However Bob Lutz was up-front about the range issues associated with electric cars. He admitted that weather, atmospheric conditions, terrain and driving habits all have an impact on just how far an electric car can go before the battery needs to be recharged.

Gm claims that the Beat is going to be gentle on the environment too thanks to what they call a Port De-Activation system that ensures high exhaust gas recirculation that results in combustion stability at low speeds. That sounds impressive but no emission figures have yet been released for the Chevrolet Beat.

In India the Beat will come with quite a reasonable level of standard equipment but safety features that we might consider as standard … such as ABS and dual airbags will only be available on the LT variant.

While photos of the Chevy Beat’s interior are yet to be released General Motors, India, have announced that the Beat will feature an unusual setup for the instrumetn cluster. Instead of being mounted on/in the dashboard the instruments will be mounted on the steering column in a way that’s similar to what you would see on a motor cycle.

It seems that the Chevy Beat will only be available with a five-speed manual transmission but GM do intend to sell the Beat in the American market so it’s likely that there’s an automatic transmission on the way.

Pricing … even in India … is yet to be announced.

The Volt is expected to go on sale in the United States sometime in November next year and Holden will be bringing it to Australia soon after. The looks may not be to everyone’s taste … the 4 door prototypes on display recently will not be the final version and it’s expected that the original 2 door coupe shown here is what will be released.

The fuel consumption in American figures is said to be 230 miles to the gallon but even that figure is about as fuzzy as my maths. You can read how they arrived at that figure here but there’s still one figure that’s definitely not good if you really do want a genuine electric car – it seems that you’re going to be struggling to get 70km out of the batteries before you need to recharge.

And anyone who has had the battery on their cordless drill go flat in the middle of a job knows just how long it takes to recharge a battery.

Hard to believe but if you convert them to bio-diesel then it seems that anything is possible.

You’ll find the story and the video here