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This Tuesday, General Motors announced it is planning to mass-produce the Chevrolet Volt, an electric vehicle that will get fuel economy of 230 miles per gallon in city driving. This is so much more efficient than any car on the road today, that it even makes the Prius look inefficient. The Chevrolet Volt will become the first mass-produced vehicle that will have an MPG rating exceeding 100, and many industry analysts agreed that the car is a generation ahead of the plug-in hybrids that are being considered and developed by a number of GM's competitors. "The GM vehicle is the best one in the country based on what we've seen," according to Don Hillebrand, who is the director of transportation research at the Energy Department's Argonne National Laboratory. This lab is specializing in technology for for plug-in vehicles. "But it's hard to tell -- other companies could be keeping theirs secret." GM's announcement is all the more striking since the company has not been known for being a "green" manufacturer. Apparently it wants to change that image. GM has already launched an advertising campaign which is centered around a logo that forms a "230" using a 2, a 3 and a round electrical outlet. The company hopes that the Volt will become the symbol of a "new" company, with a new strategy, after all the recent bailout problems.

Although the claim of 230 miles per gallon is based on a proposed federal methodology for measuring the efficiency of plug-ins, it does not mean that drivers can continuously get this extremely high mileage. This depends on the distance the car is driven. The first 40 miles in a fully charged Volt is largely powered by the battery and over this distance the car will actually get triple-digit gas mileage. If you would drive your Volt for 30 miles each day on easy roads and recharge the car every night, almost no gasoline would be required. But when this range is exceeded the car will be less efficient, or it would need to be recharged.

Source: Washington Post