Volt doesn't give Consumer Reports a charge

In fact, Consumer Reports says Chevy’s plug-n-play car “doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

“When you are looking at purely dollars and cents, it doesn’t really make a lot of sense. The Volt isn’t particularly efficient as an electric vehicle and it’s not particularly good as a gas vehicle either in terms of fuel economy,” said David Champion, the senior director of Consumer Reports auto testing center at a meeting with reporters here. “This is going to be a tough sell to the average consumer.”

I wouldn’t care much about this, except for the fact that Tom Friedman tried playing car salesman a few days back, in arguing that we should start hiking the gas tax a full buck a gallon so more drivers would switch over to the Volt. Turns out, the Volt isn’t so hot. It’s just not that good a car.
But the Volt has captured the lefty imagination, so I wouldn’t expect Friedman, or President Obama for that matter, to mute the cheerleading for it. Even if it’s basically the high speed rail of cars.