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Chevy Volt Rated At 230 mpg In the City
necro81 writes "General Motors, emerging from bankruptcy, today announced that its upcoming plug-in hybrid vehicle, the Volt, will have an EPA rating of 230 mpg for city driving (about 98 km/L). The unprecedented rating, the first in triple digits, is the result of a new (draft) methodology for calculating the 'gas' mileage for vehicles that operate primarily or extensively on electricity. The Volt, due out late next year, can drive approximately 40 miles on its Li-Ion battery pack, after which a gasoline engine kicks in to provide additional electricity to charge the battery. Running off the gasoline engine yields approximately 50 mpg. Of course, the devil's in the details, because the conversion of grid-based electricity to gasoline-mileage is imprecise." Now we know the meaning of the mysterious "230" viral marketing campaign.
Chevy has been promising the Volt for years now. *IF* it ever does come out, it might be interesting - but by now their marketing campaign seems to be run by Duke Nukem.
I'm supposed to believe that, in 2 years of hybrid development, you've developed a production vehicle that will get almost *5 TIMES* the gas mileage of Toyota's hybrid model (that they've been developing and improving on for over 12 years)?
I'm throwing the Shenanigans flag. No...scratch that...I'm throwing the COMPLETE AND UTTER BULLSHIT flag.
I suspect that, since this is a plug-in, they're "fudging" (more like "outright lying about") the figures by only counting actual gasoline used in day-to-day use. So if a guy drives every day back and forth to work, less than 40 miles, he's only using the plug-in electricity. But the GM exec's aren't counting that electricity he's using, only his actual gasoline used on occasional longer trips, towards the "Miles Per Gallon" rating. I guess GM thinks that people don't pay for their electricity, and that electricity doesn't come from power plants that burn fossil fuels too.
According to GM, I guess if I never go on longer trips, my Volt will be getting infinity miles per gallon.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
The best inventions had to be done in this day and age by a company that saw it's own bankruptcy looming. I hope this 'Phoenix' will prove successful. ;=)
On another note: I can choose a new car in 2010, make sure you market it in Europe too, lest I buy a Prius again
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Twenty rods to the hog's head, etc.
I'd be interested to see what rating the Prius will have.
One of many BIG questions I have: How does this thing provide heating/cooling and what impact does running these systems have on said MPG performance?
How about miles per pound of carbon dioxide emission?
Or, or in addition, miles per PRIMARY unit of energy input?
--PM
So, while doing its (realistic, not theoretical) 30 mile run on batteries, it has to lug around a heavy internal combustion engine, and when it switches to its engine, it gets worse mileage than a VW Polo Bluemotion, while lugging around an expensive pile of useless toxic metal.
Long range electric or efficient internal combustion. Please, please, pick one.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
under the epa fuel economy testing system wasn't the first gen prius rated at 100mpg in their lab, but in the real world its somewhere in the 40s.
GM better not base a campaign on that number. Every consumer watchdog group is going to be on this. The 230mpg number could only have been obtained by completely neglecting the grid-based electrical input, which factors into the cost. Great way for a failed company to recover...on a lie.
The Prius isn't plugin, so it will remain as it was.
the devil's in the details
/. you have to actually RTFA.
... then you don't know what you're talking about ... which is how most of our politicians and most Americans operate.
aint' that the truth
For example, in politicals you have to actually RTF bill.
And on
if you don't
They forgot to mention the Forward Mounted, Cannon Fired Grappling Hook (TM).
The instructions were a little vauge, but the pictures showed the driver aiming on a HUD at a City Bus....so you fill in the blanks.
WTF? Over?
40 miles per day electric of your 50 mile commute leaving 10 miles to gasoline. So yeah it gets great mileage, otherwise it is like 50 to 60 max, probably lower. Too much energy loss to convert between forms of power.
the real story is, highway mileage without recharge except by the engine.
Still, lets play with numbers. Say you get your 230 mpg or more. You pay 40 grand for this privileged. Cars this size (Volt is Cruze/Cobalt size) cost around 20k normally. Lets be nice and say you optioned out well. Figure $5.00 per gallon of gas. You drive 15,000 miles a year, the Volt will burn in city mode 62 gallons, the normal car 500 ( a prius 300). $300 versus $2500 looks good. But that discounts loss of the battery, so amortize that as well. If you leave out the battery pack it still means five plus years to make up the difference IF your car only gets 30 in the city. Buy a TDI from VW and you get forty plus for around 22k.
So its hype and a bogus test meant to exaggerate the car in best possible situations. Meaning if it sticks cars will be designed to beat the test.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If you can drive ~80 miles on less than a dollar of electricity (as it says in TFA - they claim 40 cents), how is 230 mpg a bad comparison again? Even if it's more like 60 cents of electricity, still, you're getting 240 miles out of $1.80. $1.80 is not a bad estimate for the price of a gallon of gasoline.
It may be imprecise, but I don't think it's THAT imprecise.
The real thing I wonder about is long-term cost efficiency. What happens when you leave the car at home for 3 days - does it continue to draw power? How much do you waste? What happens when the Li-ion batteries inevitably lose charge capacity? How does that affect your mpg? How often do you have to replace those batteries - and how much do the batteries cost?
Those questions are where GM gets a lot more shaky, I think, especially since, to my knowledge, they haven't really been answered.
MPG rating is meaningless when you can get some of your power from another, external, power source.
Though a 50MPG car isn't anything to sneeze at, claiming it can get 230 miles on a gallon of fuel is simply bullshit. It gets 230 miles on a gallon of fuel PLUS several recharges from an electrical outlet. When you compare this to an all-fuel car or a non-plugin hybrid, there isn't a valid basis for comparison. How much fuel was burned to make that electricity? When you combine the fuel the car actually burned plus the fuel used to make the electricity the car used, what's the REAL fuel mileage?
Multiple-fuel-source vehicles are harder to point to with a real standard for efficiency, but ideally the EPA standard should be some function of how much fuel AND electricity were put into the vehicle to go a given distance. Come up with a standard of how much energy or pollution or whatever goes into making the electricity, then add that equivalence to the numbers.
By EPA standards, I suppose my Jetta Diesel TDI gets INFINITE gasoline mileage. Because it burns Diesel, it uses, duh, no gasoline. But it does burn actual fuel.
I'm not criticizing the car, or even the idea of having a primarily-electric vehicle with enough of an onboard system for unlimited range without recharges. 50MPG is pretty darned good, and being able to use ALL electrics for the majority of driving is generally a good thing, since electricity can be produced using cleaner sources than internal combustion of dinofuels.
But even those of us who DO wear the "green" label somewhat proudly laugh at this kind of nonsense. Treating these numbers as anything more than bullshit is like trying to defend "The Day After Tomorrow" as an environmental statement. It simply makes environmentalism, or even those who casually try to increase their efficiency, look like the work of whack-job nutters.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
I hate these misleading MpG measurements they keep giving out for electric or hybrid cars that can plug in. They can all be explained like this:
x miles on battery power
y miles on fuel
x+y/g = z
Which is true, until the battery runs out, which it does extremely quickly. They also fail to take into account how much "fuel" comes magically out of your power socket into the car.
Frankly, I think there should be a law that says you can't include pre-stored electric power power in MpG measurements. So they would have to say "50 MpG with up to 100 miles provided by the battery!"
Erin Burnette was spreading FUD about the Volt on Squack box this morning - here's a paraphrased quote "I spoke with auto parts manufacturers who said that these electric cars will create more pollution, the way the grid is set up there will only be more coal and pollution than with a gas engine"..
Oh. My. God.
At least her co-presenter, Mark what'shis name had the sense to say " oh i'd like to see the data before blah blah blah"...
Do we think people are intelligent enough to make up their own minds and realize that auto part's manufacturers have their entire business model tied to ICE and that 1 moving part is going to need fewer replacement parts than hundreds of moving parts?
edit: captcha is illusion!
If you have the cheddar to drop $40k on a commuter car, you probably don't think twice about the price at the pump. Let's hope there are enough people buying this for the novelty value that it will stay afloat long enough that production efficiency can improve to the $25k/unit level.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Why are these still considered abstract? Fill the car up with all the electricity/gas that it can handle and run it until it is dry (or at least dry enough for your MTBF numbers to be correct). Then look at how far you went and give us those numbers. What is that? You didn't use gas? Then add a "Miles per watt" taken from the electrical grid. If you provide a 99.999% efficient charger with the car, then your MPW goes up.
This is getting as annoying as the Zigbee protocol. Just make up your freaking mind already!
for every gallon of Mountain Dew I consume I can drive 1000 miles. What? That is not what is actually fueling the car? Nonsense!
230 Miles per gallon + KWattHour or something would be more accurate... Despite dubious/inaccurate marketing, I still want one really bad. Series Hybrid is my favorite, because I can eat my cake and road-trip it too.
Once that gas engine kicks in, we're talking maybe 50 mpg at best.
The only conditions under which that "230 mpg" figure means anything is if you drive about 51 miles per day. Lower than that, and your actual mileage will be higher, higher than that, much lower.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I would just like to point out that I'm sick of the American auto industry treating us Canadians and the rest of the metric world like second class citizens. You in the US all enjoy your wonderfully efficient 230 mpg, whereas we are stuck with only 98km/L, less than half!! For shame.
I plan to start a boycott until this terrible treatment of the metric world halts.
Who's with me?
... between major failures? This is a GM vehicle afterall.
Why in the hell couldn't GM have just come out with a normal 50MPG car that didn't suck ass like the Metro? That would sell well and be a ton cheaper to make.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
How many gallons of electricity does it hold?
My UID is prime. Hah!
http://www.daxdesai.com/2007/12/21/who-killed-the-electric-battery/
Very informative article. Here's the best part:
-----
Further Chevron Texaco is responsible for about half the price premiums on todayâ(TM)s hybrids. They charge $1,200/kWh for the battery when it could be $150. How well do they control NiMH technology? Well every NiMH battery has to be licensed from a company - Cobasys, wholly owned by Chevron. Manufacturing is limited to consumer electronics size batteries. This explains why Tesla Motors is using thousands of small consumer-grade batteries in its electric vehicle.
