Your Tax Dollars at Work: The Volt as a Halo Model to the Cruze

In the 1960s, customers who could only dream of owning a Corvette often left their local Chevy dealers with the keys to a new Impala or Bel-Air. Now, it seems the same thing is happening with the Chevy Volt don’t-call-it-a-hybrid and the Cruze small car.

Year-to-date sales are up some 32% across the range, though only 567 of the 80,000 plus cars the Detroit automaker sold in June were Volts. The remainder were cars like the Cruze, which has earned the crown of Chevy’s biggest seller.

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Toyota to Use Prius Hybrids to Supply Household Appliances with Electricity!

As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. In Japan’s case, the devastating earthquake in March and the subsequent damages to the country’s infrastructure put the spotlight on Toyota’s Estima Hybrid minivan that features a system allowing the supply of auxiliary electricity to power household appliances.

The minivan’s owners were extremely satisfied with the system, which effectively turns the hybrid system into an electric generator that runs on gasoline, claiming that it was invaluable during the extended blackouts in Japan.

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NYPD Goes Green with 50 Chevrolet Volt Patrol Cars

Police officers in New York City will now be able to boast that they drive environmentally friendly cars and, as an added bonus, approach possible offenders silently. That’s because 50 Chevrolet Volts have been added to the 40 Nissan Altima Hybrids of the NYPD fleet, as a part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s PlaNYC project for lowering emissions and creating, in his own words, “a greener, greater New York City”. Read more »