[blackguardx]

Diesel-electric trains have no battery, though. The Chevy Volt hybrid was pretty close in that the gas engine acted only as a generator to charge the batteries and could supply enough power for the motors in case the batteries died. I’m not sure why Chevy killed it.

[cityofdelusion]

The Volt was an _incredible_ piece of engineering, but it was also an incredibly expensive architecture that was basically mandated as part of the government bailout of GM. Sadly it was perceived as a money loser and that was that, traditional hybrids just hit lower price points.

[neogodless]

General Motors (GM) has a longstanding issue where what they care about most is global platform sales. They tend to only prioritize platforms that can be used to sell as many vehicles as possible. Regardless of how brilliant and well-engineered it might be, if it's not one of their better sales vehicles (or a halo car like the Corvette), they kill it. Often, they are just impatient, and if they'd take some of these great platforms and developed them and nurtured them, they could've expanded them into one of those global top sellers, but they tend to keep a close eye on shorter timelines.

[beej71]

From the sound of Toyota's profits, I'll bet Chevy isn't sure, either. :)