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I'm not sure why people are hating on this car so much other than the fact that it's GM and everyone is mad at them for the whole bailout thing right now.
.75 gallons? You're going to complain about that?
The only real difference between this car and previous hybrids is that this one will go 40 (maybe, I'm guessing closer to 30) miles before it kicks into hyrbid mode.
This car is a great concept and for the vast majority of people I know, will provide essentially gas-less lifestyles (except on road trips, but if you're taking THIS little thing on a road trip, you did something else wrong). And if you need to go 70 miles instead of 40 in one day, you spend what?
This is the kind of technology that can break the oil companies hold on the auto industry. yet people continue to bitch about how it's not good enough for them. I say fuck you all and I hope other companies follow in this car's footsteps. All technology has to start somewhere and this is the first version of a gas-free car to hit the market. Give it a few years and we'll be seeing cars that go 60 miles on one charge, then 100, then maybe even more. Give it time, stop bitching and appreciate how far we have come, not how much you still want to happen.
I understand they're working on yet another Prius generation, for release around 2011 (either 2011 or 2012 model year) that will use lithium ion batteries instead of nickel metal hydride and will have plug-in support.
By then I assume they'll be able to easily top 230 MPG.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
Mark this troll all you want, but after seeing what the US has to offer in the automobile market, I won't ever buy a car from the likes of GM or Ford. I don't care what kind of promises they make. They've proven time after time to produce inefficient, shit-quality cars.
So I guess there is no conflict of interest there?
The Chevy Volt has great mileage, by Presidential Executive Order.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
From The Atlantic: GM's Volt Offers Amazing Mileage, But At What Cost?
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For those of us in europe this means about 0.01 L per km (no, we don't use the km/L stated in the summary, we use L/km).
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
So, they've released that it supposedly gets 230 miles per gallon, but that doesn't translate into savings...
It's just like the people who drive "green" cars like the Prius. Do they not realize that the car will only run for about 100,000 miles before they have to replace some ridiculously expensive component? "But it's for the environment!" they'll claim. So the majority of consumers in the USA are concerned with "the environment" over their pocketbook? I think not...
The reality is that this Chevy Volt will have some absurdly high cost per mile, compared with an equivalent "gas-guzzling" sedan, but because of the "green" frenzy, people will buy it so they can tell all their friends that they are doing good for their grandkids.
This is complete and utter crap, and the only reason it's happening is that the government now owns GM and sets the rules.
This would only even begin to be reasonable if electricity came for free, and never with any carbon footprint. It doesn't, the Obama EPA lies, and none of us should be surprised in the least.
I can only hope that all the other hybrid makers -- and even non-hybrid makers -- sue the government's pants off over this outright lie!
Perhaps cars should be rated in $/mi to drive based on average fuel and electricity rates for the county in which they're sold. That would be more honest than this farce.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I don't CARE how many miles it gets to the gallon while only using gas 10% of the time. That I DO care about is how much ENERGY is used to send it those 230 miles. Fuel Equivalence is a number we need. ie, if you took the same amount of energy (joules, or whatever other metric you feel like using), worth of gas, how far does this car go?
We also need some granular metrics:
- it can travel 40 miles on a full charge and it takes X KWh to fully charge the battery from it's minimum allowable state. This allows people to understand the amount of electricity the car requires in "gas equivalent costs." aka, each time I'd charge the battery to go another 40 miles, I'd incur $1 on my electric bill at my current electric billing rate (more if it's on-peak in some areas).
- it uses 1 gallon of gas to x miles when the generator is running but when there is still some battery charge remaining, or when charging the battery while driving using the generator (at about 30% charge remaining, the generator kicks in to resupply the battery).
- it gets X miles per gallon when the battery is fully discharged and the car is running on generator only.
- some ballpark estimate of what the street price cost of a fast charge would be vs the current electric rates in the area. ie, if I pay $0.12/kw at home, am I expecting to get raped for $0.40/kw when out and about? One could hopefully assume it would be less than double the cost of electricity at home, and still far cheaper per mile driven than gasoline...
- what is the impact to MPG or electric driving distance with the AC on full blast (or the heat)?
If the car can run on 0 gas for 40 miles, but only gets 18MPG after that, i have a problem...
Also, any energy statements about driving per charge needs to account for power used FROM THE WALL SOCKET, not power used from the charged state of the battery. Charging the battery takes more energy than can be stored in it, and that needs to be accounted for, including the differences stopping at 70%, 80%, 90% and fully charged.
How much leakage of the battery is expected when the car is idle? (it has some computer system running using power to determine when to charge and not charge itself based on peak/off-peak, so what impact is this? Hopefully it's about the power draw of a small cell phone...
The economy of these cars is NOT proven.
I want to know, with AC/heat running, and all other common car electronics (radio, GPS, charging a phone, etc, headlights on 50% of the time), and a combination of city, country, and freeway driving, how much gas and electricity (each seperately) will i expect it to use if I drive 20 miles, 40 miles, 60 miles, 150 miles.
I know the first models released, at $40,000, will NEVER boil out even vs a traditional hybrid. Anyone buying one of these is doing so either as a status symbol, or as an overt environmental guesture regardless of cost. Even traditional hybrids are questionalby worth it... however, I'd like to know what the price poiint for likely break even or even potential to save money lies so I do know when to invest in one. If electricity is 1/3 the cost of gas to go the same distance, and you drive 40 miles per day, and can get an equavalent car that gets 40MPG for $20,000, you're saving a whopping $2 a day is gas is $3 a gallon. Also figure, the more people drive these, the more expensive electricity will get, so don;t count on saving $3 a day at $4 a gallon... Even if you could, $3 a day saved means 18 years to break even vs a Prius! If you drive more than 40 miles a day, and run on gas only, i highly doubt the mileage will be better than the prius, and this will actually increase the time to break even (or make it impossible to do so).
How many KWh are there in a gallon of electricity?
I'm sure Chevy's "getting a charge" out of it somewhere downline... What will be the carrying capacity of the rolling electron?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
All I want to know is rods to the hogshead!
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
230mpg is a skewered result. They included the 40 miles that runs electric only in the calculation. If they ignored the 40 electric only miles, then calculate the mpg only when the car is actually using gas, it would be much different result and actually be a more accurate number to use.
HA!!! I was going to post the same thing about Diet Dr Pepper(r). Can we make the battery fluid drinkable, tasty and caffienated? My doctor says I need more electrolytes.
A bit of information I found interesting: "Tentative EPA methodology results show 25 kilowatt hours/100 miles electrical efficiency in city cycle". Maybe miles per kW will become the "MPG" for electric cars?
So its hype and a bogus test meant to exaggerate the car in best possible situations.
Or, for people who live in an optimal situation, say 20 miles from work with mostly in-city driving, it is as great as advertised.
I drive a TDI Golf. I get 45 MPG. But it's all high way, 80 miles a day. If I were driving stop light to stop light, my mileage would plummet. Diesels with a nice short final drive are the kings of the highway, but full electrics dominate on surface roads with lots of stop and go action.
Also, not sure on the Volt, but I believe Toyota offers a battery recycling plan that dramatically drops the cost of replacement, and I think the more recent generations of batteries are shooting for 10 year service windows.
If I had a 20 mile or less commute in a town of more temperate weather, I would definitely look at the Volt as a serious contender for my next vehicle.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
At 230 MPG, this changes the economic formula for "value". At those energy consumption rates, perhaps a higher initial cost will be more than offset by the much lower fuel costs.
...but it does make me wonder how they were able to accomplish such a feat in so little time. What else are they hiding in that R&D lab?
That is, if the 230 MPG is accurate. If it is, however, it's a game changer. Nobody expected this kind of performance when the Volt was initially announced. I say congrats to GM.
Either give all efficiency measurements in joules/meter (or foot-pound force/mile or megajoules/kilometer or something), or separate the figures for when the vehicle is running on pure electricity (J/m would work for that) and when the vehicle is running exclusively with the fuel-consumpting engine (traditional MPG or liter/100km would work, or maybe J/m for this too).
Jumbling it all into a single quasi-MPG is just smoke and mirrors to make the figures look good.
while true; do eject; eject -t; done
I saw this post earlier and did quick math to show how much power this really is:
http://fulldecent.blogspot.com/2009/08/some-quick-math-on-gms-new-volt.html
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-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Can someone tell me why we are using miles per gallon to measure electricity?
did you forget to take your meds?
Call me when GM has repaid their "loan" to US taxpayers. Until then, it's Ford or an import for me.
But for many people, even 51 is overkill for a day. I think CNN states that 3/4 of drivers keep it under 40 miles per day.
During the work-week my commute is 22 round-trip, and I rarely put on another 10-20 during a day. That means 90% of the time I drive between 22 and 42 miles per day, I run most of my errands on the way home anyway to save time.
Now, I do drive the occasional 200-300 mile road-trip maybe every-other year. But it's rare and I don't know if I'd use this car for that.
Similarly I know someone that constantly brags about the mileage he gets on his Prius since he drives entirely in the city. And someone else usually says "good for you, but I drive my TDI on the highway."
If I drive an mains-rechargable electric/gas car for very short trips, such that I never actually burn gas, and always run off the battery, when I do finally take a long trip somewhere and the gasoline engine kicks on, I might find that the gas has gone bad and the engine won't run, and I'll be stranded.
This is probably not a very huge concern for most people, but I imagine that certain users might find it a problem -- the little old lady who only drives to church on Sundays, 2 blocks on a 25mph road, for example.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I think something like the Volt will be nice for someone with a house and some extra cash to spend since this car cost 40k. How long will the batteries last? How much does it cost to replace the batteries?
I do not think the US market is ready for a mass explosion of electric cars. A few kinks need to be worked out:
I smoked pot once. But I DID NOT inhale. Will you hire me?
The #3(( with plugging in... I want to be able to get by with a visit to the nearest trash can.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
The 230 figure is designed to account for how most people will drive the vehicle and uses a government standard test methodology. The important thing is that the same test is applied to all equivalent vehicles. Since 90% of people drive 40 or fewer miles in a day, it's not an unreasonable number if recharged as designed.
