Now that oil has dropped in price in the US, this technology becomes more endangered. It will be interesting if the Volt makes the assembly line now with oil under $50 a barrel. Should it be produced, Yes! Will it be... that remains to be seen no car company wants to sink money into a line that won't sell and won't be able to be serviced properly on the road. i.e. charging stations etc.

The construction for the plant that will be used to build the powertrain for the Volt was shut down at the end of 2008.

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/12/gm-puts-the-vol.html

They still claimed that they were on schedule, which had to be a bold lie. They were late already, and then they decided to stop building the only factory in the world that is going to be able to build that particular power train.

The only way that car ships on time is if GM takes their bailout money, doesn't touch anything that is draining money and instead goes all the way with the Volt. All or nothing.

If and when it comes out, I'll take two. Even if gas is cheap, for the kind of driving we do in my household, the Volt would need very little gas.

Actually GM is dumping a ton of what R&D money it has into Volt. Pvera is wrong.

They didn't stop building the factory either. They are simply not building it out, meaning installing the equipment needed to build the car yet. That alone may or may not slow down production.

The Today show this morning drove a fully finished Mule of the Volt in a Cruze body. So you're really waiting on the body and interior not the guys, which is interesting.

To go from full mule to finished product in two years (GM is saying end of 2010) is more than doable for almost any manufacturer. I'd say they're overestimating to cover their a***s and in case the tooling of the factory takes too long.

The idea that someone other than a major manufacturer can do it better and cheaper is also suspect as Tesla hasn't been able to do it well at a much higher price for an all electric. Toyota is working on a plug-in Prius and other electric based cars. We should hear of more in Detroit this week.

as always I'm a senior editor at Cars.com, not a plug, just so you know.

Considering the current state of GM its hard to tell but I sure hope it makes it.

If GM can't get it together, you will probably never see it from them. It is more likely that a start up company will come along with new technology and create a better unit at a lower cost.