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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.
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.
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.
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
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!"
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.
Assuming the car lasts 10 years I'll save $16K just on not paying for commute fuel.
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.
Still, my daily commute (on the same order as yours) would also be mostly on-battery. This would save a lot of gasoline.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
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. I'm not sure how they'll manage to differentiate between power for transport and power for home/business use, but if there's one thing that the government is good at it's figuring out new and inventive ways to tax people. 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.
"Give someone a program, frustrate them for a day... Teach someone to program, frustrate them for a lifetime."
And what's to say that electricity prices won't jump up dramatically with people suddenly charging their cars on the grid every day? Also, assuming that a GM car will last for 10 years, particularly a first-generation plug-in hybrid, is a pretty tall order.
Volt's battery is guaranteed to deliver 40 miles of AER _even_ after 10 years or 150000 miles.
The same thing that says that if electricity prices go up too much more putting photovoltaic cells on my roof becomes profitable.
It's not that my commute is 35 miles -- one-way. It's that four months out of the year the outside temperature averages 30ÂF during my commute. That's currently (no pun intended) the major drawback to a fully electric commute, because I'm certain that running an electric heater to keep warm will kill the car's driving range.
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
Here's a tip, genius: if your roundtrip commute is FIFTY MILES, maybe the Volt isn't for you?
Wondering how much current is required to charge though - if you charge at work, where they expect you to do no more than plug in the block heater, would it be easy to trip the breaker with several cars charging? Here's a market for a time-sliced plugin octopus.
Free gas - the economics of free imply people will use it until it's not so free. If you can always get free charging, maybe everyone will drive more and you have gridlock everywhere. On the other hand, free charging might mean mobile homes on electricity rather than little gas misers. Park your home at work and never leave! Free LAND!
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
I can charge at work. Free gas anyone?
At least until your employer starts charging you for charging, which they are certain to start doing if this vehicle comes anywhere near popular.
You are also going to see metered parking lot outlets. (These are already used in places like Fairbanks Alaska for headbolt heaters).
There is no free lunch, and there is no work place recharging stations for 99.9999% of workers. The fact that NetworkBoy found one is 1) a miracle, 2) short lived, 3) bound to be usurped by his boss.
So NetworkBoy will end up paying the full recharge bill and will have to charge at home. Still not so bad.
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. And while you wait 15 years to get another nuclear power station permitted you will be keeping the coal fired plant up all night.
Just about all coal generation plants are Clean Coal plants these days, but the definition of "clean" keeps changing. The juice has to come from somewhere, and scrubbed coal plants may be cleaner than the exhaust of millions of vehicles, but it is by no means a Free Lunch.
So advocates need to temper their glee with a little reality check until they can hang enough solar panels on their roofs to charge their cars.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
"My RT commute is ~24 miles. I can charge at work. Free gas anyone?"
i hope you're right. i suspect that your company would frown upon filling your tank. That would be an awesome benefit though. "We offer competitive salaries and free recharging of electric cars and plug-in hybrids."
More likely, there would first be an effort to prevent such charging, followed by charging stations that require payment. Followed by a spike in electricity prices.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
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.
I bought a $1500 Yamaha TW-200( http://yamaha-motor.ca/products/products.php?model=2916&class=13&group=M|&LANG=en ) few years back for going into the bush. It has since become my primary vehicle in good weather.
The bike gets 95MPG and has been around unchanged for over 20 years, so parts are abundant. I now have 2 of them just because I can, paid 900$ for the second. Scooters went up in price to the point of arrogance but small dual sport bikes have stayed reasonable. People need to stop driving what everybody else thinks is cool, and drive something that THEY genuinely think is cool.
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.
If I was a betting man, I wouldn't bet on GM being around in 10 years.
Sheldon
Its already been proven that the Government won't let anything happen to GM. Plus, GM has the best balance sheet in the industry because of it's bankruptcy. Have you seen any other automaker's debt-ratio lately?
Because most 50MPG cars that are not turbo diesels do suck! Allow TDI passenger cars in the states! Imagine having TDI combined with electric? Isn't that what trains have been doing for a long, long time?
Yes, because comparing a Volt to a motorcycle makes a ton of sense and isn't at all a strawman. Why not compare it with riding the bus, or getting on a bike? The guy has a car, he's in the market for a new car, and he's getting the Volt. Please compare within those parameters. Most compacts start in the teens these days, so the gas savings he's quoting start to make sense around a midrange, reasonably priced new car. This is not a loss, and that's one way to look at them.
By saying he should get a motorcycle you might as well say "New cars are a joke, they are a loss no matter how you look at them" because your argument could easily be used there as well. Of course, thats not at all the point of the discussion, so I don't see how your point is at all relevant.
Sorry, but buying any new car is the opposite of being green. A lot of polluting resources go into manufacturing a new car. If you want to be green, you (in order) move to within walking distance of work, take a bus/train, or get a fuel-efficient used (already manufactured) car.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Which is offset by the fact that he has enough money to afford the bike, maintain the bike, knows how to ride it, and that he doesn't have to worry about impressing you.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
...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.
