Most Americans drive around 20 miles a day (the actual stats are in another comment). 40 miles is more than good enough for a huge majority of Americans. But if you drive more than 40 miles a day, you get the first 40 or so for around $1.50 then get 40mpg for the rest of them. I'm going to guess that this is better than what you currently get in your car.

The Volt goes 40 miles on a charge, not 15 miles. I haven't used gas in my Volt for about 3,000 miles. It is worth plugging in the cable for that.

Cell phone use on commercial flights aren't banned because of the disruption they do to the airplane, they are banned because of the disruption they will do to the cell network. At 30,000 feet, your cell phone will attempt to connect to 100's of cells at once. This obviously causes network congestion. If people really did turn off their phones during commercial flights, we would have more cell bandwidth on the ground.

It is a hybrid, but it is possible to drive one completely on electricity if you have trips less than 35 miles between charges. Some people can go months without using gas.

The Chevy Volt lets you get to work on electricity. Then you visit your sister, the first 35 miles is electric and the rest is 40 mpg gas. If you have the 220V charger, your around town-driving on a Saturday could be mostly electric if you have enough time between trips.

"far beyond the human ear's ability to hear." What is the point in getting something that is far beyond your ability to hear. CD Quality is good enough for 99% of the people out there. In my opinion, a large portion of the 1% who can hear a difference are the same people that pay $300 for a $1 power cable and tell you there is a huge difference between the sound quality when using them so I wouldn't trust their opinions.

I created an account just to say this. You weren't born with the ability to create windows installation disks that have been slip streamed and other drivers on it. You took the time to learn how to do this. The fact that you didn't take the time to learn how linux wireless adapters work isn't a fault of Linux.