Which economy cars are you saying are comparable to a Volt? Have you driven a Volt? Per Edmunds, Volt has the lowest TCO of Civic EX, Jetta TDI, Mazda3, and a Subaru Outback or Impreza (all the cars I was considering when I bought my Volt). How does it not make economic sense? Just because it costs more than barebones Versa?

After tax credits, most people pay mid to low $20's for their Volts. I paid 25.5k. So nowhere near double a small economy ICE. And the Volt is not an economy-style car... test drive one and see! If all we care is about is saving money, we'd all buy new Versas for $14k (or better yet, a used car for much less). But drive a Versa and drive a Volt (or any other mid $20's car) and you'll see what you pay for.

That's actually an easy question to answer: it's all about efficiency. GM could release a software update tomorrow that keeps the Volt is series mode all the time, but the range when operating in gas mode (called CS mode for Charge Sustaining) would suffer. At low speeds in CS mode, the Volt already does operate in pure series mode. Still in CS mode, but go above 36mph with a light load (meaning no heavy acceleration), and it will switch to power-split mode which is a parallel operation. It does this because it is more efficient to use some of the gas engine's torque to directly drive the wheels than convert it to electricity and then convert it back into torque in the electric motor. Every time you convert energy, you lose some. Keep in mind, even in power split mode, the electric traction motor is still providing most of the power. I know GM got panned for allowing this parallel mode to exist, but they did it because it's more efficient that staying serial. That doesn't make the car any less an EV. It can still go 100mph in pure EV with heat and a/c... full performance without any gas. I go weeks without using gas in mine, other go months. Indeed the new Volt coming out this fall is making the parallel mode even stronger (using two planetary gear sets instead of one on the current Volt) while still raising mpg in CS mode.

It is electric... all fuel cell vehicles are electric, they just use hydrogen in the fuel cell to generate electricity instead of having a large battery.

You don't seem to understand how a Volt works. Saying they should "remove the non-electric drivetrain"? makes no sense... the drivetrain is very simple: a planetary gearbox with two electric motor/generators and a gas engine as inputs.There is no separate non-electric drivetrain. And disengaging the gas motor from the wheels... well, the car already does this. The Volt actually engages and disengages the gas motor from the wheels all the time (once battery is depleted) based on speed and load. It chooses what is most efficient, sometimes it's most efficient to have the engine act as pure generator so it disengages from wheels, other times it's more efficient to have engine powering wheels so it engages (and can still act as generator while in this mode). It's still tuned for generation too, as it tends to run at a few set speeds no matter what the gas pedal demands... so even when engaged the engine never runs like a normal car. By forcing them to permanently disengage, you'd actually get less range. The Volt already is the perfect EV for today's age... it's pure EV for the first 40 miles, then it can be both a serial AND parallel hybrid after that, depending on what is most efficient for the current speed/load. Forcing pure serial all the time for some sort of EV-purist fantasy would be a mistake, as your range would be lower since it's less efficient. I never understood why people were so mad that it wasn't a pure serial setup, GM designed it to be the most efficient it can be, that is what should matter. Love my Volt...