If you wanted a better figure of how it would last for a day's worth of driving you could take the total driven range and divide that out to get miles per gallon. Perhaps even quote it with a qualifier as something like 100MPG/300kWh to account for the electrical contribution (my figures are made up but you get the idea). This would allow to easily account for the cost of the electricity as well as the extended range from batteries and post battery range once you have drained the initial charge.
Regardless of how you interpret the results the car is impressive even if it is too expensive. Give it a few years and you should be able to get something like this for a lot less money. I've already talked over with my wife and we want to get a vehicle like this and solar panels on the roof in about three years when costs drop. I figure it should drop my monthly expenses a fair bit and be good for the environment.
I wish they would have kept to their original listing of "40 miles on a single charge, 50 MPG when running off the generator". The EPA needs to come up with some new measuring standard for this type of car, or some idiot is going to put one gallon of gas in his uncharged Volt for a 200 mile trip one day, and bitch and moan when he runs out of gas in the middle of nowhere after 50 miles.
The government owns GM, the government wants electric cars to be bought, the government determines a method to calculate mileage for a grid power assisted car. The calculation is not easily verified but don't worry the government would never lie.
If cars like the Volt and the Leaf even LOOK to be successful, oil traders will begin to run from the market, sending oil prices plummeting.
I'd be worried that if all my runs were full-electric, that is to say that my 10 mile commute never required the car to dip into the gasoline, that without treatment, the gasoline could break down and gum up the injectors - like when you store a boat or mower over the winter...but who wants to drive around with a stabilizer-mix full time? that's gotta put a big hit on efficiency and power if you ever need the combustion engine to kick in.
i don't think i've ever seen that issue discussed when hybrids are brought up.
Just don't plug it in one or two nights a month and run it on the fuel the next day. That ought to keep the engine lubed and the fuel cycling through. That's a good point, though, in terms of the fact that they should probably tell people that if they buy the car.
It's a simple problem to deal with, as long as people know about the issue and know to not charge the car occasionally so the engine will kick in.
What...speed are these ratings computed at? I live out west--instead of the lousy 55 limit in many places out East (if you can even go that fast with traffic), my daytime limit here is 75. People almost constantly break that, (last two weeks I set my cruise at 85 and there was only two cars on the whole trip that didn't pass me) and you can hit 85-90 and I've never seen a cop blink unless you're within a mile or two of a town since they're often passing.
On a road where you can see for 5 miles in all directions--it's perfectly safe as long as you have quality tires and good suspension. It'll change a 20 mile commute from 20 minutes to 15...
I drive a fairly efficient car now since it's not unheard of to make a 45-60 minute drive to visit friends or kin... Will it hold up under *real* highway conditions? It isn't exactly the autobahn out west (roads aren't as nice). It's already clear that the "efficiency rating" would drop to 100 MPG on one leg of that trip--but will it even "even worse" if I'm pushing it to the reasonable road speeds? I doubt it's really "40 miles" if I'm driving at 80 MPH--does that speed assume "city limits" of 25 MPH? What about the highway rating--is it at 55, 60, 90? How's it hold up at actual velocity (given that highway figures are traditionally better in gasoline powered cars)?
I've been stressed all week trying to figure out what this "230" number was all about.
Why didn't any of you in-the-know assholes update True# for me?
When i searched for "230 volt" it brings up crap about the euros and their wonky electric system.
True#, I pine for your wisdom in a situation like this.
1 gallon of Gas
Unfortunately, that in itself doesn't allow us to calculate us the C02/Mile equation, but it's a start.
You stereotypers are all the same...
Replace that 4 cycle IC gas engine with a Stirling generator to recharge the batteries, plus better batteries and Multi-bank charging via a optional roof, hood, and trunk solar cells that can recharge several percent of the battery while people spend 8 hours at work.
The ultimate commuter car / golf cart hybrid.
People who park in open parking lots at work and commute less than 10 miles a day will essentially be commuting for FREE as in FREE beer.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
South of Miami Florida, with AC on 78F 24/7 because of health problems, 1 computer+network equipment on 24/7 drawing 264W, 1 computer on 8hrs a day drawing 120W, and two TV's on intermittently. What will my electricity bill be when I have to plug in my car driving a total of 350 miles/week. I only spend about $32/week on gas.
I might actually have a lot of months where the car isn't running on gas.
If you sold cars for a living you should know gasoline does not keep well in a tank. And engines should be run at least a little every few days or couple of weeks.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
(2010) In today's news, Volt, Prius [plugin], and Ford Fusion [plugin] Hybrid sales hit all time highs. In other news, electricity prices reach an all time high due to high than normal consumption.
Also in other news oil prices hit below $30/barrel ($1.50 at the pump) due to decreasing demand.
Sure it may help the environment, but economically and 'dependently', it's a zero sum game. That's right, a game...
Very weak. 40 miles on battery and then ~ 50mpg for the remaining 10 miles and you get the stupid mileage figure. Yes you can average 230mpg over the first 50 miles you drive on a fresh charge. Of course driving just another 10 miles would drop the mileage figure substantially. I guess it's time to have two mileage ratings. The first would be gallons per 100 miles with a fully charged battery, the 2nd would be gallons per 100 miles on a fully depleted battery.
_GP_
I bought my 2002 Prius after a six month wait time. I paid more for it then a comparably equiped gas car. There was no economic rationale for my purchase -- I did it because I loved the car, and had the privilege of driving a cutting edge piece of engineering for going on seven years now, with minimum maintenance and hassle. There's something beautiful about driving with virtually no noise and I still smile when I roll up to a stop sign and the engine shuts off.
Moreover, I am willing to pay higher than market rate because of the externalities associated with having the world's first mass-produced electric car:
I am supporting an environmental technology that I believe in.
I am supporting green-tech projects, built in America.
I love driving on electric power only.
I am willing to take a risk on buying the Volt or the Prius or any other quasi-experimental first-generation piece of tech hardware because I have the money.
I am buying it because as a child I wanted to know why I couldn't put a windmill on top of the family car and use wind power to make it go.
Maybe Chevrolet's engineers are just insisting on being thorough and working the bugs out BEFORE release... which is a concept too many software engineers seem to have forgotten? That fleet of 50 "beta" Volt cars that's been on the road wasn't just for advertising, ya know.
I want to hate his car since I will not be able to afford something like it for a number of years if it succees...BUT WOW.....230 mpg....for CITY driving? Gadzooks.
it's coming from the coal power plant; generating electricity for these cars to charge.
Well, someone once told me that oil was stored sunlight, and then another said that oil was fossilized animal and plant remains, yet then came a geologist that said oil is generated by an enzyme in the earth's crust and therefore renewable.
I think my milage on a bicycle is not as good compared to an unladen car, so I'll use what's appropriate. Joe Cell, or water Electrolysis as some people derived, should be what non automobile and oil companies should be striving for. Sunlight is generated by a balanced fusion reaction, so we should focus in creating a self-sustaining reaction ourselves rather than collecting the efficiency to run our cars. Just skip the sunlight and move towards somthing that is overbalanced in its energy, like Methernitha Testatica or a Hummingbird Motor.
And so, for you, it would be nearly ideal. And would get much more than 230 mpg, on average. Closer to 1000 mpg, in fact.
My objection isn't to the car, or to its performance. It's to a "new standard" for measuring mileage that produces essentially meaningless results - in almost all cases, you'll get either far less or far more than 230mpg. Which means they might as well not have bothered to publish a number.
Especially since some people are going to buy it for the 230 mpg, and then scream bloody murder when it doesn't get nearly that high for them....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
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And as eye-popping as the number was, a rival automaker, said last week that its all-electric vehicle, the Leaf, which is scheduled to come out in late 2010, would get 367 m.p.g., using the same E.P.A. standards.
unfortunately by 2011 if appears that will under perform the market
they are a loss no matter how you look at them.
What both you and the GP left out is higher fuel prices can make it worthwhile. GP used $3/gallon however last summer gas got up to $4.50. What happens when it gets up to $10 a gallon? And that's if the Volt cost $35,000.
Financially what may be better would be to keep the vehicle you already own, use a bike, and invest in businesses involved in plug-in hybrids as well as alternative energy.
A top of the line motorcycle like the FJR1300 that has bags to carry stuff and a back seat area to hold a large backpack to hold the laptop+other items is 48Mpg typical and cost less than $13,000 with insurance being lower.
I've been thinking about getting a motorcycle and saddlebags. I don't know, is insurance for motorcycles lower than for cars? I imagine the cost depends on whether helmets are worn or not.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
...why do these stories about hybrids, fully-electrics, etc. always elicit responses like "but it freezes here, which kills performance" and "but I drive 200 miles every day, will it be able to do that? No."
I don't hear anybody ranting on the Mini for not being able to support a soccer (hockey?) mom with her 3 kids+entourage+equipment.
I don't hear anybody complaining that a Ford Excursion is crap up in northern Alaska because the tires keep sinking into the thawing dirt roads.
Who last complained about a Scuderia Spider (open top car) because they lived in Seattle and, well, dur?
Not every single car is going to fill your specific needs and desires; thank goodness, then, that there is a wide range to choose from.. and with the Volt and other initiatives, those whose desires include having a non-gasoline car to drive short distances regularly in non-extreme (4 months of freezing is extreme enough, tyvm) weather will be having that choice available to them, just as you have had the choice between a myriad of cars that will happily run with little performance loss at 30F and the heater blasting at full.
Look at the testing yourself and see the potential loopholes. There's no reason to guess here. The information is available.
But it isn't available directly at that link, which is the top of their documentation publication page. And about 10 minutes of following likely links and searching for things like "electric" did not turn up the algorithm for rating MPG on cars that get some or all of their power from the wall.
Could you (or anyone else who finds that) please post a deeper link here - at least to the document in question if you can't link to the passage? Thanks.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Yeh, I guess. But honestly, it is a pickel.
How do you, with just one set of numbers, describe the mile-age of a car that used both electricity (via a charge) and gas?
They do need to post *something* and it should be a short-and-sweet number because anything more than that will confuse the general public.
For example, if they said 40 gas-free miles, and then 50 MpG afterwards I'd be OK with it. But Joe Sixpack would either ignore or get confused by the "40 gas-free miles." He'd say "Huh?" or "So it's like a GM-made Prius."
