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.