Who holds back the electric car?

...it sure as hell ain't the Stonecutters Lodge. The brutal realities of modern science are bad enough. Even so, I'm so hoping that Chevy pulls this one off. The Chevy Volt:

If it meets specifications, it will charge up overnight from any standard electrical socket. It will go 40 miles on a charge. Then a small gasoline engine will ignite. The engine’s sole job will be to drive a generator, whose sole job will be to maintain the battery’s charge—not to drive the wheels, which will never see anything but electricity. In generator mode, the car will drive hundreds of miles on a tank of gas, at about 50 miles per gallon. But about three-fourths of Americans commute less than 40 miles a day, so on most days most Volt drivers would use no gas at all.

As a commuter who goes 20 miles one way, every day - even a lifelong driver of imports - I'd buy a Chevy to not use gas.

The article in the Atlantic is an unabashed part of GM's media barrage for the Volt, but it's a great narrative.

They're taking insane risks to do this:

The pencil pushers had done none of the marketing and cost studies that typically precede a product launch, but no matter. Normally, Bob Lutz says, “you basically define the whole future of the car on paper before you give the go-ahead to start spending some serious engineering and design money on it. And in this case it was completely backwards. We saw that we had a smash hit that hugely resonated with the public, and we just decided: let’s go to work. No business case, but let’s get this thing into production-ready form, and we’ll worry about the cost and investment and the profitability later.

And they're pulling out the stops:

Early on, word had come down from Bob Lutz and Jon Lauckner that standard procedure was suspended where the Volt was concerned. “You guys are not going to be held to the normal GM bureaucracy,” Lutz recalls saying. “You guys spend money when you need to spend it. You have a problem, call us on the phone.” Engineers, designers, and executives were told to trust their instincts and make decisions on the spot. If a larger issue crops up, it is taken to a special Volt steering committee, and Lutz, Lauckner, and the key company vice presidents settle it before leaving the room.

I know, I know - too early to get excited - it's GM, after all - but hey-

Just think of it - being proud of American innovation for a change...!

(H/t TPM)