So Accuracy, Realism, and Simplicity... pick and two (or one if you're a pessimist).
Then, you would kind of like to drive home that if you keep the mileage low enough each day and charge when you get home, that you'll be getting insane numbers.
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I read somewhere that the method the EPA is currently using to measure mpg for these cars is to see how much fuel is consumed for 51 miles. What happens is the car runs on the batteries for 40 miles, then on gas for 11 miles. So, the average for all 51 miles was 230G, which means the total fuel consumed was approx .2217 Gallons. But, .2217 Gallons / 11 miles approx. = 49.62 MPG (when not running on the batteries).
If the EPA used any value less than or equal to 40 miles, the car would appear to get infinite miles per gallon. If they used 41 miles, then it would appear to get 2034MPG. Basically, by choosing how many miles to use as your 'standard', you can really choose *any* value > 49 for MPG. As the miles increase, the value would asymptotically approach the true MPG when running on fuel.
Because if you put in some gasoline in a new one it will still be there a decade later when you look again.
This new bogus number is because of GM working with/lobbying EPA. I can't believe EPA caved into such a content free meaningless number.
To get 230 miles from a gallon you would also need about 5 full charges to go with it. It isn't intuitive, it isn't useful in any way. It is just hot air.
230 miles per gallon? Sure, if you want to ignore all the fuel burned to charge the vehicle. The worst part is that the EPA is falling right in line and practically sponsoring this propaganda. Fuel efficiency should be determined by figuring out how far the vehicle can move on the equivalent of one gallon of gasoline or diesel. Anything else is apples and oranges and total bullshit.
According to an article in Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant [in Dutch] GM lobbied intensively with EPA to modify the test method for hybrid cars. They say the Volt differs from other hybrid cars by being able to run 64 kilometers on electricity. With five standard testruns of 17.6 km the gas engine has only participated in 24 of the 88 km, and that would explain the 98 km/liter. They call it a marketing myth.
Sorry for the metric units, we don't understand miles and gallons over here.
Ok, one sentence didn't come out quite right. . .
"So, the average for all 51 miles was 230G. . .", should have been:
"So, the average for all 51 miles was 230 MPG. . ."
The two reasons to buy a hyrbid are to save 1) money or 2) the environment. So get to the point, and rate all cars based on $/Joule and kg CO2/Joule.
Say you bought a Volt at 230 MPG for $40,000. How far do you have to drive to recoup the cost difference over a Ford Fusion Hybrid at $30,000 that gets ~40 MPG?
Let's assume $3/Gal. The MPG difference is 190 MPG, so you save $3 every 190 miles.
So the number of miles you must accumulate to recoup the cost difference is $10,000 / ($3 / 190 miles) = 633,333 miles. At $5/Gal gas, you'd have to drive 380K miles. Even at $20/Gal gas, you'd have to drive 95,000 miles to justify that $10k premium for the Volt.
Unless the Volt has significantly lower maintenance than a regular car (same vein as jet engines vs. prop engines), I don't see the point of it.
GM is borderline lying here, and to top it off they haven't told us anything about the actual efficiency of burning gas and turning it into motion. That is buried behind some arbitrary amount of charge cycles.
The honest and usable way to report the efficiency would be:
EV range:
Charge sustaing MPG:
That is it. From that you can understand what the car will do in any usage situation. With the current arbitrary blended number we actually know nothing.
It is all hype and no substance.
If this is the "New GM", I want no part of it. I was previously rooting for a GM comeback. No more. I don't support dishonest snake oil salesmen.
so the money you pay for the electricity has some chance of circulating back to you.
and cool them in summer because I doubt the service life of most of these cars will be in weather that is ideal for batteries.
Throw in the fact that road surfaces are much hotter than the air temperature, drive a vette or other low car like a Miata and you know this quickly, and suddenly how much power is lost for keeping the pack at the optimal temperature. Night driving, being in the rain, all sorts of ways I can find to drop my mileage but I think temperature ranges of a typical US location will do it more harm than good.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I will be interested to see if it can hold a charge for 40 miles when it hist -20 in Minnesota. I know Li works well in the cold compared to other batteries, but there is still an effect.
If the rich and stupid want to lower the price of gas for the rest of us by buying expensive plugin hybrids, WHO ARE YOU TO STOP THEM? (Although, higher electric prices could suck. . . but if you heat and cool your house with something like a Geothermal heatpump, and use power-efficient lights and appliances, you might personally come out ahead).
A plug-in hybrid's "miles-per-gallon" rating can be made arbitrarily high -- it just depends on the gasoline/grid electricity "blend assumption" made during the calculation.
So you can see why a miles-per-gallon statistic is worth very little when it comes to plug-in hybrids.
Instead of coming up with an arbitrary blend assumption that won't exactly match the behavior of any driver, the EPA should simply publish two economy ratings: the miles-per-gallon when the car is propelled strictly by gasoline, and the miles-per-kilowatt-hour when the car is propelled strictly by grid electricity. Yes, this is more complex than publishing a single figure of merit, and a small percentage of consumers will never understand it, but on the other hand, it would cause lots of consumers to study the issue and actually learn something. And avoid the unrealistic hype of "zomg, the 230 mile-per-gallon car!"
How about miles per pound of carbon dioxide emission?
No good. This figure is also going to vary quite a bit, depending on the assumed gasoline/grid electricity blend. (Plus, not everyone buys into the alarmism over CO2.)
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
I own a BMW R1200RT, it gets 49mpg. Can carry two comfortably provided its, not raining, snowing, over 90F, under 40F, and oh I don't know, about half a dozen other factors external. So lets take my 18,000 motorcycle and throw it up against an 07 Civic I owned. That gets 35+ on the highway and .... oh well weather is a non-factor.
The problem with motorcycles is that one day you have an excuse to not ride it (See weather, see errands, etc) whatever, and that suddenly builds into not using it hardly at all. Believe me, I can come up with a million excuses to buy it but they quietly get forgotten when the convenience and safety factors are considered.
Rain is annoying to downright sucky. Right now its 94+ in Atlanta and the road temperatures are over 100. Moving on the freeway its a blast furnace, stopping and I am roasting; full gear because I like myself. Make it rain and it gets more fun - quick find a place to stop and suit up and roast even more. Winter, well as long as its above 36F I am fine; heated suit; but honestly I will take top down driving in my Miata instead.
So please don't compare bikes to cars, it doesn't make sense. Motorcycles in most Western countries are recreational/luxury buys. If you really wanted to conserve and have the utility of a bike you would get a scooter like the MP5 (3 wheel - it don't fall over easily and it leans well)
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
They are not doing a eMPG like conversion for the electricity used. Tesla Roadster runs at similar efficiency as the Volt in EV mode (28 vs 25 KWh/100miles) and the eMPG rating that I have seen for Tesla was 135 eMPG. Now clear if you mix in some gas range it is only going to get worse than that, no significanlty better.
It is clear this is some arbitrary amount of EV miles likely close to 5 full charge cycles before burning one gallon of gas. As such it misleads and tells us nothing about the actual gas geneator->wheels mpg. I think this number is likely to be unimpressive and if GM gets it's way, we may need to wait for independent parties to get a production volt to test before we find out.
If the tank is 10 gallons, I can almost drive across the country on this? Obviously claiming 230mpg is idiotic, even if you start off fully charged. Trying to retrofit this car to "mpg" is just a straight up scam.
A good heater shouldn't require more than around 1.5 kilowatts, the size of a space heater that can keep a small room toasty. The Volt's engine is rated at 111 kilowatts.
So running the heater shouldn't cost more than around 1% of your total range.
111 kW is the peak output of the engine. Your math only makes sense if the engine is running at peak output the entire drive, but not during normal driving conditions.
First I'll make an intuitive argument: Peak engine output would only happen if you're flooring the accelerator. In this case, the batteries will discharge rapidly and you will travel at a high speed. Ignoring second-order effects, the car will still travel the maximum range of the batteries (i.e. 40 miles) but in a very short amount of time. Intuitively, if the heater is only turned on for a short amount of time compared to the distance traveled, it won't have a large effect on range.
Now, we can look at a more sensible way to determine the effect of the heater: look at the capacity of the batteries. Wikipedia tells me that the batteries can store 16kW-hours. It also tells me that the range of the electric motor is 40 miles. Again assuming no second order effects, we can assume that a 20 mile drive consumes 8kWh (distance/maximum distance * battery capacity). Given your assumption that an electric heater pulls 1.5kW, it's easy to plug in some numbers:
20 mile drive @ 60mph -- 8kWh consumed by engine, (1.5kW * 20 minutes) = 0.5 kWh consumed by heater
20 mile drive @ 40mph -- 8kWh consumed by engine, (1.5kW * 30 minutes) = 0.75 kWh consumed by heater
20 mile drive @ 20mph -- 8kWh consumed by engine, (1.5kW * 60 minutes) = 1.5 kWh consumed by heater
Case 1: 8/8.5 = 94% efficiency (-6% range)
Case 2: 8/8.75 = 91.5% efficiency (-8.5% range)
Case 3: 8/9.5 = 84% efficiency (-16% range)
As speed decreases, the more the heater affects the range of the car. Again, this is intuitive, because at slower speeds, the heater is operating (and draining power) for a longer period of time compared to distance traveled. 20-30mph speeds are common during a typical heavy commute and would reduce range by up to 15%, much more than the 1% you predicted.
And to show that the peak wattage calculation does indeed work assuming maximum speed, we can take the quoted maximum speed of the Volt's engine (180mph) and use my method above:
20 mile drive @ 180mph -- 8kWh consumed by engine, (1.5kW * 6.6 minutes) = 0.16kWh consumed by heater
My method: 8/8.16 = 98% efficiency (-2% range)
Your method: 111/112.5 = 98.7% efficiency (-1.3% range)
The two are very close considering that most of the assumptions I've made about performance aren't accurate at extreme high or low speeds.
I used to think the same, I didn't believe in taking out a loan to buy something that's going to depreciate in value. However you can earn more investing money than what you'll save in interest. That is in a better economy, however in good tymes and bad tymes some companies pay dividends. PPG Industries has paid out dividends, 37 years in a row. The board of directors declared a quarterly dividend of $0.53. It closed today at $55.15 a share. There are other companies like that who increase dividends every year.
