Balancing innovation against deadlines because work and life have hard deadlines…..

Feel bad for GM, I couldn’t make this up

I went researching to Chevy Volt to find some facts to offset my calculator below. I did get lots of feedback about people thinking that price is not the only factor here.

So when I went to chevy to look at 'affordability' I found this. Check the URL

GM Working on affordability

ROI of MPG

I've been car shopping lately and thinking about what mileage I need in the new vehicle. The cars that I like and are more fun to drive hover just under 30mpg while the 35+ models tend to be a bit mushy on the gas (or tiny)

Today I came across this: http://www.comcast.net/articles/finance/20090811/US.GM.Volt.Mileage/

GM is unveiling a car that get 230MPG in the city!  I thought that was awesome until I came across 3 facts

1. That mileage is in City driving
2. The car is not shipping yet (and all my projects are 'bug free' until they ship also)
3. The car is $40k

I wrote up a quick app to let me calculate how many miles I have to drive in order to recoup the $40k price tag.  Even comparing it against a $20k hybrid that gets 50 MPG I still have to drive almost 320,000 miles to break even! (at $4/gal)