"I expected a science fair experiment. But this is a moonshot."
Chris Theodore is a wily veteran of the auto business, a seasoned development engineer whose impressive resume includes vehicles as thoughtfully executed as the Chrysler minivan and as tightly focused as the Ford GT.
As one of the consultant judges on this year's COTY panel, Chris brought the deep insight and professional skepticism you'd expect of someone who's spent his entire working life making cars. But our 2011 Car of the Year, Chevrolet's ground-breaking Volt, has blown him away. "This is a fully developed vehicle with seamlessly integrated systems and software, a real car that provides a unique driving experience. And commuters may never need to buy gas!"

The Volt started life an Old GM project, then arrived fully formed as a symbol of New GM, carrying all the emotional and political baggage of that profound and painful transition. As a result, a lot of the sound and fury that has surrounded the Volt's launch has tended to obscure a simple truth: This automobile is a game-changer.

ENGINEERING EXCELLENCE

The Volt boasts some of the most advanced engineering ever seen in a mainstream American automobile. The powertrain allows the car to run as an EV, a series hybrid, or a parallel hybrid, depending on how far you drive and how you drive. The secret sauce is how GM controls the powerflow between the 149-horse electricmotor, the generator, and the 84-horse,1.4-liter naturally aspirated internal-combustion engine. It's fundamentally different from the way Toyota handles things in the Prius.

EFFICIENCY

While it is entirely possible that a consumer able to use the Volt in pure EV mode most of the time could use no more than a tank of gas-9.3 gallons-a year (because as noted earlier the car will automatically start the internal-combustion engine at regular intervals to keep the fuel system functional and the gas fresh), it is not a perpetual-motion machine. It requires energy to move. Our testing showed that, in EV mode, the Volt uses energy at the rate 32.0 kW-hr/100 miles or a notional 105 mpg (based on the EPA calculation that a gallon of gas contains 33.7 kW-hr of energy). The internal-combustion engine sips gas at the rate of about 40 mpg.

In a multiday, 299-mile test that involved a mixture of normal freeway and stop/start city driving (no hypermiling) -- and recharging the car overnight, as most consumers would -- we used a total of 58.6 kW-hr of electrical energy, and 2.36 gallons of gas. Just counting the gas, the Volt returned 126.7 mpg. Converting the gas used to energy used (79.5 kW-hr) and adding that figure to the electrical energy used gave us a notional 72.9 mpg. That's impressive.

VALUE

All of that technology is expensive, which accounts for the Volt's $41,000 price tag. Engineering the Volt required considerable investment by GM in vehicle systems integration that would normally be handed off to outside suppliers and contractors. But the cost of the Volt's powertrain and associated systems will come down as GM perfects lower cost components and is able to amortize the development across a larger number of vehicles. Meanwhile, consumers can apply for a $7500 federal tax grant, plus state grants, where available, to offset the Volt's relatively high purchase price. And our testing suggests that even if drivers regularly went 80 miles between charges, the Volt is significantly cheaper to run than regular hybrids.

Using EPA average figures of 12˘ per kW-hr for electricity, and $2.80 for a gallon of gas, the Volt costs just 3.8˘ a mile to run in EV mode, and 7˘ a mile with the gas engine running.

CONCLUSION

The more we think about the Volt, the more convinced we are this vehicle represents a real breakthrough. The genius of the Volt's powertrain is that it is actually capable of operating as a pure EV, a series hybrid, or as a parallel hybrid to deliver the best possible efficiency, depending on your duty cycle. For want of a better technical descriptor, this is world's first intelligent hybrid. And the investment in the technology that drives this car is also an investment in the long-term future of automaking in America.

Moonshot. Game-changer. A car of the future that you can drive today, and every day. So what should we call Chevrolet's astonishing Volt? How about, simply, Motor Trend's 2011 Car of the Year.