It is true? Using the EPA standard for calculating miles-per-gallon, General Motors - which just came out of bankruptcy - put in the numbers and claims that its-soon-to-be released Chevy Volt gets 230 MPG in the city [presumably Highway will be around 500 MPG].

If true that is amazing. General Motors and some critics believe the company is overshooting; but General Motors states that whatever the final EPA estimate the Volt will still be the first car to achieve triple-digit mileage. General Motors further boosts that the Volt will be able to drive the first 40 miles without a drop of gas and have a range of 300 miles before needing to be “recharged.”

All this is amazing, the Volt makes the Pirus look like a 1910s piece of crap and it exactly the revolutionary car a new General Motors needs.

The price tag? $40,000. That is a lot, especially during a recession. But GM hopes people will be taken in by the savings in gas making a trade-off that will eventually [presumably] benefit them by saving money. But given the lifetime of an average American car before resell, many people may very will calculate that they will not even have the car long enough to make up, say, $20,000 in gas. That is a lot of filling up.

And then there is the question of how reliable an electric car will be.

Hopefully, this will work out for GM. It certainly needs a victory after years of failure and the corporate worlds largest bankruptcy ever.