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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.
Hardly vaporware. Its in production.
"Give someone a program, frustrate them for a day... Teach someone to program, frustrate them for a lifetime."
Look at the testing yourself and see the potential loopholes. There's no reason to guess here. The information is available.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
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.
Nissan said last week that its all-electric vehicle, the Leaf, which comes out in late 2010, would get 367 m.p.g., using the same E.P.A. standards. so don't worry, the volt is already 137 mpg behind the competition
Everybody seems to think I'm lazy I don't mind, I think they're crazy
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)?
No, you're supposed to read the summary at the very least and understand that it's talking about an EPA-established conversion from electricity usage to equivalent gasoline consumption for EVs. Regardless of the particulars of the method, it's no surprise that this number would be much higher for something running purely off an electric motor vs. the Prius which is using its ICE most of the time even for short trips.
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.
No, Smartiac, they are counting the electricity you use. The value is only for short trips that solely use electricity. It isn't infinity because they are in fact trying to account for that electricity, but put it in terms of the standard MPG. That conversion metric has a whole host of problems with it, but it isn't ludicrous on its face. EVs are extremely efficient, and power plant electricity generation is extremely efficient compared to the ICEs in automobiles. So whatever reasonable conversion you come up with, that's probably in the ballpark.
The MPG will be much lower for longer trips because there they actually have to burn actual gas. But even that is 50mpg (again using the EPA guidelines which aren't perfect for normal cars either).
The enemies of Democracy are
An electric vehicle gets miles per kWh. They should simply list both numbers: miles per gallon for the gasoline engine and miles per kWh for the electric engine. (A gallon of diesel is roughly equivalent to 40kWh, so these numbers are comparable.)
From The Atlantic: GM's Volt Offers Amazing Mileage, But At What Cost?
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Factor in the cost of gas in 5 years, I'd say 20-25k$ in the long run
At $3/gallon that's $1650/year. Assuming the car lasts 10 years I'll save $16K just on not paying for commute fuel.
Offsetting the $35,000 you paid for the car + interest as I am sure you don't have $35,000 in cash laying around, and insurance you paid on it at the tune to $15,000 for full coverage on it for those years.
Sounds like a major loss to buy the thing.
Whereas... 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. If you live in a climate that does not have snow you can ride it year round easily (yes if you have skill and the right gear you can ride to work in the rain wearing a suit and arrive dry.) It's still a loss when you calculate it the same way, but it's far FAR lower loss.
Hybrids are a joke. they are a loss no matter how you look at them.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Factor in battery replacements. Unless GM has also made a lifespan breakthrough in Li-Ion battery technology, so that you can use the same battery pack for 10 years of harsh all-conditions charging and discharging.
Actually, you don't have to factor in battery replacements because GM is supplying the Volt with a 10 year 150,000 mile warranty on the Li batteries.
> 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...
Source please? Our neighbors purchased the first Prius in our metro area, and Toyota gave them a thank-you gift of a lifetime warranty so they have no incentive to under-report problems. Their Prius is around 120k and has had zero major maintenance required. Including batteries. That's pretty typical of Prius experience I have read about.
sPh
This isn't the first plug-in the General has produced, remember the EV-1? I'm sure there's lots of lessons they learned from that endeavor that have been applied to the Volt. As far as plug-ins go, GM is the first and only only large automaker I know of that has produced one in the past (large = excludes tesla's 1,000 or so cars they want to produce per year).
And if I had some moderator points you'd be getting marked as -1 Troll for saying
assuming that a GM car will last for 10 years
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.
It can go 40 miles before a charge. This is great. Seriously. Fantastic.
If you want to sell me a car that uses mostly electricity, BUT has the capability to burn gasoline when I want to exceed my normal commute, great! Tell me that's what the car does. It's a great idea, because I can own one car that has zero tailpipe emissions all week, but can carry me somewhere further than 40 miles on the weekend without me sweating about battery charge levels. Brilliant!
But I object to the bullshit that this is somehow the equivalent of getting 200+ miles on a gallon of fuel. It. does. not. It gets 50 miles on a gallon of fuel, plus they are claiming that (after a bunch of recharges) it can get an additional 180 miles on electricity to get up to 230 miles. They are then claiming that this electricity costs so incredibly little that the car gets an "equivalent price of fuel" matching 230 miles per gallon of fuel.
The algorithm used to come up with this mileage are severely squirrely, and the mileage is (how shall I put this kindly), "excessively optimistic".
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Gray Davis did.
The example that illustrates the point. As the wiki points out, Davis would have been happy to stop the brownouts, only the only clear way he could have done that is by removing price caps on long-term contracts that had been established through California's energy market de-regulation (CA de-regulated its power grid, but established caps as some sort of hedge against.. er... power generation companies and market makers abusing their position by creating artificial scarcity).
