![]() And you can feel it immediately when you start driving. It’s a heavy car for this class, weighing in at 1721kg. From there you just select forwards or backwards and it will go there. To turn it on you just push a button and not much happens, aside from the dash lighting up. The first thing to note is the sheer silence of the cabin. This is a peculiar car to drive, especially if you haven’t even driven or been in an electric vehicle before. With the rear seats folded down you can open up a long and flat space capable of swallowing a mountain bike, remembering not to gouge the pedal on the rear centre console armrest. Speaking of which, the back presents 300 litres of space in the default configuration. And the rear seats sort of float and blend in with the cargo area. It’s cool and rather interesting sitting inside. In the back there are only two seats due to a then-futuristic centre console making its way up the middle. In the front the cabin offers about as much legroom and headroom as a Toyota Camry. This is a sedan but you could call it one of those four-door coupes that are becoming increasingly popular. The MyLink system comes embedded with many interesting apps such as radio and internet-radio systems including Stitcher and Pandora, as well as satellite navigation, and various eco driving information screens that track and analyse your driving and subsequent impact you are leaving on the environment. There are large buttons with responsive touch controls, and the main menu screen makes it easy to find what you’re after. This must have been one of the first vehicles to receive the system and it still holds well against the market standards today. Up at the top is Holden’s now-familiar MyLink touch-screen interface. For the driver there’s an advanced (for its day), customisable digital instrument cluster with funky graphics. Most of the centre fascia is covered in a sneeze of buttons too and it is overwhelming to understand what they all do, until you become familiar with it. When the car first debuted in 2012 it must have been a star attraction. It’s mostly monotone with lots of grey and a few white bits, which look, umm, 2008 iPod. Inside the Volt is also showing some signs of age. For the 2016 model all of this has been updated. The headlights also seem out of date compared with today’s bi-xenon high-definition LED mambo-jumbo. You can point out a few clues that give away its age though, such as the repetitive straight lines which these days are replaced by nice curvy ones. It looks like a concept car from not that long ago. It looks very different from any other car on the road. There’s no doubt about the exterior’s futuristic design. It is targeting the premium market though and it does come with a generous list of gratifying appointments. This is the same price tag from 2012 when it was an advanced standout. This is sent through a single-speed auto and into a front-wheel drive system.Īt this point is where the age factor starts to become… non-excusable. The system produces 111kW of combined power and 370Nm of torque. ![]() Under the bonnet lies a complex hybrid system consisting of a 1.4-litre four-cylinder petrol engine and an electric motor which ambitiously tries to be the primary power source, until the circa-80km range is depleted and the petrol generator kicks in. But is it still a modern motivation to save the planet? It was first launched here in 2012 and has since remained in the same specification. And for that reason alone it is a bit of a pioneer. But before it gets here, we thought we’d take a last look at the existing version to see how the technology stacks up against the current industry standards.įor those that don’t know, the Holden Volt was one of the first proper plug-in electric-based hybrid vehicles to hit the market in Australia. The all-new 2016 Holden Volt, or at least the American Chevrolet Volt, has just been revealed and it could be on its way to Australia. ![]()
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