Chevy Volt May Bore the U.S. into Saving the Planet

I could not tell it was anything but a car. A normal, albeit whisper-silent, car. I drove the battery-powered, and shockingly silent, Chevy Volt at Manhattan's Pier 92 this week, amongst a small amount of pomp, and a bit of circumstance.

The press event, the early rumblings of a growing North American release, informally introduced a handful of journalists to Chevrolet's farm-bet - a new fleet of electric and hybrid cars.

Detroit is going green after nearly a generation of declining numbers culminating with a painful and embarrassing Washington bailout last year. However, with the crushing reality of the economic situation, came a new opportunity to tap into a brand new automotive market - a market seen as a moral necessity by some in an attempt to wrestle away the chokehold of fossil fuels on the throat of the first-world.

Gas-powered cars are unsustainable. They're too expensive in the short-term, and far too costly in the long-term of planetary health. But how can we change a hereditary market so large and entrenched? Small, quiet steps.

Chevy's new electric car, the Volt, is in my opinion, the vanguard of a complete overhaul of our nation's energy strategy. At its heart is a next-gen lithium-ion battery. The battery plugs into an electrical grid, charges like a cell phone and will take the Volt an average of 40 miles on one charge. It's that simple.

The reasons and results of use of a vehicle like the Volt are extremely complex, though. The average American commuter drives fewer than 40 miles in a given day. And yet gas mileage is worse, far more inefficient, than long-range highway driving. At a fraction of the daily cost and a fraction of the actual CO2 consumed, a Volt driver would be saving themselves and society vast amounts of CO2 (which translates into money and pollution). Every. Single. Day.

It's a seismic shift, and if recent socio-political movements are any indicator, moving too quickly and too loudly could doom the idea of phasing fossil fuels out of daily driving.

Early adopting thrill-seekers (you're probably not reading this if you are, since you're camping out for your iPad about now) might be woefully disappointed in the Volt's innocuous design. It looks like a normal Sedan. It drives like a normal compact car. It has a dashboard, a super-charger and a moon roof. The pedal is still on the right. It's a freakin' car. It won't scare people and bother them that the word is changing too fast. And all the while, more and more people will be surreptitiously charging their cars in their garages at night for that quick 10-mile shuttle to work the next morning.

From there, economic forces of Friedman's wet dreams could direct a new marketplace of energy, where a small computer in your garage charges your car at cheaper, off-peak hours, and sells back the remaining unused electricity to the local power grid during the day, when demand is great. Society itself becomes more efficient. And cheaper.

This is all a long ways off, but if it's going to happen, I believe the Volt will be looked at as the Model T of the smartgrid era. No other vehicle has been introduced into this inefficient and polluting marketplace with the power to truly change how we consume energy. The Volt will lull drivers into a greener future by the power of its own banality. Quietly, quietly.