It's sort of a bad example, because none of the brownouts at that time were caused by a lack of generator capacity; it was all caused by Enron and Reliant calling up their plants and telling them to call in sick for the day, causing spot prices for power to rise on account of lower supply, and calling their other plants and telling them to ship their capacity to Nevada, so they could (1) arbitrage cheap Nevada power into expensive California power and (2) sell transmission line capacity to themselves, causing the price of transmission capacity to go up and making the cost of piping the California poer to Nevada and back even more profitable.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
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.
Electricity costs me $0.19 per KWH and it takes 10KWH to fully charge Volt's batteries, for a total of $1.90
Gas around here is about $2.50/gallon, so a full charge is equivalent to 0.76 gallons of regular. Which means 52.6 mpg at my current gas and electricity costs. After the charge is exhausted, the car is rated for 50 mpg.
However, I live NJ, so our gas is cheap and electricity expensive. In other places the math might be drastically different.
If con is the opposite of pro, is Congress the opposite of progress?
That is NOT the only real difference. The biggest difference here is that there is NO variable timed engine. No cam lobes. No transmission. Just a gas powered electric generator. There is NO hybrid mode. This vehicle operators only on power from the batteries. When you take it over a certain speed, the generator kicks on to keep the batteries juiced. This decouples the generator from the power source. Also, it's not a little car. It's a 4 door sedan that gets 50 mpg on the highway.
But, IF this vehicle ever became popular we will have another crisis on our hands. The electrical grid probably can't handle the load, even in off peak hours, let alone in high-demand hours.
That is blatantly false. Utility officials have already stated that even during peak hours they have the capacity to cope with even several years worth of increases in the number of electric cars. During off-peak hours, the issue isn't even there.
http://www.chaotickingdoms.com
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_
Factor in battery replacements. Unless GM has also made a lifespan breakthrough in Li-Ion battery technology, so that you can use the same battery pack for 10 years of harsh all-conditions charging and discharging.
Actually, you don't have to factor in battery replacements because GM is supplying the Volt with a 10 year 150,000 mile warranty on the Li batteries.
Doesn't this just shift the burden of pollution and disposal to a different party? The net effect is unchanged. Li-Ion batteries use a lot things that aren't good for the environment and a lot of energy to do so. Someone else is using more energy so you can use less. Net of zero.
Give me a TDI motor any day over this hybrid stuff.
Bearded Dragon
Electricity prices are already going to "skyrocket" if cap and trade goes through. Obama "guaranteed" it.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
The SI unit you might be looking for is Joule. Every form of energy can be brought back to Joule - be that electrical energy or chemical (potential) energy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joule
It doesn't get 230MPG. It gets 230MPG if you start on battery, drive until the battery is dead, and then drive a little bit farther on gas. You must consider that the energy that was stored in the battery had to come from somewhere, namely the on-board gas-fired electric generator. Of course, since they don't consider gas that was burned putting that energy there for the test, they can claim these ridiculous numbers.
It's all an elaborate fraud designed to dupe people...
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.
Mid-grade fuel? You're already wasting your money. I'm not aware of a single car that benefits from mid-grade fuel.
You should use the grade recommended by your car manufacturer, which is almost universally either 87 octane or "premium" (91+). Using anything above 87 in a car that calls for 87 provides exactly zero benefit, and using anything less than what the car calls for results in reduced performance and knocking.
Second, Simple economics say, that if this car will do this, the demand for gas will be less, therefore, gas prices go down... Economics 101
You forgot the second part of Econ 101: supply. The SUPPLY of gasoline was pretty much always fixed,and it's always going down. That means that price will generally trend upwards. Now this little care might have SOME negative impact on demand for gas, but not likely enough to counteract dwindling supply, much less offset the INCREASED demand generated in the world economy by a growing population, and a higher percentage of the population starting to drive in developing nations.
All in all, gas will rise and fall a bit with the seasons as always (typically it gets more expensive in the summer and cheaper in the winter as people travel less for example), but the OVERALL trend in the price of gasoline will pretty much be going up for the forseeable future. 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). Even for those things I think we'll see a transition to pure ethanol (which isn't produceable in the quantities needed to fuel our cars, but could be viable in more limited applications like the planes and such).
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
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.
My '05 Civic hybrid can turn off the engine in these conditions:
1) Driver MUST push dash-mounted button to engage "Economy" mode. This mode is sticky between driving sessions.
2) Engine MUST be somewhat warm. My temp gauge doesn't have units, but it needs at least four bars.
3) The car has come to a halt for a couple seconds and you haven't engaged in behavior that the car thinks is stop-and-go.
When the engine is shut off, the air conditioner doesn't run, simply because the compressor is belt-driven, which requires the engine to be running. You can still run the fan and/or open the windows.
Saves a ton of gas, though.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Have you driven a Corvette lately? They are world class without a doubt.
