{"id":5896,"date":"2010-10-21T10:18:35","date_gmt":"2010-10-21T14:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/henrypayne.com\/?p=5896"},"modified":"2010-10-26T10:20:04","modified_gmt":"2010-10-26T14:20:04","slug":"why-care-about-the-chevy-volts-planetary-gear-follow-the-money-national-review-10-21-10","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/2010\/10\/why-care-about-the-chevy-volts-planetary-gear-follow-the-money-national-review-10-21-10","title":{"rendered":"Why Care about the Chevy Volt&#8217;s Planetary Gear? Follow the Money ( National Review 10.21.10)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why has the complex drive-train engineering of the Chevy Volt\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/planet-gore\/250468\/chevy-volt-runs-coal-greg-pollowitz\">become a headline<\/a> in the popular press? Why does anyone care whether the Volt is an EREV (extended\u00a0range electric vehicle) or a series hybrid? Simply put, it\u2019s the difference between whether Government Motors gets a $7,500 tax credit \u2014 or just $3500 per Volt sold. It\u2019s the difference between whether the sticker says $41,000 or \u201cjust\u201d $33,500. It\u2019s the difference between how many credits GM gets towards Obama\u2019s artificial average-vehicle-mileage mandate of 35 mpg.<\/p>\n<p>When the feds start running\u00a0consumer\u00a0markets, engineering quibbles matter.<\/p>\n<p>As Holman Jenkins wrote in the WSJ on Wednesday, \u201cthe gasoline engine that generates electricity when the (Volt) batteries are depleted will, under certain circumstances, directly turn the planetary ring gear and help drive the car.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Engaging the planetary ring gear is the type of genius engineering solution auto nerds come up with to make cars better. The Volt, properly understood, is a \u201cplug-in hybrid\u201d since it is capable of running on the battery ALONE all the way to 100 mph (a \u201cdual mode\u201d Prius hybrid, by contrast, runs on a gas engine with a battery for low-end assist).<\/p>\n<p>But by crossing the breach between the gas engine driving a\u00a0generator\u00a0or directly driving the wheels (that outer, \u201cplanetary\u201d gear in the transmission), it created havoc for GM\u2019s public-relations department which had advertised the Volt as the\u00a0<em>real deal<\/em> electric (\u201c230 mpg!\u201d Also a fabrication, but that\u2019s another story) and therefore worthy of the $7,500 \u201celectric\u201d handout as opposed to the $3,500 \u201chybrid\u201d handout. Regardless, GM \u2014 or rather, the rich Greenies who need the latest $40-grand\u00a0status\u00a0symbol \u2014 will get your $7,500 in tax money because the tax credit was designed for the Volt in the first place.<\/p>\n<p>The whole flap shows the cynical loopholes that pervade this industry now that the government is making the rules.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why has the complex drive-train engineering of the Chevy Volt\u00a0become a headline in the popular press? Why does anyone care whether the Volt is an EREV (extended\u00a0range electric vehicle) or a series hybrid? Simply put, it\u2019s the difference between whether Government Motors gets a $7,500 tax credit \u2014 or just $3500 per Volt sold. It\u2019s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5896"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5896"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5898,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5896\/revisions\/5898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}