Car loans are usually about 6%.
That depends. Bankrate is showing a dealer interest rate of 1.9% and credit union rates of 4.5%.
most people (myself excluded) don't buy cars based on solving their problem (need for transportation) for the least amount of money.
I've bought 7 vehicles, 6 used ones I paid for in cash, and the 7th was new I paid with a loan I got through the dealer. Of the 6 used ones, the longest one has lasted was about 3 years, and that was even though I rebuilt the engine in it. My new one I bought in 1999, almost 10 years ago, and I still have it.
Now I'm thinking of buying a used motorcycle.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I subscribe to Consumer Reports mainly for their more sane MPG measurements with cars rather than the bad joke EPA tests that are gamed and self reported by the manufacturers.
But this takes the cake. GM lobbies and gets a meaningless overinflated nonsensical measurement to use that contains all noise and no signal. With this kind of measurement you have ZERO indication of what kind of mpg you will get after you run the the battery down. None at all. This is content free hype and nothing more.
Are there still scientists/engineers working at the EPA? If so, they need to hang their heads in shame of foisting a useless measurement like this on the buying public.
EV range: +
Charge Sustaining MPG:
This is the only thing that makes sense.
EV range: +
Meaningless huge MPG number mainly made up of multiple EV charges:
This adds no value, tells us nothing. This is just misleading hype.
The EPA should not be part of GMs hype machine.
Long term this will just damage GM as these will be called "GM MPG" for overinflated meaningless mpg ratings. Very sad they chose the low road.
A use for all this cash people will save by not buying fuel will be usurped via some other method.
All the money collected for text messages, cellular data, and airtime minutes are my example. Somewhere, someone is plotting how to better monetize electric car charge delivery, and if you think the gas pump is bad, just wait.
Your rotary dial and copper pair were supplanted by an insidious money eating gizmo. The service station is poised to be reinvented, with coffee bar (serving a slew of $5 "conveniences")
I propose the following standard when reporting fuel efficiency of plug-in hybrids:
gasoline mode: X mpg
electric mode: Y miles per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
It's not as simple as one number, but it's a lot more accurate.
So we're going to pay $40K for this little bugger. Well, somebody might, but not anybody I know.
Let's do a little figuring. Let's say you can buy a comparable new IC engine'd car for $20K.
Now how long will it take you to to spend $20K on gas? At $4 a gallon that's 5,000 gallons.
At 30MPG that's good for 150,000 miles of driving. At a (high) 15,000 miles a year of driving that's ten years.
So after ten years you have just equaled the cost of the Volt. Except after ten years there are quite a few years left
on the IC car but the Volt needs a new battery which costs much more than what the car is worth, so
that effectively makes it worthless.
And if you put the $20K you did not spend in into the bank at 2.5%, you'd have the $20K plus another $2.56K in interest.
Hmmm, let's see, would I rather have a reliable car and $25K at the end, or a unknown first-try car and $0?
Prius? For the $16,000 you don't spend on Volt, you'll get an easy 45 mpg (winter) and 50 mpg (summer), with around 600 miles range on a tankful of regular gas. And with a $250 power inverter and a power cord, it'll power parts of your house in an emergency - fridge, computer, lights - as long as there is gas in the tank. The gas engine kicks in and out automatically and quietly as needed to keep the battery "up".
I remember maybe a year ago that aptera showed off their prototype which they rated at "330mpg." It's a plug-in hybrid that looks like it's straight out of a sci-fi movie, but it's still pretty cool and has the same drive concept as the Volt here. http://www.aptera.com/index.php
I've often wondered how much ozone these electric vehicles (if accepted en masse) will pump into the lower atmosphere. Or is this not really a concern?
...Hummingbird Motor...
Shenanigans! T'ain't no surch animal. Or did I miss a "Whoosh"?
If you want a true magical motor, look up the Stirling Engine.
If you want an engine that's closest to the ideal of running off pure entropy, that's your bunny.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I assume the gasoline doesn't keep well because tanks are metal, and there is some sort of chemical reaction happening, or perhaps some metal is getting dissolved into it. In that case, wouldn't the problem be fixed by keeping the gasoline in a plastic container in your trunk? That way you still get to use it as a reserve in emergency scenarios, and it hopefully wouldn't go bad.
First gasoline eats or dissolves plastic. Next, even in an inert container such as a glass bottle it will separate and precipitate.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Is anyone else going to comment on the fact that it's *not* the first car rated in triple digits? The Tesla Roadster already gets about 200 miles on a charge, and the model S is slated to do the same...
If it were the exact same design, but the BMW Volt or the Toyota Volt, you'd all be tripping over one another trying to praise it, and crying, "Der, why can't da USA make dis and not der gas guzzlers! Der! LOL!".
In the 1970s we called that Model 455 AC.
4 windows rolled down at 55 mph.
in Ohio at all.
80% of our electricity is coal generated.
Apparently Ohio's potential wind power is pretty good, onshore as well as offshore. According to one person mentioned in the second link above Lake Erie along the Ohio shore can provide more than 100% of the states electrical needs. It may not be enough with a lot of EVs on the road but to discount EVs in Ohio just because most of the state gets it's electricity from coal doesn't work.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The EPA methodology uses kilowatt hours per 100 miles traveled to define the electrical efficiency of plug-ins. Applying EPA's methodology, GM expects the Volt to consume as little as 25 kilowatt hours per 100 miles in city driving. At the U.S. average cost of electricity (approximately 11 cents per kWh), a typical Volt driver would pay about $2.75 for electricity to travel 100 miles, or less than 3 cents per mile.
According to Wikipedia, the Gallon-Gasoline Equivalent of electricity is 33.4 kilowatt-hours. Google says that works out to 133.6 mpg.
Why are there so many haters on this car? If anyone thinks that this is the end all be all solution to the problem, they are freaking idiots. This is just the first volley across the bow of the PRACTICAL electric car idea. With mass production brings decreased costs and better technology over time. If all car companies waited until the technology were perfect before producing it, it would be another full decade before anything hits the market. Yes, GM has screwed up in the past, but don't hold that against them with this car. THIS IS A GOOD START.
http://www.tomandemily.com
You think Joe Sixpack isn't going to get confused when he buys one and finds that he only gets 100 mpg because he drives 80 miles per day? Not only will he be confused, but he'll be taking the car back to the Dealer and insisting that the Dealer "Fix it!" Or, in States with Lemon Laws (Florida comes to mind, he'll take it to the Dealer and tell him to give him a refund for "this PoS that no way gets 230 mpg"....
I'm a pessimist. Always assuming the worst helps when trying to predict human behaviour.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
One thing that I think most of the knee-jerk reactions are missing is that while the Volt uses a gasoline generator, future models do not have to be tied to this. In fact, GM has an Opel in the works (probably still is) that will use a diesel generator instead. The generator can also be replaced by a hydrogen fuel cell if that becomes cost effective -- there is close to zero engineering cost for changing the powerplant, unlike current cars. For that matter, GM could just dump in a whole bunch of extra batteries and call it the EV2...
If cars start getting 230 mpg, then a gallon of gas will end up costing $50 per gallon between taxes and profits for the oil industry. But the potential cost to the consumer isn't the real problem. Anyone with high school physics knows it takes energy to do work such as move a person or stuff from one place to another. Energy by conversion is never environmentally friendly in any form. Hydro wrecks the landscape, burning fuels pollutes the air, nuclear creates radioactive waste, and even solar, wind, and wave have negative impacts on the environment. The only way to truly protect our environment it to produce the cleanest energy possible and use that energy responsibly, and sparingly. Since humanity can't even worship different gods without wanting to slay each other, I suspect true environmental responsibility is a long way in the future. The current "green" trend is currently being driven by corporate greed and strategic marketing to make consumers think they are "saving the environment" by owning a Prius or buying crap labelled "environmentally friendly". What's amazing is that hordes of supposedly "educated and enlightened" people fall for this nonsense. GM's car is a cool achievement for a company known for producing gas guzzlers. But, fooling people into buying a 40k car on the basis of environmental concerns, when they helped create the concerns through decades of producing pollution mobiles and ignoring the environment until it became a fascist trend to be green, is pretty lame indeed.
"then you'd need to drive around 177,000 miles to break even. "
You expect the battery to last 177 000 miles?
So what is the milage rating of the tesla Roadester or the Nissan Leaf ?
... <insert infinity symbol>
How about
G
Well, I mentioned several issues
Till the wind farm is up and providing economical electricity, that snub stands.
EV's have lots of issues. Batteries seem to be the largest, particularly here where it will be cold. Hey, it is Ohio.
But I digress, lets start small and doable, right now, find me a good string trimmer for my lawn.
Li-Ion have a limited lifespan and cost a fortune to replace.
As it stands today, I can purchase several cheap (junk) trimmers for the price of a feeble battery string trimmer. A ICE trimmer cost less than the replacement battery of an electric.
PS, wow think of those large wind generator blades covered in ice in gale force winds and 20ft waves.
here in michigan it's a law.
Helmets are mandatory in Florida, where I used to live, too. But I live in Minnesota now and they are not required here.
Plus comfort level is higher in a helmet. A full face helmet with visor closed at 70mph is way WAY better than no helmet.
I prefer wind in my hair and as for safety I'd rather die than be saved, if I were saved, by a helmet. Riding my bike I already survived a head injury, specifically a Traumatic Brain Injury or TBI. I was not wearing a helmet however it not have done me any good if I had. My head was not hit, instead my injury was caused by the sudden shaking of my brain, much as Shaken Baby Syndrome injures or kills infants. And you could say I almost did die, while in a coma the docs told my family bit would be a miracle if I lived. Since then the docs and therapists I've seen also said it was. However I totally disagree, I wish I had died even today almost 13 years later.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The Volt is a joke. Pure-electric cars are the way to go if you want to cure our oil addiction. It's not a proof of concept; they've been on the road for years with a 250-mile+ range that's increasing every year.
When the Volt hit's the streets in 2010, it's likely to be a $40k auto. Tesla's moderately priced sedan will be about $50k.
