According to The Wall Street Journal owners of the Chevrolet Volt will be offered loan cars by GM, while an investigation is carried out on the Volt regarding fires that have started after crash tests. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration had carried out some crash testing on the Volt that resulted in sparks and fires.

GM believes these were caused by malfunctioning electronics rather than overheating chemicals from within the batteries. Mary Barra GMs product chief stated that engineers were currently working on ways to make the battery case stronger, and added “We’re looking at a handful of promising avenues” and is confident the Volt is safe.

Investigations began last week after two crash tests caused the electric cars battery to spark or catch fire. The NHTSA were doing the tests following an incident last spring where a Volt battery that was damaged in a crash test had caught fire 3 weeks later.

Both sides have said owners of the electric car shouldn’t be too concerned as the fires didn’t start on impact, and started a few days after. The latest tests the NHTSA ruptured the Volts coolant line and damaged the battery compartment, in an attempt to replicate the first accident to highlight the problem. With the first accident the fire started weeks later, but in the latest ones it started in a matter of days.

In recent tests by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found the Nissan Leaf and other electric cars, got good results in crash testing according to an article on Autoblog by Jeremy Korzeniewski.

The electric cars which also included the Chevrolet Volt had “Good” results in crash tests for front, rear, side, and rollover crash protection. The testing was carried out in exactly the same way as any other vehicle is tested.

They also got good marks for their standard electronic stability control, and joined other economical cars such as the Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight by earning the Top Safety Pick title. This news is added to the Nissan Leaf recently winning the Car of the Year award.

There have been questions raised before about the safety of electric cars and their high voltage systems, and whether they posed an electric shock hazard for occupants or rescue workers. Below you can see some electric cars as they are put through some crash tests.

Now the big selling point for the Volt (and the Leaf for that matter) is the capabilities to cover distances of up to 40 miles on a single charge from its plug and play hybrid powerplant, this is with out any assistance from the 1.4-liter gasoline engine.

However a report from Autoblog states that when the time comes to full up the tank on your hybrid, GM are insisting that you use premium gasoline only? Now obviously these fill ups will be few and far between, but it does seem strange that the energy efficient customers are being pushed into spending more for their fuel.

The only explanation that can be gleamed from this, is that GM’s technical team might have been able to source abit more energy efficiency from the higher octane fuel, although this theory has not been backed up by the auto manufacturer. As of yet there are still no mpg figures for the Volt whilst running on its petrol engine though we will keep you informed. So it leads to the question “would you still be happy to run your hybrid on higher costing gasoline as instructed by your dealer”? Give us your views.

Source: The Truth About Cars

Sam Abuelsamid from Autoblog understands that the first year is always learning how to build the cars – the second year they can take what they already know and use that to produce more vehicles. We just hope that there is demand for the Volt by then.

GM has told Chevrolet dealers that they are all required to certain guidelines in order to sell the Volt. The first is that they have to always keep one in the showroom to show potential customers. The second is to make certain that they have a fully working 240 volt home charging station – this is so customers can test drive a fully charged Volt.

General Motors hopes that the Volt will be more popular than the Nissan Leaf, and not having to meet certain criteria as you do with the Leaf could help Chevy sell more electric vehicles.

Those of you looking for a more powerful system, then you will have to part with at least $2,000. This offers much faster charging than standard units, which I am certain that you will need with the busy lives that we now lead. Still, the basic charger is still something for nothing I guess.

The DOE is working with Chevy on this giveaway, but as with all free things there is a catch. Those first 4,400 Volt drivers will have to agree to allow the U.S. government to gather information – it is hoped that this will help them offer a greater use with the electric vehicle.

According to Sebastian Blanco from Autoblog, both Nissan and Ford will be offering similar deals when they launch their electric vehicles.

Autoblog is uncertain if the model spotted is one of the IVERs or the new production validation cars that started rolling out of the assembly plant. It seems that we have been waiting for the Chevy Volt for a decade now, so is nice to finally see a pre-production model.

The 2011 Chevrolet Volt comes with a 1.4 4-cylinder flex-fuel engine, this works in conjunction with an electric motor. With both working together, GM’s latest vehicle will be able to produce 150 horsepower – top speed will be 100mph and a 0-60 time of 9 seconds.

General Motors expects the Chevy Volt to achieve at least 300 miles on a full tank of fuel. Let us know if you have spotted the Chevy Volt on the streets of Detroit

The new technology will be on show at tomorrows CES 2010 event in Las Vegas. Most of you will remember that when the production version of the Volt was unveiled in 2008 many thought that they were sitting in a car designed by Apple; this was due to the smooth and capacitive touch controls.

There were those who thought that the car would be designed to work closely with Apple, thankfully this latest app works with a bunch of other Smartphone’s as well. The app will be made available later this year, with many more following shortly after.

This cell phone app is like something from Star Trek; the interface looks a lot like the instrument cluster on the General Motors Volt. The applications contacts OnStar servers, which then contacts the car. Most new GM cars have the same kind of system, but do not have an app to gain access to it.

For full details of how this system works, visit AutoBlog