A few more baby steps toward the Volt

The buzz keeps growing

GM has now opened a design center for the Chevy Volt and, eventually, other E Flex vehicles. Unfortunately, this really isn't much of a story, as this was planned. What's more interesting, however, is just how much interest there is in the Volt, even though this plug-in vehicle is still a couple years away from reality.

Anyway, if there is anything interesting about this Volt update, it's that designers have cut some aerodynamic drag out of the Volt design. At the LA Auto Show, Bob Lutz admitted that the Volt had performed pretty poorly in initial wind tunnel tests. Nonetheless, GM has plenty of time to finalize aerodynamics. Right now, it's all about the batteries.

The next big story regarding the Volt will be the first fully functional Volt - one that uses one of its potential battery packs, and that should be happen sometime in the first quarter of 2008.