Hrm... buy a $40k car from a known-asshole-based company -or- give the geeks a chance and buy a car that not only kicks Volt's ass in performance but is 100% electric... no-brainier. Even if Tesla turned out to be just like GM in their business practices their car still wins. GM can rot.
This isn't the first plug-in the General has produced
The EV1 failed because GM wanted it to fail. First off it was rented and not sold. Next it was only rented in California and parts of AZ to the general public. They were also offered to some GM and GM dealer employees in Atlanta, GA. After the trial some people who had rented EV1s asked GM to be allowed to buy them but GM refused.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I am so getting one of these cars when i can. I can also see not touching the gasoline engine part of the car for long periods, just using the battery pack for the majority of my driving. I'd recommend anyone else out there doing that to maybe throw some fuel stabilizer in the tank of gas so it doesn't lose any octane over a few months.... Just sayin'.
WÌÌfÍ--ÍSÌÒÍ...Í...ÌHÌÍfÍÍÍ--ÍÍÍ
For now the cost of running your car off the grid is cheap, but wait til everyone else is doing it and the price will sky rocket. When the price of coal went up because the EPA banned high sulfur coal many factories and power plants switched to natural gas because it was cheaper. And now we all pay more to heat our homes in winter because the demand for natural gas has gone up. But really, what we need are cars that can be driven manually with gas power on local roads, and on the freeway a lane where they are operated like a personal rapid transit system using electricity.
There's something wrong with a calculation method that yields a claim of "230 miles per gallon" for a vehicle that cannot drive 230 miles on one gallon of gasoline.
In general I agree with you, but this is pure bullshit. Obama did not outlaw trucks.
or artificially increase gas prices
Gas prices won't need to be artificially increased either. There's only so much petroleum and with Chinese and Indians driving up demand prices will naturally rise. Sure there are oil wells where it is not economically feasible to pump oil and with higher prices they will become feasible but even so oil will run out.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Eventually it'll become simply a niche product for things that simply can't run practically on electricity (such as airplanes, where without an ungodly wingspan and crippled speed a batter just can't hold enough energy to make up for it's weight).
Aircraft manufacturers and airliners both are testing using biofuels. Virgin Atlantic flew a Boeing 747 from London to Amsterdam with BioJet-A fuel. In another test a biofuel was used in another Boeing that flew across the Pacific. Of course I don't think it's realistic to believe biofuels will fuel most air travel.
Electric powered planes are also being developed. "Electric Aircraft Technology Effort Gets Boost at Oshkosh". Even the Chinese are developing them.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
And also don't forget that China and India are getting into the car phase driving demand even higher. I don't think they will be able to afford Volts any time soon.
That's alright Indian car manufacturer Tata already has EVs.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Michigan thumb weather isn't significantly different from Ohio weather, rumor has it that some guy named T Boone Pickens ordered 667 windmills and doesn't have anyplace to put them up and they are too big to fit in is garage. Maybe Ohio could cut a deal with him and even manage to put Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station out of it's misery before they manage to have 3 of the top five most dangerous nuclear incidents in the United States since 1979.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
You also got to consider the likelihood that as full or majority electric power cars start to become popular, you're going to see governments at the state, local and federal level attempting to make up for lost tax revenues.
What conservatives, I, and others of different political positions have proposed is a tax on mileage. The way it would work, at least in my proposal, would be that when people renew their license plate tags their odometer would be read then they'd be charged according to how many miles were driven since the last odometer reading. If owners were concerned about one yearly bill they didn't know how big it's be then monthly or quarterly they could file the mileage for that month or quarter.
To take it a step further and make it a net zero tax, the average amount taxpayers would see their fuel cost rise would be subtracted from their income tax. If the average driver saw their fuel costs rise $100 a month then their income tax and holdings would drop $100 a month. This could also be applied to electricity sourced from carbon producing sources.
Suffice it to say, driving one of these, especially on a short commute, will really save money, as well as the environment, but don't count on power being (as) cheap for long if we see a lot of these types of cars take to the streets.
As outlined above alternative energy sources will become competitive with coal, petroleum, and other conventional energy sources.
Should there be a Law?
They should specify Mpg given two figures:
(1) Average Mpg + Kwh (loss of charge) given a very long trip, e.g. 48 hours of travel around the city since the last plugin. Given that the vehicle started with a full charge, and will not be allowed to be plugged at any later time during the trip.
and
(2) Average Mpg + Kwh usage for a short trip, say 6 hours.
The problem is the one synthesized figure doesn't give everything you need to know to understand the efficiency
Some people will be primarily interested in the amount of GAS the vehicle consumes.
Others will be interested in the cost and the total overall environmental footprint. Considering this is not a solar powered car; the electricity it utilizes costs something.
It could use less gas but still cost more, if it has large batteries that need to be charged, and the Kwh consumption of a short trip is high enough. Esp. consider also the weight of the added batteries.
Also, there is this matter of, what happens to the Mpg, when the batteries run out of juice, and the trip has only just begun?
Depending on the type of battery, capacity may be lost over time also, and the vehicle may soon drop close to 50 mpg, within 5 or 6 years of purchase
Chevy Volt RAPED At 230 mpg In the City!
Well, I mentioned several issues
Maybe in other posts but not in the postI replied to.
Till the wind farm is up and providing economical electricity, that snub stands.
Wind turbines should be able to be erected faster that EVs are manufactured. Erect twenty 5 megawatt wind turbines a month and you add more than 1 gigawatts of capacity a year. The hardest part isn't erecting the wind turbines, it's adding capability to the grid. However because failures in the grid cost the US $80 to $188 billion a year. So the grid needs to be upgraded, and made smart, anyways.
lets start small and doable
I agree, however solar and wind is doable and can start slowly. For instance as I say above erect 20 wind turbines a month.
As it stands today, I can purchase several cheap (junk) trimmers for the price of a feeble battery string trimmer.
I bought a Craftsman plug in electric trimmer from Sears last year for about $50. I would have preferred one with a battery pack but they cost more as you say. What I find ironic was that I also bought a battery powered drill for $50 as well.
A ICE trimmer cost less than the replacement battery of an electric.
Batteries for the drill cost about $10.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Your post made a lot of sense to me, until I suddenly remembered that the second word was Chevrolet's. :)
The enemies of Democracy are
rumor has it that some guy named T Boone Pickens ordered 667 windmills and doesn't have anyplace to put them up
Actually Boone does have someplace to put them, a lot of them at least. When he released his plan I supported him at first. My support ended when I learned the plan was part of his plan to steal water. He wants to pump water from the Ogallala Aquifer, which runs and supplies water from South Dakota to Texas, on his west Texas ranch and build a pipeline from there to Dallas where he wants to sell it. However the Ogallala is already being pumped dry faster than it can be replenished. If Pickens has his way he'll reap tremendous rewards while farmers and cities from South Dakota to his ranch will lose the water they need.
He threatened that if he doesn't get the water he won't erect wind turbines.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
It's interesting how it almost seems like the standards were revised just for GM. Coming just on the heels of the announcement that GM's bankruptcy would allow them to shed many of their most polluted sites (it's unclear who will become responsible for cleaning them, but it seems likely to be the states) and really make money going bankrupt it seems especially sleazy. What exactly is the story?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
After we've already agreed that even the worst case (coal power) is better than ICEs
Have we? I certainly missed that meeting. According to my calculations (which were done in a professional capacity as a researcher for a firm interested in these numbers) the worst case (brown coal, lignite) was several times worse than an average petrol ICE vehicle, and many times worse than a light efficient petrol car. I left the exact numbers when I left the firm and though I might be able to get the numbers from them, I never post in the same slashdot thread twice.
Suffice it to say that while my lack of hard data may fail to convince everyone of my results, I am merely contesting the claim that we all agree.
We dont all agree, I strongly disagree.
PS I am assuming by 'worse' you are referring to emissions not price, as coal is one of the best cases for price and is slightly better than an ICE, although not as much as you might think.
Small city commute is for me up to 10 miles (twice , so up to 20 miles a day). I keep hearing car , car , car , mpg, mpg , mpg, and I SMILE. With such a small commute you can use a *bicycle* and have a bajillo miles per gallon, and do sport, save on car cost (I have a 11 miles commute). Sure you have to be a bit more warry on car, but if you live in a city with bike lane (I do) this can be very safe. Lately I even added a trailer on it so that I can buy up to 80 kg of stuff, so I need only a car ONLY in case of 1) medical emergency 2) non city commute. 230 MPG ? HA !
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
know that other US cities have dire problems with their power grids now. I've heard of rolling brownouts in Cali. Can't imagine the extra load of thousands of charging EVs would do much to help the situation.
While charging may happen during peak demand, in CA that is when it's nice a sunny and when solar energy is abundant. And one of the reasons for the rolling blackouts in CA several years ago was because of bad regulations. The so called deregulation was not that at all, instead regulations were changed. Whereas before it happened afterwards a company could not both generate electricity and distribute it. ownership of generation and distribution were separated. Next, while distributors had a cap on how much they could charge electrical consumers, generators had no such cap on what they could charge distributors. If the price distributors had to pay was higher than they could charge their clients, they either ate the cost or they stopped distributing electricity. Meanwhile electrical generators were able to sell electricity to out of state distributors who were not capped on how much they could charge. During the blackouts a wind farm capable of generating 240 gigawatts of power sat idle. Why? Because the distribution powerlines were not there. Why would a business build powerlines if it could not sell electricity for more than what the generator sold it for?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Let's get rid of this stupid mi/gal, and trying to convert Watts from the power line into amount of gasoline, and so on.
It's all a load of crap. For a single in town use metric, stick with the average efficiency of the engine and motor (battery only) using the EPA's standards. For high way use, a single metric is only feasible for engines run primarily on fuels. A hybrid or a vehicle that utilizes a fuel based generator actually needs an efficiency vs. distance graph for a true representation. Single metrics make little sense for highway miles with a hybrid until the distance is far beyond the battery only range. Then a worst case scenario can be used, the efficiency without the battery only range since an affine linear relationship is established if the battery only range is left in the calculation. I personally prefer a purchase calculation for highway miles to _only_ be based the worst case. I'll use the more accurate calculation for mid range trips during its use if I buy the product.
