Chevy Volt Won't Get California's $3,000 PHEV Credit or 10-Year Battery Warranty

Chevy Volt Won't Get California's $3,000 PHEV Credit or 10-Year Battery Warranty

By John O'Dell July 22, 2010

We've been on vacation and missed this when word first came out, so if its not news to you, apologies.

But if you are a Californian who was hoping to buy or lease a new Chevrolet Volt extended-range plug-in hybrid and try for the state's limited pool of $3,000 PHEV rebates, you can forget about it.

Seems GM didn't want to go through the cost of qualifying the first run of Volts for the Golden State's tough AT-PZEV emissions classification (the acronym stands for Advanced Technology- Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle, and yes, we know that "partial zero" makes about as much sense as "sorta dead" or "a little bit pregnant"). And without that classification there's no qualifying for the rebates.

Doesn't much matter - the state only has enough cash for about 700 of the cash awards, to be divided, as we understand it, among purchasers/lessees of battery-electric vehicles (the Nissan Leaf is the only qualifier we know of although the Coda EV might squeak in) and qualified AT-PZEV plug-ins, if there are any.

One other repercussion of GM's decision not to apply for AT-PZEV status - the Volt doesn't have to meet California's tough 10-year, 150,000-mile battery warranty requirement and GM already has announced that the lithium-ion battery pack will be warrantied nationally for 8 years or 100,000 miles.

If it had the higher Caliofnia emissions designation, Volt buyers in that state and seven others that use California emissions rules would have received the longer warranty.

GM officials have said that they likely will do some emissions fine-tuning and seek AT-PZEV status for the 2013 model-year Volt, which will hit the market in mid-2012. By then, the way things are going, California will be so broke there won't be any state incentives for anything.

John O'Dell, Senior Editor 

John O'Dell:  is an AutoObserver Senior Editor. Follow @AutoObserver on Twitter.