…and the title is all that you need to hear, now isn’t it?  Some more grim details, though: almost 49 grand (not including tax credit) for a car that’s actually a glorified hybrid (the gas engine has to be on if you want to take this sucker on the highway); and the effective gas mileage is somewhere around 27 mpg.  Now, that sounds great if you’re the President – because Obama thinks that the average clunker out there gets 8 to 10 mpg, mostly because the President is an urban liberal* who probably hasn’t driven himself anywhere in the last decade – but it’s a bit more disconcerting for the rest of the population to be told that this Government Fiat car is the Wave of the Future.

I mean, we were told the same thing about Soylent Green.

Anyway, if you think that I’m being too cruel about the Volt, apparently it’s nothing compared to Consumer Reports’ initial assessment, which appears in the April 2011 issue and is distinctly unkind – to the point where the reviewer in two separate places explicitly questioned whether buying one of these things made anything like logical sense.  That article, by the way, casually notes one under-mentioned but actually critical point: the lack of a ambient heating system.  The way the Consumer Reports reviewer put it? “You have seat heaters, which keep your body warm, but your feet get cold and your hands get cold…” – which is bad enough for commuters.  But it’s even worse for parents who thought that they could use this vehicle to do anything like a long trip in wintertime.

Free advice?  Don’t.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Which means that he comes from an insular subculture that does not drive on a regular basis, does not drive long distances, and that adamantly refuses to voluntarily interact with other subcultures except in the most stylized and controlled circumstances.