Good review of the Volt. One slight correction: it isn't true that "electric motors produce maximum torque at all times". One can argue that they have a much nicer torque curve than an internal combustion engine, given that they produce substantial (often maximum) torque at 0 rpm. However their torque, like that of any motor, is dependent on rpm. See for example: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/electrical-motors-torques-d_651.html for a good discussion of the subject.

I really enjoyed the post about the Bobby Darin Dream Car, which I saw in the flesh when I was a kid growing up in Los Angeles. What a perfect example of all that was amazing/wonderful/grotesque about car design in the 1950s and 1960s! [grammar rant alert - you have been warned] The discussion about present vs past tense of the verb "to run" (i.e. run vs ran) missed the point. The grammatical construct in question is the so-called "third conditional" -- a variant of the pluperfect expressing a condition contrary to fact. It calls for neither the present tense nor past tense of the verb, but rather the past participle. You would say "Elvis does X" (present tense = does) or "Elvis did X" (past tense = did) but "Elvis would have done X" (past participle = done). Confusion arises because the past participle is sometimes the same as the present or the past tense, as is the case with "to run", where the present is run, the past is ran, and the past participle is run. So "Elvis would have run away" is correct and "Elvis would have ran away" is incorrect.