the radio. iPhone integration is buggy. The main display never hangs, but the entertainment display will hang from time to time. Not critical but would expect better from a polished product.

My gas savings has been tremendous. I have quite a long commute. On a short day, it is over 100 miles. Last year, I filled up 6 times, each time, a max of 9 gallons. My current MPG rating on the car over 330 mpg.

It is a great car. The main antagonists of the Volt have ulterior motives for their rantings. The primary one was a GM fund manager who got handed his shorts for lunch and has been whining ever since that it was the Volt that cost him.

My previous car was a Yukon XL. I don't give a rats ass about being green. I only have solar and the car because they make sense.

Rats, my moderator points expired yesterday. Funny post!

I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/michael-dell-1997-apple-quote-2013-2#ixzz2VMh5IUD9

How quickly people forget the past. Buy music for your Zune? Microsoft changes their business model and your device becomes a brick. Why on earth would I want to buy a device that ties me permanently to a company. The xBox 360 is good enough for me and when it no longer is, I'll find another solution. Hopefully by that time, a embedded Linux monster is developed.

And I think EA is reaping the rewards of their BS. I used to buy EA games but that ended a while ago. I vote with my money.

Microsoft is lowering the barrier to entry. If the 720 requires always on internet, there will be no 720 in my house. It isn't like Microsoft's fortunes are soaring right now. A series of inept moves followed by more inept moves has neutered a once powerful company. This has happened to IBM (young poeple can Google IBM). It has happened to Hewlett-Packard. In the 70's and to the mid 80's HP was the must have equipment. I still have my HP 12-C. It happened to Apple until the second coming of Jobs. Apple was the high flying stock while they were producing the Apple II. The stock ended up going all the way to $12 before Jobs turned it around. It is now happening to Microsoft. As a 30 year, Win32 developer, I have made the transition to Linux. Linux still has some rough spots, but developing QT on embedded takes me back to the hobby software days of the Apple II. It is fun.

There are no Sony products in my house. Sony used to be the brand to have in the house. Think Apple magic. Sony walkmans. Sony CRTs. All of it good. And then some knuckle heads decided to maximize share holder value. This always results in reduce value to the consumer. The Sony Play Station was the last Sony device in the house. I told my kids I didn't want them buying PSPs. They did anyway. Their birthday money, but Sony will not get one more dime from me. The PSPs got bricked when Sony updated them. And, Sony wouldn't fix them. "Sorry, our fault, but your warranty is over." Then Sony tried root kits on their music. What sort of company does that crap? My kids won't ever buy a Sony product. I encourage all of you to never buy a Sony product.

So, Microsoft has the number 1 gaming platform. Make the platform require internet and watch that platform decline. My 12 year old asked if he could put together a PC on his own. I hadn't done it since a 33 MHz DX chip. (Again young ones, look it up). My 12 year old, using Tom's Hardware, some birthday money and some money from dad put together one of the fastest machines I had seen for ~$700. Windows7 boot in 13 seconds; games rendering in ultra high resolution and frame rates. Let me get to the point. Microsoft is going to mass produce a DRM, internet tied platform for $500. The $700 box my kid put together will be $500 in a year. Another gaming company with some backing and the growing numbers of Linux developers is changing the environment to where Microsoft will have put themselves out of the market. And old guys like me who like to game, the 360 is good enough for me. I used to play Mario Bros on the SNES. All of today's graphics wows me. :-)

Years ago, Steve Jobs was ousted by Apple's Board of Directors. He was replaced by, John Sculley, a proper CEO. Sculley had convinced Apple that he would sell a computer like a bottle of soda. He, of course, was wrong as were the following CEOs. It was only when Apple was selling at $12 a share and Apple was dead did the board bring back Jobs, his vision for the long term and the Next OS. The rest is history.

Nokia is repeating the mistakes of Apple. The Nokia board bought into the Elop burning platform. Never mind that Nokia was on the verge of a great break through in their adoption of a Linux based OS with a world class framework, Qt, to back it. Elop doesn't have the vision or the technical prowess to pull Nokia back from destruction. He is the captain of the Valdez. His oil rig is still burning and spewing oil. Maybe, just maybe, when Nokia is all but dead and irrelevant, a technically savvy CEO with a vision will come in and turn around Nokia. Until then, the N8 was my last Nokia phone.

Meego is an excellent OS platform. Had Nokia proceeded to stay the course, the N10 would have been a must have product.

Start your comment with a flame bait comment, "I'll assume..." which really reduces the credibility of your post. The stated cost of production of the Volt is around ~37k. The MSRP for the base model is $39k. So, I traded a Yukon XL for a 2013 Volt. I've had it for one month, put 1600 miles on it and I have yet to visit a gas station. I think the retards are the "accountants" that somehow want to put this car in a special class and apply numbers to it. No one seems to do this with BMWs, Mercedes, Telsa..ect. Except, now in the case of a Volt, we are now going to boil the car down to numbers. For me, the car is a no-brainer. I am no longer spending 10k a year on fuel. The net cost of the car to me is ~36k given California taxes, title, CA refund, Federal credits. I charge at work for free (solar) and I charge at home for "free" again solar. So now I am paying .9% financing and nothing to speak of for fuel. I have $400 a month more in my pocket because of that.

But forget the numbers. It is fun car to drive. When I plug my iPhone into the car, the car becomes my iPhone. The car has phenomenal acceleration that from the stop light that will leave most cars in the dust. The rush is akin, on a small scale, to my old BMW K1200RS motorcycle. The build quality is phenomenal. It brings back memories of 1980's Toyota and Honda build quality. There are way fewer parts, so theoretically, the car should be more reliable than an ICE vehicle. The brakes in general don't get used. Driving around town, when you stop, you can put your finger on the brake rotor and it will be cold to the touch if you only used regenerative braking.

Ignorant people, or retards in your language, are people who post out their ass about a car they read about on some right wing news feed. I'll assume you aren't one of them. The car was engineered and designed years before Obama was elected. The GM bailout was initiated by Bush and completed by Obama. Many people buy cars for reasons beyond money. Trying to boil down the Volt to a monetary bottom line is...well...retarded.

I bought two PIs. One for me and one for my son. The purpose was to have a inexpensive piece of hardware on which we can learn the mechanics of embedded Linux development. I noticed all of the above problems on the boards that I bought. As a beginner, I wasn't sure if I was doing something wrong. We spent an entire Saturday working through the power issues, like the crew working on Apollo 13. We did get it worked out, but when you are learning something, it is best to learn on a platform that isn't presenting intermittent problems. The student isn't going to recognize the demarcation between their ignorance and hardware problems. If the board can't be built reliably for $35, get better chips and raise the price. In order for the board to do what is says it does, USB better provide 500ma or it isn't a USB connector. The upside to all this is that I've learned more about Linux in two weeks than I have tinkering with Linux for 10 years.

What does it mean to game the system? The game paper, while not pertaining to the subject, is a well written paper. It is not gibberish. It would take some talent to produce the gamed paper and probably more time. Given that, why wouldn't the student just write an on topic paper?

Given the bigger picture, writing is an art form. An essay is an art form. Even a human grading the paper might miss the nuances of what is being written. Who can truly say what the author has written is incorrect, when in writing, there is no incorrect or correct. There is just a continuum from bad to good writing.

I had the same result, so I started reading the comments to see if others were able to read the article. And then...oh yeah...this is Slashdot. At least the posters read the title or the comments would be off topic. :-)