GM already makes a plethora of small diesel powered cars, just not for the US market. European Opels/Vauxhalls aren't bad at all. As I've said before, my 7 passenger 2008 Vauxhall Zafira 1.9 CDTi would get 35-40mpg (US)when fully loaded on a road trip. That's better than most econoboxes are advertised at here. As an American, I was disgusted that I couldn't legally own that car in the US. Adding insult to injury was seeing all the GM logos on the windows.
Side note: GM has released the Opel/Vauxhall Astra in the US as the Saturn Astra. However, they made it suck by putting the worst engines and transmissions in it and giving it practically no options.
Since the US DOE says we have about 1087 Gigawatt total production capacity this suggest we will be short by 2 thirds.
BZZZT, try again! You mixed up gigawatts and gigawatt hours. That's 3,000 gigawatt *hours* per million vehicles per year. The US consumes about 4,000 terawatt hours per year.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
You're using the wrong numbers for the epa estimates, capacity != total electricity generated.
You need to use net generation per year to compare total energy consumption demands. The 1 gigawatt capacity is essentially the maximum amount of electricity that can be delivered at a given moment. Current US production is 2000gwh per year with coal alone, and totals about 4000gwh. We also import more energy than that as it is. Granted, if there were 1 million Volts on the road we would need to double our current production or buy more energy than we do, but 1 million electric vehicles is a very high number since a very large percentage of vehicles on the road are work vehicles for which electric is (currently) not suitable, before you even get to the other reasons people might not buy an EV.
Since the Volt can only run 40 miles on its battery before needing a charge, and it uses 25kwh per 100 miles, the battery capacity is apparently about 10kwh, give or take. If it takes an hour to charge (it takes much longer than that at the moment), it would require 10 gigawatts of capacity to accomodate 1 million vehicles. That's a drop in the bucket (relatively speaking).
All the same, we'll need to work out better energy production somehow, I say a few billion of this bailout money should be going to nuclear fusion research. Cheap, plentiful, clean, and about as safe as anything else we use. If you can get it to work, that is.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
1) "A lot of things that aren't good for the environment"? Name one. Here's a rough recipe for your typical LiP cell. 1) Lithium carbonate (as found in mineral water); 2) Phosphoric acid (as found in soft drinks) 3) Iron powder; 4) Sugar (regular old sucrose, burned to make the cathode's carbon binding); 5) Graphite or amorphous carbon (for the anode); 6) A porous polyethylene membrane; 6) One of several typically nontoxic electrolytes (BYD's pres likes to show off by drinking his company's electrolyte); 7) casing, wiring, etc.
Which of those do you have a problem with? The only reason you can't throw traditional (laptop-style) li-ions in the trash is because of the cobalt and the fire hazard. LiPs and manganese spinels (what almost all EV makers are using, with the notable exception of Tesla) have neither. Plus, they're all setting up systems for their packs to be recycled -- not because of either any particular value to the raw materials nor any significant environmental consequences to their disposal, but to assuage the fears of people like you.
2) "Give me a TDI motor any day": Oh please. Even the cleanest commercial diesels, like the Jetta TDI, can barely meet modern US emissions regs. Show me a single SULEV diesel. Heck, have they even managed to make a commercial LEV diesel yet? Diesels emit less CO2 than gas cars, sure. But EVs emit less CO2 *and* less of every other pollutant except PM. And, the pollution that they do emit is displaced, no longer at street level in crowded areas, but at altitude and generally in less population dense areas.
Plus, that's on our current grid. Electricity is getting cleaner (42% of new capacity added to the grid last year was wind, and most of the rest, natural gas), while oil is getting dirtier (increasing share of syncrude and high-energy sources as the easy-to-get stuff gets used up -- think Athabasca bitumen)
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
I drive a Honda Insight. It has an 'Econ A/C' mode that will disable air conditioning while at a full stop so that the engine will halt (the fans keep running, its just normal air while stopped). Releasing the brake for a second will start up the engine again, along with the A/C. There is also a Full A/C mode that prevents the engine from halting at a full stop, but keeps the A/C at full blast all the time.
And, I too experience about a 15mpg decrease when accelerating with ac. If I have to enter a freeway or expressway, I'll often disable the AC until I get up to cruising speed, then turn it back on. I wish there was a way to do that automatically..
I welcome our new 99% overlords.
Here is more background on GMs push for this kind of rating:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a2GgcMQbsIcU&refer=us
"General Motors Corp. said it reached a preliminary agreement that clears the way for U.S. regulators to certify the Chevrolet Volt, an electric vehicle that can be recharged at home or with a 1.4-liter gasoline engine, as the first 100 mile-per-gallon car."
When I read this article last year it sounded like GM was pushing forward this kind of nonsense measurement. Sound like a coup for GM.
200,000mi on my '96 saturn and it's still pushing 35mpg. Yeah good cars, too bad Saturn as it is probably won't be around. My next car is a diesel.
Om, nomnomnom...
The 2010 Prius certainly doesn't do this. Never heard of earlier Prius years doing it, but the 2010 doesn't even have a serpentine belt -- all the accessories are electrically-driven.
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?