Great news for NW Ohio.

Not that this is a forum for a debate on fair taxation... but.. Harvey- Do you realize that Farmers and blue collar workers make up a large percent of truck/suv owners? I don't know a single farmer that doesn't own at least 1 pickup. I also know very few construction workers/plumbers/electricians that also don't own a pickup. If you tax those... you're taxing the middle class workers. If you want to tax rich people.. a more appropriate tax would be on cars like the prius (which would not be a good idea, and i'm not advocating).

Bob - 200k is middle class in NY. I don't think many people making 200k in New York, DC, or Boston are buying Yachts. The reality is... these new taxes aren't indexed to inflation. Couple that with the fact that the bureau of printing and engraving has been working so much OT, and it's going to impact the middle class in ~10 years. People will just adapt to a higher tax burden, which is sort of a sad reality. As a side note with taxes... If we raise them to 1960s levels (as some liberal talking heads suggest), what is my incentive to take out 150k in loans to go to B-school or law school? But i digress... Good luck GM.

a123systems is backed by some companies with a lot of experience in manufacturing (GE, Qualcomm, Motorola) not to mention MIT.

cujet- Ford has to adhere to the same EPA driving cycle as every other auto manufacturer in order to receive their EPA fuel economy ratings. They can't 'skew' numbers. Maybe your normal driving is more aggressive than the EPA driving cycle (which has been updated in recent years to reflect more aggressive driving). vrd863- The F150 only uses a gas engine. I would imagine the reasoning has something to do with the need for an expensive heavy duty frame (found in the F-250 and F-350).

SJC- agreed. I've wondered why hybrids haven't been incorporated into larger vehicles (outside of the escape and silverado). They're already more expensive, so the cost of the battery would equal a smaller % of the total cost. Additionally, the savings in fuel costs would be much greater in vehicles where the base model gets less than 20 mpg.

Actually... Crysler's biggest area of growth is Europe. Apparently Jeeps are popular over there. I still think people should be able to buy what they want to buy (higher gas prices would lead to a faster switch to alternatives globally), so I have no problem with it.

The government is beholden to the people. Their fair share? That's not easily defined. Some might argue that a head tax would be the 'fairest' way to distribute the costs of the government's services. I'm not suggesting that corporations should be allowed to conduct themselves unethically, but that isn't anywhere close to where our government operates. Too many markets are socialism-capitalism hybrids. Nobel Laureate Fredrich Hayek argues in 'The Road to Serfdom' that those markets are in-fact the most prone to become monopoly and oligoloply markets. I would argue the reason we're seeing so many large banks influencing markets are government policies that promote consolidation, although that's a separate issue. The point of my previous statement is that the government is woefully inadequate when it comes to innovation and pareto efficiency.

SJC- I think you misspoke. I think you meant to say "The government has it's place, but don't wait for it to do what the coutnry needs, it is what their special interests need." Take a look at who makes up our government.. wings of the same bird. To take a step back and look at what our goals are for batteries we need to understand that the biggest hurdle to commercialization is R&D. Some firm (existing or future) will commercialize viable technology. Unethical firms do exist, but that's really the individual not the system. The best thing the government can do, which it has done since 2005 across two presidents, is to provide resources to universities and private labs in order to make these sorts of advances that we've been seeing.

Engineer-Poet, I don't think many people are against using wind energy in our nation's energy mix. We should most definitely continue our trend of wind development, but we also need to include base load plants (nuclear, solar thermal, and hydro) as well as peaking power plants (natural gas and hydro) to have an effective electrical grid. I don't think that this whole 'peak coal' theory is probably incredibly worrisome or even true. If the US used nuclear reprocessing like France, nuclear could be cheaper than coal. We wouldn't even be discussing fine particle pollution, sulfur dioxide emissions, or black lung if this were the case..

ejj- How does Obama get credit for the volt? Bush gets credi/blame (depending on who you are) for TARP (which bailed out GM)... The volt is a reaction to Bush's energy policy of 2005. I don't like Bush,but come on... Obama was a state senator when GM started developing this thing!

Thank Jimmy Carter for putting us in this situation. If he hadn't killed the nuclear industry, we wouldn't be so reliant on coal for electricity still.

I'll agree that high speed rail serves a strategic alternative to highways and airplanes and certainly could dominate the market in trips between 100-500 miles. I wonder what the associated cost would be in terms of infrastructure development of HSR vs. the cost of offering some crazy incentives to 'voltify' cars on the road.

Will S- Not sure where you live, but here in DC we're still occasionally allowed our freedom of speech and debate. I like green cars; that's why I frequent this site. I understand a need for new technologies that will revolutionize the auto industry. This advancement is an incremental improvement in Ford's ever improving car portfolio. You clearly haven't followed the updates in EPA estimates or even the time lag for commercializing new technolgies. Ford is now beating foreign and domestic automakers in fuel economy and initial quality in most car segments. Don't ever speak down to someone with such a sophomoric argument, it just makes you look like a fool.

26 mpg is a vast improvement over previous models. Unless you'd like an economically fascist government banning products... this is a great vehicle. you're giving people what they want, while improving a glaring weakness. There is a need for large vehicles.

This article fails to mention the fuel economy for the Ecoboost variant. According to the Detroit Free Press, it will get 19 city and 26 highway... that is pretty darn good for a full sized SUV http://www.freep.com/article/20100726/BUSINESS01/100725035/1318/Ford-unveils-its-all-new-Explorer

~50 gallons of ethanol per ton of switgrass? At 12.5 tons per acre, that would produce 625 gallons per acre with lower stress on soil and fewer inputs into planting and cultivating. Not bad...

As a libertarian-republican I can even argue for a strategic need for high speed rail as an alternate option to driving or flying. We could have a nuclear/wind powered train system that produces no emissions while providing easy tranportation.... But, 2.3billion dollars will not do it the right way unless you focus the entirety on one project. Nickel and diming projects for these 79mph or even 110mph trains will do nothing to improve the image of train travel. If they started by improving the Acela to a 200mph train... that would be a good way to demonstrate the technology as well as the comfort/convenience over driving or flying. Tampa-Orlando was a good start... but they wasted money in Ohio for the '3C' line that won't get used.

The telematics systems developed by GM (onstar) and Ford (based on Microsoft Auto) are years ahead of anything from Toyota or Honda.

True story. Within a reasonably level of predictably almost all new technologies become cheaper to produce over time, though.

What about those people who live in unincorporated agricultural communities? Similarly, small towns within 20 miles of a factory. I refer to communities similar to that which consitute a significant portion of our country. Additionally, there isn't a need for factories to be located in cities.. they're often located on rail lines and staffed with workers from rural (unincorporated) areas within 30 miles.

Maybe it's time to adapt you and your wife's perception.

Henry- 30 mph? You're kidding I hope. I love the idea of high speed rail... but I don't think you can connect every rural area via rail to eliminate the need for cars.

Hopefully they can hit their price milestone! It won't really matter in terms of sales as I'm sure there will be a sufficient number of early adopters willing to pay the premium, it's more for the media reaction.

GM has a great opportunity to use all Volt real-world data in real time to help understand the strengths and weaknesses in their battery design. It will be interesting to see if they take advantage of the capability of OnStar telematics and the additional capability the Volt will provide to test the configuration. I'm not quite sure why HarveyD is always so down on GM and Ford, they seem to be doing some very logical things lately.