The Chevy Volt: A Rolling Crematorium?

Running nearly the entire length of the "hump" between the driver and passenger seats and, then, forming a "T" that runs along the back seat of the Chevy Volt is an extremely large and toxic lithium ion battery. It's the very same battery type that is used to power your laptops or cell phones.

The problem with lithium ion batteries is that under certain "stress" conditions, like extreme overcharging, they have a tendency to catch fire. Just five days ago, on a regional flight in Australia, an Apple iPhone burst into flames. A couple of days later, in Brazil, another iPhone caught fire. The fact is that the lithium battery has a history of either burning people's skin from the high heat that's generated or just plain catching fire.

Now, we have the Electric Vehicles being powered by lithium batteries thousands of times larger than any you would find in a cell phone or laptop. To my knowledge there have already been 3 fires associated with the Volt. The first occurred back in April of this year when a Connecticut couple lost their entire garage to what is suspected to be a Volt fire. Then, just a few weeks ago, a Volt that was undergoing a crash test had its battery burst into flames. Finally, another set of batteries, used in another crash test, caught fire after having been removed from the car.

After the first crash test fire, General Motors (GM) announced that they would provide rental cars to anyone concerned about their Volts until such time as they were able to assure the safety of these cars. Then, following the next fire, GM announced that it was willing to buy back any Volts from owners fearful of the hazard. That, to me, was a clear admission that GM has a serious problem. With that, sales of the Volt are starting to falter as the buying public smells a rat.

I don't know about you but, I, for one, would not want to sit in a car that had even the remotest possibility of being a mobile crematorium. I'm not sure that the world is quite ready for the electric car revolution. Thanks to the Obama Administration and the leverage they exerted with the bailout, GM was pushed into a rush delivery of the first electric car. Fortunately, only about 8,000 of these might be sold this year. But, if they are a real fire risk, even one Volt on the road is one Volt too many. I really think the future of the electric car has been put into question just because Obama wanted to please his eco-left, climate change, activist voting base by rushing an unproven electric car to market.