Having just bought a Volt in Oct 2013, I absolutely love the car for my daily commute and family shopping trips, but the car is just a bit small for longer trips where we need to haul a bit of luggage.
I'm hoping that future incarnations will grow to a family of vehicles (like Prius and Telsa) mating a bigger Voltec engines and batteries to something Malibu or Impala-sized. I just can't see myself buying two identical cars each with limited passenger and cargo area. An Equinox or Captiva sized crossover would also be nice.
My wife and I leased a 2011 enclave and 2011 volt, one as the commute car and one as the family hauler. I was sure that there would be an Enclave-like plug-in by 2014. Can't we have a voltec family hauler, ideally with seats for seven? I would be happy with half the volt specs (20 AER and 20 MPG in CS mode).
GM has let out stories of their intent to use the voltec concept for future growth, but this is clearly dependant on market demand. The perspective that we need to rememb er though is that most "family haulers" are mostly used as single occupant vehicles too. They are "limited" by the fact that they have too much passenger space and too much cargo capability to be efficient. The volt is nearly an engineering miracle that it can both get 5 miles per kwh for 40 miles on a charge and also 30+ gasoline only MPG. Those numbers would be very sensitive to significant increases in size and weight and would produce a car with many fewer compelling reasons for ownership. look at teh CMax energi- it is the next small step "up" in capacity, but the compromize leaves the owner with almost meaningless battery range, basicly to the supermarket and back for most suburban owners, and the comfort compromise on longer whole family trips is only a bit bigger than the Volt.
Great points. In my particular instance, I use my Volt to commute to and from work, about a 50 mile round trip. The gas savings alone compared to my previous gas guzzler is pretty much paying for the car payment (once the federal and state tax credits/rebates come back to my pocketbook). My wife, on the other hand only needs to drive to our local town occasionally and we end up taking longer family trips about once or twice a month. So I'm willing to lose some battery life and gas mileage if we can get unlimited short trips (7 miles roundtrip to the local grocery store) and still haul 4 people plus luggage to Chicago O'hare airport (300 mi round trip).
That said, I'd love to get a Tesla that might be able to make the trip without a recharge, but the car is just too pricey for anyone but the filthy rich - which I am not. I refuse to spend over $23K on a vehicle (don't know how long I can keep that up with the rising car prices).
I have a Cadillac SRX on lease that will be due in 2 years. As a Volt owner, I am already thinking ahead to the day when I have to make a choice on whether to purchase the SRX, walk away from it and buy something to replace it or just go back to one car. The issue is that I do need a bigger vehicle when I want to go on longer trips or when I need to haul something. I suppose I could go back to one car and rent when I need something bigger, certainly a huge cost savings but having two cars is so convenient so it would be nice to be able to have a bigger vehicle that is also energy efficient like the Volt is. I will be keeping a very close eye on cars over the next few years, that is a given now!
I would love to see this as well. My wife's car is a Passat Wagon, and it's the smallest thing we can have. Our family is 4 (2 adults 2 kids) but often times we take mother-in-law or another with us, and are forced to leave the Volt at home. I would have loved to bring it on our Pittsburgh trip last week but we had to take the Passat instead. If there were an Impala or LeSabre sized Voltec powered vehicle available I'd be all over it. Wagon preferred! Even with the roomy Passat wagon, we still needed a roof box to carry all 5 of our gear for a week long trip. Fortunately we pulled off a comfortable 27 mpg in the Passat so it wasn't horrible. Could have done even better if we had more time to drive slower too. Spent a few hundred miles of the 1400 mile round trip driving in the snow too. I've no interest in a CUV or SUV. And please give it a spare tire!
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