Chevy Volt charging to be controllable from an iPhone or BlackBerry

By the time the Chevy Volt rolls out to its first lucky drivers late next year, it'll be iPhone and BlackBerry smart. At the L.A. Auto Show, a Chevy suit flashed the above slide, revealing a BlackBerry displaying the Chevy Volt's battery charge status.

The iPhone and Blackberry apps will start out with the ability to control when the Chevy Volt gets charged, with the Volt letting your cellphone know when it's all juiced up and ready to go. Chevy hinted that other cellphone platforms will eventually be able to converse with the Volt, too.

We'd like to see the Volt transmit lots more data to the iPhone, working like the Garmin EcoRoutes ESP we showed you last month. Its selectable screen shows the inner workings of the car's engine, such as real-time fuel economy, a tachometer, throttle position, intake manifold pressure, coolant temperature, intake air temperature, and emissions.

As a bare minimum, the Volt should be able to receive the iPhone's audio via Bluetooth. But we think the snazzy car will be ultimately capable of much more than that. We'll see exactly what Chevy has planned — the company says it'll reveal more details about these apps soon.

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