Not to keep this going but the Prius had battery problems in it's first run in colder states but they've got that worked out for the most part now. I actually really like the Volt. I think a lot of the difficulty dealing with any kind of new transportation is educating the public. In NYC you would get absolutely mobbed if you tried to take away the subway, people love it. It's the greatest way to get around, fast, cheap, dead reliable, and you can be sloshed and you still get home in one piece. In LA it's almost impossible to convince the rich middle and upper class to use the subway, despite the fact that it's very good in LA. The difference is that in LA people haven't figured out that it's great yet, because they haven't lived with it and learned how great it was.
Same thing is true with hybrids (regardless if they are actually good), the first major marketing push was to convince people that they didn't have to plug in the Insight or the Prius. "You don't plug it in!!!" was the constant cry. They had to educate the public. Now all people want is a plug in Hybrid because now they see why it's such a good idea, but prior to the no plug in Hybrid you would have been mobbed had you tried to sell a plug in hybrid.
I like the volt. I think many people will find that they don't drive enough in a day to use much gas if any. Certainly I would never use gas unless I was on a long trip and almost everyone in a larger metropolitan area would use very little gas. That's good, we should use more electricity because typically electricity is produced cheaper and cleaner than Petrol. Also I think that while there is this huge push for better centralized power systems that we will see an increase in localized and home power generation. Partly because fuel cell technology like Bloom is opening up the doors to NG power production without a generator and partly because as more and more ways of generating power get cheaper, smaller locations can be more and more diversified in their power generation, and diversified power generation is the one thing that everyone agrees is important.
Indeed I want to run my house off a condensing steam engine that condenses through a radiant floor system. Burn whatever I can get my hands on, scrub the exhaust and charge a "volt like" car.
