GM offers big price cut on Chevy Volt

[wercal]

37. I gave a CO2 analysis

You are arguing costs, which doesn't make any sense.

I think you meant to reply to a different post of mine.

So, what if gas turns out to cost $5.00/gallon?

Most people fail to realize that the price of gas is NOT ballooning out of control. When compared to the CPI, the price of gas is fairly constant. Here is a graph of just that:

http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/realprices/

You can scroll back as far as 1976. What do I find?

In 1981, the real price of gas was $3.53 using today's dollars.
It dipped to as low as $1.47 in 1998.
Its recent high is $3.68 in 2011.
Presently, it is $3.48...actually below 1981 levels.

What does this tell me? Well, if gas were to rise to $5.00/gal, EVERYTHING else would also have risen...to include the cost of electricity. In fact you can use the same graph, and flip to the electrical cost tab...and discover that the cost of electricity has gone from $0.026/kwh to $0.12/kwh from 1960-2013....but the actual cost has been fairly flat since the 1970's. History tells us to definitely not expect the cost of gasoline to suddenly outpace electrical costs.

PV panels - I assume you are proposing putting them on your house? Solar systems currently cost $4.87 per watt...and lets assume you can get sun for 12 hours a day. Your solar system costs $5,681 to recharge a 14 kwh Volt. Assuming no upkeep costs and completely free sailing after that, and using $3.60/gallon gas getting 29 mpg in a Cruz, and 40 miles a day in the solar charge, driving 6 days a week, you get payback in 3.66 years.

Now I have made a lot of rosy assumptions (during the winter you won't get 12 hours sunlight, for example...and the batteries in the solar system will need periodic replacement)...but even with those assumptions, from a cost perspective, you will reach your breakover point on the Volt much faster, if you simply stay on the grid and plug into the wall.