Those blackouts are mostly due to NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) attitudes for power plants and transmission lines
No, those rolling CA blackouts was because of bad regulations. CA separated ownership of electrical generation from ownership of distribution. At the same tyme the state also capped the charges distributors could charge to electrical consumers, but the generators were not capped. Wholesale electricity costs increased more than 500% but prices were capped for instate customers. A wind farm capable of generating 240 megawatts of electricity sat idle, because it was not profitable to build the transition capabilities.
Quite simply CA's rolling blackouts was not caused by NIMBYs.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Do you know what caused the rolling blackouts in California in 2001? It was not because of lack of generation or transmission capacity, it was all because prices for instate electricity users was capped but wholesale prices increased 500%. Electrical generators were able to sell energy to out of state buyers for more than could be charged to instate buyers.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
By that you mean the California voters who voted to deregulate to the system we got?
Except it wasn't deregulated, regulations were shifted. Such as the separation of generation and transmission, then the prices distributors could charge users was capped but generators were allowed to sell electricity for whatever price they could get. Wholesale energy prices in CA increased 500%. It simply was not profitable to sell electricity in CA.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
somehow, I say a few billion of this bailout money should be going to nuclear fusion research.
The $787 Billion stimulus plan approved in February had $45.1 Billion allocated for renewable energy incentives. Another $3 Billion was for the Department of Energy and $.3 Billion for the Department of Defense for R&D. Smart Grid got $11 Billion, energy efficiency and renewable energy grants got $16.8 Billion, and other things got $8.4 Billion. Altogether energy got almost $100 Billion.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
We don't actually measure fuel consumption in km/l in Europe. Writing 98 km/l is even less informative then 230 mpg :). But thanks for the effort anyway.
I really don't think this is the end of the world. And the best part- for us nuclear fans- is that a big electricity crunch would be just the stimulus needed to build new plants. I know it takes a while to get them online but the transition to electric vehicles won't happen overnight, either.
Ah but nuclear power plants can't be built as fast as wind turbines can. Doing a quite search the Salem Nuclear Power Plant was the largest electrical generation nuclear powerplant. It has 2 reactors, one capable of generating 1,174 MW and the other 1,130 MW for a total of 2,304 MW. However if you erect 20 5 megawatt wind turbines a month in 2 years you'll add 2,400 MW of capacity. Could a nuclear powerplant be built and brought online in 2 years?
Backed by French government loans Areva, also owned by the French government, started building the Olkiluoto Nuclear Power Plant in Finland in 2005. Originally it was scheduled to be built in 2009 as "the world's largest and safest nuclear plant". Today, it's not scheduled to be finished until 2012 at the earliest, and it's 2 to 3 billion dollars over budget. Fact is is cost overruns for nuclear powerplants considerably add to their costs. As the freemarket institute CATO reprint of a "Forbes" magazine article says, the nuclear power industry is "Hooked on Subsidies". Notice where it says "How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don't. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I couldn't for the life of me think of why mileage-based tax was better than the tax-per-gallon that we currently use.
Actually if you think about it it should make sense. A car that gets 40 MPG can put just as much wear and tear on the roads as a car that only gets 20 MGP. The 40 MPG vehicle can drive twice as far for the same cost as the 20 MPG vehicle putting twice as much wear and tear on the roads. So it's freeloading. The same can be applied to vehicles using biofuels.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I suspect what will happen long term is that indeed, electricity for your car will be quite a bit more expensive than electricity for your home as a result of taxation. What will probably end up happening is, in the future, electric cars will have special plugs, that fit only in special outlets which are metered separately. There may be some sort of electronic connection between the car and the outlet as well, with secure/encrypted communication to prevent tampering or plug converters.
I don't see how the government, in the US, can do that If the government tried to require special plugs there's no way it could enforce it, too many people would have the skills to replace plugs.
The other option, considerably less palatable due to privacy implications is to charge at license plate renewal time a tax based on miles driven in the state by using a state mandated GPS unit installed in the car.
I have proposed a mileage charge to be paid when license plates are renewed. However it does not require any sort of GPS or tracking. All it requires is two odometer readings. When a vehicle gets a license plate the odometer is read, then when the tags are renewed it's read again. I am one of those who prize my privacy, and have repeatedly stated I do not trust government and that I fear it more than any terrorist, yet I don't have a problem with it knowing how many miles my car was driven. Heck, the odometer reading is already required when I renew my tags.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Rather than borrow money from other countries to pay for your government you should pay for it, which means higher taxes.
Bullshit! Government needs to stop spending so much. If the US government stayed within it's constitutional limits federal income taxes could be abolished and replaced with user fees, pollution tax, and maybe a low sales tax.
Having visited America the roads are horrible
That's because one of those user fees, in this case fuel tax, isn't high enough to cover the cost of roads. Actually instead of a fuel tax, to pay for roads, there should be a mileage fee. Charge by how many miles are driven.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
This a very extraordinary car. It's mpg rating can grow even without any cent of further investment into efficiency increasing r&d. Just come out with a new grid power to mpg conversion formula, and you're done. So, if they say the battery does 40 mpg, and turning the gas engine on to charge the batteries gives 50 mpg, to achieve 230 mpg you'll need how many gallons in the tank ? And an additional important question: 230 mpg means nothing if the batteries and the gas combined can't take you 230 miles away before running out of both current and gas, so how far can the Volt take you in reality ?
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Goats or GTO?
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Why can't both hybrid and clean diesel owns accept the fact that they're both good solutions...?
Why not use both? I'd like a hybrid that uses a diesel engine that uses biodiesel.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
My gosh, my Saturn has about 46,000 miles on it so it much of been brutalized. Except I only put about 5,000 miles a year on it whereas most people put more miles on their cars. When I renew my car insurance and am asked how many miles I drive a year, they'll put down 12,000 because that's the lowest their forms go.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Do you really think gas is only going to cost $5 in, forget 10, 5 years? Hell, last summer it got up to $4.50 a gallon. I would not be surprised if gas reached $10 a gallon in 5 years. That 12,000 miles of yours would then cost $4000.
Of course if you buy the cheaper Camry then invest the money you otherwise would have spent on the Volt in 5 or 10 years you may be able to pay cash for your own new Volt. Especially if you invest in GM and it's suppliers.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
at some point the battery is going to need replacement when it's out of warranty.
The Toyota Prius was introduced into the US in 2001. I wonder how many of them have had the batteries replaced. Here's an article about an Aussie taxicab company owner who puts more than 125,00 miles on his Priuses a year and hasn't had problems, after more than 200,000 miles 2 batteries did need to be replaced. Heck I had to replace the battery in my car, which is not a hybrid, after about 45,000 miles. If a Prius used as a taxi doesn't have problems I doubt many others will have problems with them.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Just because a hybrid vehicle is out there on the road, doesn't mean that that battery pack has the bulk of its storage capacity intact.
What would be an acceptable batter life for you? Does 125,000 miles a year meet you standards? Here's a taxi cab company that gets that. They replaced the batteries in two taxis, one after it had more than 200,000 miles and the other after it had more than 340,000 miles.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
"Then there are wipers, lights, window defrosters, and heated seats that drivers expect in a car of that price range."
Lights.
LED:10-30W
Defrosters and heated seats???? Look, if you want to waste energy warming your lardass on your carseat, why the FUCK are you complaining that this will shorten the range on batteries???
Your anus isn't going to freeze shut just because you expect a butcrack warmer for this price.
Just like they do with lead-acid batteries.
Now add in the FACT that your exhaust pipe wears out, the cat converter needs replacing and none of these are bought off you, WHAT'S THE FREAKING PROBLEM???
simple math dictates that as demand grows so will the costs.
Simple economics dictates that as energy costs grow more people will generate their own. As utility companies raise their rates more and more people will install geothermal, solar, wind turbines, and or other alternative energy sources. Then with the economy of scale manufacturing costs will drop to an equilibrium.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
New York State:
408.7 per square mile
France:
297 per square mile
in the mode you described battery will last for 2 years max.
According to one source the batteries "will be guaranteed for 10 years/150,000 miles." Using those numbers that would be 15,000 miles per year. Yet an Aussie taxi cab company puts on 125,000 miles a year on it's Toyota Priuses.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
My question is, where the hell has this been for the last 10 years?!?!?
So we (the taxpayers) bail out GM, then they get serious about "going green"?
It's all about greed and only when backed up against a wall does corporate America even attempt to do the right thing.
I think this is another marketing ploy for a car that will end up costing more than we think, again "the devil is in the details" and much like the healthcare debate the details seems to be lacking or sparse at times....
Reduce everything to the efficiency of the vehicle and the target distance. That is the most _logical_. That way we are comparing apples to apples, not mi/gal to Watts. Any conversion between the two has to make a terrible assumption. From an engineering perspective, it doesn't matter what you put in, it's how much you get out! The consumer can then make a decision based on the efficiency patterns based on how they drive, what they drive in, and energy/fuel costs.
In town efficiency can simply be the average efficiency using some of the EPA standards to account for acceleration, deacceleration, and stopping. Fuel based engines use the same old standard. Electrics use their battery only motor drive unless the amount of power available from the battery is extremely small.
Again, use the same old EPA standards for fuel based engines for highway efficiency. For electrics, I'm most concerned about the efficiency when the generator/engine is being used since it is almost guaranteed to be the worst efficiency. I would want to have the affine linear equation of battery only operation plus the generation in relation to distance. It would be something like this
Total Efficiency = (Battery Energy Out + Engine Energy Out(distance)) / (Battery Energy In + Engine Energy In(distance))
Where the Battery Energy Out is the output running the motor on battery only with it drained and Battery Energy In is the energy capacity of the battery, the Engine Energy Out is the output energy of the engine as a function of distance, and the Engine Energy In is the input energy of the fuel as a function of distance. I'm not guaranteeing that the Engine Energies are linear with distance and this places a weight on the energy used by the engine. It's an ugly equation, but I've had to optimize worse. Note that this is only valid _after_ the vehicle passes the battery only operation and that the distance is how far it travels _after_ batter only operation has halted.
I'm sorry, but is no one ready to call "bullshit" on the claims of going 40 miles on 8 kilowatt hours of electricity from the utility?
