GM: battery rental payments weekly, might cost the same as gas

We told you GM plans to sell you the Volt and rent the battery to keep costs down. We have a few more details on the plan from Nick Reilly, the president of General Motors Asia Pacific, at the APEC summit in Australia. Nick says the payments will be weekly and cost about the same as gas. So, the operating costs for the Volt won't be much different than a normal gas car. I wonder why they went for weekly payments? Anyway, here are the comments:

• "It looks as if it is going to cost a lot more to buy a car like this, however the fuel economy is enormous"
• "People won't buy a full car. They will buy a car and rent or lease the battery and the cost of leasing the battery will be the same as, or less than, the cost they're paying today for petrol. So the motoring costs of an electric vehicle don't necessarily have to be much higher than the cost of today's vehicles"
• "Before we were saying it will be an awfully long time before we can get the costs down so people can afford it, but actually if you offset the fuel costs, people can afford it."

Whaddya think?

[Source: Drive.com.au]