New car lots, ebay, and even craigslist are all finding one thing more and more in common…the electric vehicle or EV these days. With a few EVs already roaming the streets and many more to hit showroom floors in the coming years, power utility companies are staying up past bedtime to ensure ugrades to their grids are continuing.

Not that there is a shortage of power, but getting the increased demand of power on the grid down to household level is their current dilemma. Burnt out street corner transformers, circuit breakers tripping, and your kitchen lights dimming is what they are trying to avoid with the onslaught of electric vehicles that will be sucking up precious electrons off the grid in many household garages.

All this not to fear the expects say, due to the high cost of an EV it will help them be able to anticipate which neighborhoods will need the upgrades first. Personally I think it’s great in that they are performing upgrades on our grids to handle more power and such but think they might be one too many steps ahead or thinking with a few extra zeros. I don’t doubt Chevrolet will sell many Volts but at the price of $40K, they’d be hard pressed to buckle down our power systems….I guess only time and power meters will tell.

As of yesterday Chevrolet had it’s first production-spec battery pack unit built and roll down the assembly line. While the Volt fan club has been anticipating and waiting for this, GM’s engineers are still fiddling with management software to make sure they are getting all the mileage and life out of the units. GM’s assembly line for the battery packs is located in Brownstown Township, MI in a massive 160,000 sq. ft. building housing 25 employees assembling the packs. While these battery packs might be costing upwards of $10,000 for the Volt’s 16kWh pack which works out to about $500-$600 per kWh, GM hopes to bring it close to $300 per kWh (about $5,000 for the 16kWh battery pack) by 2015 in accordance with the U.S. Advanced Battery Consortium. More information on the first pack roll out can be found over at AutoBlog.com. Let me know what you think about any of this. Yes, even those of you who may think anyone in the rear seats will be sitting directly over the pack and have a possible chance of impotency from the packs radiation!

Welcome to Chevy Volt Forums. The place (hopefully) with all the information, pictures, and details for the 2011 Chevy Volt Zero Emissions Electric car! I know, I know, many of you are saying, “What’s the big deal? It’s just another electric car like the Toyota Prius.” Well nay-sayers, the Chevy Volt will be different and better than the Toyota Prius and such. Being able to piddle around town for up to 40 miles you could run to the grocery store, work, school, take your dog to the vet, and etc. WITHOUT using any gas! That’s right, the Chevy Volt runs on a li-ion (lithium ion) battery pack capable of driving the Volt up to 40miles before the gasoline engine seamlessly kicks in and starts using gas until you recharge the vehicle.

Among other ingenious innovations on this car, one simple fact that I like about it, and many of you will as well, is that it can recharge with nothing more than a simple 110-volt outlet in your home garage! Charging time will bring a dead battery up to full charge in a matter of about 6.5hours. Nothing is in packaging but there will be a separate 240-volt charging system that will deliver a full charge in a quick 3 hours if need be.

Although the Chevy Volt won’t be perfect, I mean what car is, it will be a giant step forward to getting away from our addiction to gas guzzling. Just last month GM invested more than $700 million into the Volt at it’s eight Michigan facilities to get it road-worthy and into the garages of us americans.

Production is set to begin sometime November 2010 but many upgrades and work needs to take place before building can start. A few Michigan car facilities need a few hundred million dollars, remember that $700M, to assure new machinery and equipment is capable of building this new line of vehicle. A new plant is set to receive a little over $200 million in Flint that will solely build the engine generators.

The good news from all of this is that it all means continued if not more jobs for America, and at such a hard time as we are going through they will definitely be needed. Some of you see all this money fly about and start seeing dollar signs in GMs eyes but nothing like this comes without a price, and a pretty decent price it is. GM is anticipating on the car costing between $35,000 and $40,000. That steepness will probably deter most but tax incentives for buyers are expected to make it more affordable.

All in all, it will be progress and that is always worth applauding, even in desperate times as these, but only time will tell if the Chevy Volt is gonna be the next thing…