8 kilowatts is about 27300 btu, or the same energy contained in a LITER of gasoline.
Also, every time there is a peak demand for heating or cooling, the electric utilities are crying to us to conserve so that things don't start blowing up.
Many utilities are banning tankless electric water heaters simply because the infrastructure cannot handle the load. A tankless water heater is a load similar to what an electric car would place on a circuit (realistically). If these got popular (and they will because there is a sucker born every minute), we'll have a power generation crisis on our hands real quick.
Spare us the bullshit. Make my high mileage car a TDI, please. And keep your hippie electric car out of the left lane and out of its way!
Out of order? Fuck! Even in the future nothing works! - Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis) "Spaceballs"
230? I hope this car will get me to the dentist! LOL!
Are you seriously blaming the utility officials for the outright fraud perpetrated on California by:
Utility companies were in a bind... they couldn't add more power generation, but had to buy from out of state (enter: profiteering by Enron & buddies, while FERC sat by and watched the rape).
You might want to read up a bit about the Cali power crisis before you spout off on it.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Sometimes you have to first create the demand, and then the supply will follow. In the case of electric vehicles, at first the energy to recharge them will be generated by non-green methods. But when the number of electric vehicles on our roads crosses a certain threshold, we'll start seeing off-the-grid recharging stations that use green power. This will also help localize energy distribution, reducing demand on the grid. Win-win-win.
"Crude and slow, clansman. Your attack was no better than that of a clumsy child."
needed
And replacing batteries every 2 years, you did say "battery will last for 2 years max", if not sooner will be expensive for GM. Some Slashdotters above said the Volt was going to cost $35,000, however here's a "Forbes news item that says it will cost $40,000. Now I don't know how much the batteries cost but if they cost $2000 replacing them every 2 years, if not sooner, will cost more than $10,000 over 10 years. And that's just counting the cost of the battery not labor or other expenses. Suddenly that $40,000 is now less than $30,000. That is unless the costs of the batteries fall.
And your Prius thing is just one of the ignorant arguments that need to die. Toyota uses different chemistry there (NiMH to be exact).
Okay, so I may of been wrong in using the batteries Toyota uses as an example of how how they will last. I was ignorant, didn't know, they used different battery technologies.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Yeppie, lets all pile on...
If Wind turbines are so economically viable, why are they not in place already? Can I make loads of money with them? Without government subsidies thank you.
Admittedly, the great east coast blackout originated here in Ohio. But, up at the lake there is a lot of electric distribution infrastructure in place as a lot of electric generation takes place there(Nuclear & Coal). This is a good thing for those wanting to place wind turbines.
I picked the electric weed wacker on purpose. I figured if the EV fan boys cannot conquer such a simple device, they certainly should stay away from cars.
I needed one so off I went on my multi-month quest.
I am not expecting miracles here. I understood that the electric version of the weed eater would not have the same power, but the Li-Ion replacement battery costing $100 was the last straw. Li-Ion battery's have a very finite life of around 3 years (Give or take in the chemistry)
Hey, progress may be being made, but this field is far from ripe.
Stating that battery's for a drill costs $10 was just intellectually dishonest.
too short of a range, too long of a commute, no (convenient) charging stations in between.
When cars with internal combustion engines, ICE, first came out they had the same problems. Look now, that's no longer true. What I find ironic is that people like you bring up these valid issues but before ICE came out cars were electric.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If Wind turbines are so economically viable, why are they not in place already? Can I make loads of money with them? Without government subsidies thank you.
Can you make loads of money from coal or nuclear power without subsidies? Nope. They both get subsidies, and they pass on external costs to others.
That's an excellent argument for rebuilding and making the grid smart, which will be needed for alternative as well as conventional energy sources. That's part of Obama's plan to create or save 2 million jobs, rebuilding the grid. I however disagree, in the short term it will not do this. It would long term but not short term.
Stating that battery's for a drill costs $10 was just intellectually dishonest.
No it is not. I walked into Sears with $10 and walked out without it but with a battery, and a receipt for it. No, that's not true. I walked in with $20 which I used to pay for a pack with two batteries and a charger.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
If the car was ever made by Apple the battery would be integrated and after a year or two you'd have to send the car in to have the battery replaced and you'd have to rent a car from them (mandatory by contract) for 2 weeks while you wait for your car to get back with the new battery. The car would also only run on proprietary roads with proprietary electricity :-p
FUD, FUD, and more FUD. I am typing this on a MacBook Pro I've owned for 2 years. About every other week I swap the battery in it with another battery I got at the same tyme. In those 2 years I've only had to take it in for repair once, after I had it 16 months. A genus ran some tests then said the graphics had to be replaced. He checked then said he'd have to order the part but said I could take it home and he'd call me when it came in, so I did.
While in Apple stores I've seen others bring in iPods, iPhones, and other stuff and watched as a genus replaced the battery after testing. I even saw a genus setup an HP monitor, when Apple sells their own, for use with a Mac for someone.
I am also getting ready to install Ubuntu Studio on my Mac. Right now I've typing this in a Firefox tab and the only Apple software on it came installed on it. Most of the rest of my software is FOSS.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Obama is not saving anything but his @$$ but that is another discussion.
Make money generating electricity without government involvement burning coal, you bet, no problem.
If the drill answer is not intellectually dishonest, go trim a lawn with your drill, maybe even try driving it down the road.
Yeah I read it wrong the first time as well. It actually shows growth for the last three years. Admittedly Arctic ice is still a bit below the mean, but looks to jump over it very soon. You are right about the data looking to be from August, I am still checking. I see the statistics on your web site removed the Maurader Solar Minimum / Little ice age; most CO2 proponents do. If we do not get some cycle 24 sunspots soon, we might be hoping for some global warming. I thought we where on the way but a cycle 23 spot showed up the the sun went quiet now for over a month; not good.
More importantly, it shows a trend where recent years have a lower minimum than later years. Remember not to confuse weather with climate like Fieldings is. The long-term trend simply has irrelevant noise due to ENSO events, etc imposed on top of it. As I said before, the real problem scientists face is here
You might be referring to this paragraph: Abrupt climate change is a long-term warming trend imposed on top of natural variations which tend to swing wildly in both directions. If you mean that the temperatures remain inexplicably high after subtracting all those natural variations, you're almost right.
But that reference removed the ENSO events, and figure 2 shows a warming trend even before this subtraction.
Also, contrary to popular belief, climatologists aren't denying the fact that natural variations such as changes in the Sun's brightness affect the climate. Climatologists aren't saying that our emissions are completely responsible for everything that's happening to the climate. It's just that once we account for all known natural variations, an artificial signal remains which is best explained by accounting for greenhouse gas emissions.
No, solar variability is smaller than greenhouse effects.
Obama is not saving anything but his @$$ but that is another discussion.
I never said otherwise. Or are you attributing to me things I didn't say?
Make money generating electricity without government involvement burning coal, you bet, no problem.
Coal does get subsidies. Here's a speech by Rep Edward Markey, "My Climate Bill 'Has Huge Subsidies For Clean Coal! Huge!'" detailing some of the subsidies, not just coal but other energy courses get. And "Chevron agrees to lobby with Sierra Club to end coal subsidies" The freemarket CATO Institute has more: The USDA provides low interest loans for coal fired power plants. Coal also gets subsidies for coal-to-liquids, synthetic fuels. The EIA [pdf] reports that in 1999 energy got subsides of $4 Billion. Of that oil got $312 Million, coal $489 Million, and natural gas $1.2 Billion. And all forms of alternative energy got $1.1 Billion.
If the drill answer is not intellectually dishonest, go trim a lawn with your drill, maybe even try driving it down the road.
Now I believe you are trolling and will not be responding anymore.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
The CIA doesn't want fusion, the world economy would crash if there were free energy. They'll even level several Chicago city blocks in a hydrogen explosion and kidnap or kill scientists to prevent it from getting out.
I was thinking more along the lines of the electro-magnetic force being freakin strong.
Perhaps my reference didn't work well. I was jokingly referring to the movie "Chain Reaction".
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
It's been how long since we've built a new nuclear plant in the US? Coal is being attacked at every turn, solar and wind still being too expensive and too inefficient to meet current demands.
Remove subsides for coal and nuclear power and solar and wind are more competitive. If not for government businesses would not build nuclear power plants, the nuclear power industry is "Hooked on Subsidies". "Chevron agrees to lobby with Sierra Club to end coal subsidies".
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Show me safe nuclear power.
How about any other mass produced energy source (not solar).
Ah, disallow an energy source that can provide 69% of the US's electrical needs and 35% of it's total energy by 2050. Okay, let's use wind, which could supply 20% of the US's electricity by 2030.
Stack the deck against alternatives when nuclear power would not survive without subsidies.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Distributed power generation anyone?
You're talking to the wrong crowd. All they care about are the massive nuclear power plants that are Hooked on Subsidies.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
What about us poor shmucks who live in the Seattle area?
I know you say wind, but a wind farm near Goldendale, in Klickitat County transmits electricity to almost 10,000 customers in central California. Such waste, that energy can be used in Washington. Then there are probably NIMBYs in Seattle like the ones in Cape Cod, like Ted Kennedy, who oppose wind farms in Puget Sound. Right across the state line Oregon is good for solar power.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Alternative energy systems and nuclear plants require longer build times
Nuclear yes, but wind shouldn't take that long to build out. Erect 20 5 megawatt wind turbines a month and you'll add more than 1 gigawatt of generation capacity a year.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You haven't taken into account GM's secret plan: recall all of the Volts after a year or two, crush them into cubes, and go back to selling 11MPG SUVs.
I know you're joking but that's basically what GM did with the EV1.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Troll?!?!! Pot, Kettle, Black.
You are the person who presented the $10 drill battery statement, for whatever reason.
Clean Coal Subsidies, really? My whole point is that CO2 is not the problem. Other than the scrubbing that is going on now, we are done. Keep the money, I'll make my own.
You know, I went hunting for CO2 emissions information and came across a Green Peace item stating "deforestation, which is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than all the worldâ(TM)s cars, trucks, planes and boats combined"
We are done here.
"if you assume $4 per gallon, then you'd need to drive around 177,000 miles to break even. "