Owners Love Their Volts, but $40K Is Still Too Much

Owners of Chevy Volts love their cars, as a new Consumer Reports survey makes clear. It's No. 1 in terms of owner satisfaction for the second straight year, with 92% saying they would buy one again, reports NBC News. "The Volt is indeed an engineering marvel," writes Joann Muller at Forbes, and some common knocks against it—that it was "dictated" by the Obama White House or that GM loses about $50,000 a car—are just flat-out wrong.

Still, the Volt has problems, writes Muller: The back seats are cramped because of the battery, the controls are poorly laid out, and it takes way too long (16 hours) to charge on the typical household current. Upgrading to shorten that time is expensive. The big drawback, though, remains the $40,000 price for a compact car. Government tax credits and incentives help, "but it will still take years to break even on the investment." Read her full post here. (More Chevy Volt stories.)