2016 Chevrolet Volt raises its game as it lowers expectations

Eight years ago, General Motors shocked not just the automotive business but the world at large with an audacious plug-in hybrid car that aimed to combine the best traits of gas and electric vehicles. Executives dubbed it the "iCar" while under development and saw it not just as a vehicle but a flagship, a way to demonstrate the heights of GM engineering while leapfrogging Toyota's Prius hybrids. GM Chairman Rick Wagoner even called it "the reinvention of the automobile."

Today, GM revealed the second-generation of the Chevrolet Volt. It's better, by all dimensions, with an all-electric range of 50 miles and a total range of 420 miles. It can seat five instead of four, it looks sharper and goes further on a unit of energy. Yet if the past eight years have taught GM anything, it's that there's no easy route to reinventing the car.

Between GM's bankruptcy and a moderation in gas prices, the Volt has never met its lofty goals for sales or transforming GM's image. When it launched in 2010, the Volt was often compared with the Nissan Leaf all-electric car, the kind of vehicle the Volt was meant to replace, and in 2013 it outsold the Leaf by less than 1,000 units. In 2014, Leaf sales surged 34% to 30,200; Chevy Volt sales fell 18% to 18,805. Between its price before incentives ($34,345) and its four-seat, cargo-constrained design, the Volt simply lacked widespread appeal.

Yet GM didn't fail. The technology that once looked like a huge gamble for GM has proven itself durable and efficient; many Volt owners go months between fill-ups, and the Volt was the only GM model not recalled in 2014. There's no car in GM's portfolio that successfully appeals to eco-minded buyers quite like the Volt does, and walking away would squander that rare goodwill much as GM did when it took back its original EV1 electrics.

Instead, Volt 2.0 offers improvements rather than reinvention. There's still a huge battery pack, but it weighs less — part of a 240-lb. weight reduction in the vehicle overall — yet holds more energy, 18.6 kWh vs. 16.7 in the first version. The new 1.5-liter turbo four-cylinder "generator" now spins a pair of electric motors, which can either switch on independently or together for maximum power, with a sprint to 60 mph taking 8.4 seconds. GM says the Volt can get 41 mpg when the engine's on, and 102 mpg-e overall. A slightly longer wheelbase means more passenger space, although the cargo area remains the same, and now there's proper buttons and knobs for dash controls instead of the too-slick touchpad.

An auto show reveal only matters so much in the case of vehicles like the Volt; lower gas prices make any hybrid a harder sell, and plug-in vehicles only more so. We won't know the sticker price of the new Volt until later this year when it goes on sale as a 2016 model, but we do know that many automakers now have Volt-like technology under development. It's not that the Volt was a bad idea; it's just that reinventing the car may take a lot longer than even GM's brightest minds thought.