Electric Car Hardly Electrifying

The Chevy Volt is “the quintessential halo product," a loss leader intended to associate GM with innovation. With the pressure to make money off, the plug-in electric car's designers had the chance to create a vehicle that would make people "coo and stare," Cliff Kuang writes. "But you'd be hard pressed to tell what's so special about it, if it was driving next to you," he writes for Fast Company.

Aside from a horrid central console that brings to mind a “fake Chinese iPod,” this is "a reasonably handsome car," writes Kuang. "But it's not electrifying." Given that every single Volt will be sold at loss, it should pop and catch attention. Kuang winds up wondering why GM, “having taken a huge risk in even developing the car to begin with, seems to have gotten more and more conservative.” In the long run, that could “dull the Volt’s chances for success.” (More Chevy Volt stories.)