Chevy Volt to Be Priced at $40,000

An exciting day for the electric and plug-in hybrid electric segments of the automotive industry today, as American manufacturer GM is getting ready to announce the pricing for the new Volt PHEV at the Plug-In 2010 Conference in San Jose, California. Once they do, we'll finally have the first electric segment competition on our hands: the Volt vs. the Nissan Leaf.

UPDATE: Official Chevrolet Volt price announced

As usual, voices in the industry began spreading rumors about the sum GM is about to announce later today. And most voice are betting on what Bob Lutz told David Letterman last year: the Volt will cost around $40,000, minus the federal $7,300 tax credit.

According to Bloomberg, citing an internal GM source, this is the price with which GM will take on its only rival to date, the Leaf. For the record, the Nissan EV is priced at $32,780, minus the same $7,500 federal gift.

Keeping that in mind, the $8,000 thousand dollars or so difference between the two might seem as a big deal. GM has however already thrown in something Nissan will have a hard time matching: the 8 years/100,000 miles warranty for the Volt's battery.

In fact, it is not the price which will be the weapon of choice for the two manufacturers, but what they will offer in terms of warranty and additional services for the battery. Nissan is yet to announce for how long it is willing to service it at no charge and even decided to do a survey to see what customers expect.

As said, the announcement will be made later today, so stay tuned.