The juice has to come from somewhere, and scrubbed coal plants may be cleaner than the exhaust of millions of vehicles, but it is by no means a Free Lunch.
So advocates need to temper their glee with a little reality check until they can hang enough solar panels on their roofs to charge their cars.
After we've already agreed that even the worst case (coal power) is better than ICEs and made the obvious statement that there's no such thing as a free lunch, I see absolutely no reason to temper my glee. I am very gleeful at getting something much better than what we have.
I don't get where this comes from:
1) Assume EV fan thinks they are completely perfect and do not harm the environment in any way ever.
2) Point out the obvious that this strawman is untrue.
3) Tell EV fan to stop being happy or advocating their solution.
I mean there may be some wackos out there who really believe (1), but none of them are around here, so who are you talking to?
The enemies of Democracy are
This is the kind of technology that can break the oil companies hold on the auto industry.
I hear a lot of this concept that oil companies are somehow in the puppetmasters behind the auto industry. Care to show us how this works with real world examples on how Oil Company A controls Auto Maker B?
Now that GM has fully transitioned from company-that-makes-cars-for-profit into union-employment-welfare-program, it will never go away unless the government itself does.
China won't keep subsidizing us forever.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
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.
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.
"Utility officials have already stated"? Oh yeah, that's comforting. Are these the same "utility officials" who mismanaged the power grid in CA so badly a few years back that we had rolling blackouts all summer?
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.
"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."
Why not? It's just one federal government agency working with another one!
It would be crazy to heat up a 500 lb slug of metal just to make warm air to blow into the cabin.
It might take 15 years to get a new power plant built, but it will take 15 years to convert the majority of cars to electric... assuming that everyone does it... which they will not. You're also forgetting the fact that as more cars go electric, the demand for gas will drop, causing the price to drop, which means fewer people will buy electric,.... Eventually we'll reach a happy equilibrium, but don't be too shocked if you discover that we've pretty much already reached it. It will likely be many decades before a significant majority of cars are electric. By then, you can have your nuclear power plants built. Of course, you still have to find someone who wants one in their backyard.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Still, at some point the battery is going to need replacement when it's out of warranty.
Why? No, seriously, *why*? Why is there this huge insistence that EV battery packs are somehow inherently going to die before the rest of the car? You've got good odds of your transmission dying in an ICE car before it meets the scrapheap, yet people act like EV and hybrid battery packs somehow *must* all die before the car does.
Ever heard of the Baker Electric? Jay Leno has one from the early 1900s. It still runs on its original nickel-iron batteries. Companies pick battery chemistries, sizes, arrangements, cooling, depth of discharge, etc in order to best meet the need of the product they're making it for. Laptops aren't expected to be used for much more than a few years, so battery packs for them are optimized more for capacity, reduced weight, reduced volume, etc. That's why your laptop pack dies after a few years. That's not what we're talking about here. We're talking about LiP or manganese spinel cells. These have ten times the longevity of your typical laptop or cell phone battery. GM isn't warrantying their pack for ten years for the fun of it.
Look at the Prius. For God's sake, even many first-gen Prius *taxis* are still operating on their original packs. By all standards, the pack will outlive the car for most owners. That's what you get with a sizable, low-DoD, cooled NiMH pack in typical hybrid driving conditions. We're not talking about high-DoD lead-acid or cobalt/graphite li-ion (excepting, in the latter case, Tesla -- and even then, they've done some major tricks to up lifespan). We're talking about far more stable packs than that.
Where does this myth that the batteries are fundamentally going to have to be replaced come from?
And *even if they do have to be replaced*, you're talking about battery prices *ten years from today*, not today's prices. Look at how much the Prius's NiMH pack fell in price. I'd be surprised if a Volt pack replacement ten years from now costs any more than a transmission replacement does today.
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
I'm assuming you are from Europe, in which case the geography is much different. Europe is much more densely populated than the US, with fewer roads and a lower percentage of drivers. Things like public transportation, which reduces the load on roads, are not as practical in most situations.
So what we have is more roads and more use, which means it is significantly more expensive to maintain them. Hence, crappier roads.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Yeah, seriously. I mean, what employer is going to let an employee get away with STEALING $0.5 worth of power per day? Do you think them fools?
Seriously man. Even if the price doubles an employer will never feel the hurt. You think "They will when they have 1000 employees plugging in!", but companies of that size have operating budgets in the tens to hundreds of millions per year, $500-$1000 per day for something that boosts employee moral AND lets them throw a big-ol' "We're Green, See!" on their marketing material is something they will gladly spend.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
For the 861st time this thread:
A battery is not a battery is not a battery!
Your car uses lead-acid batteries. These are a completely different chemistry than managense spinel/amorphous carbon cells (like the Volt uses), which are in turn completely different from the LiCoO2/graphite cells your laptop and cell phone uses (to poor lifespan), which are again in turn a completely different chemistry than the NiMHs that the Prius uses (to excellent lifespan).
Your argument is like claiming that because a piece of cotton cord burns at a certain rate, so should a piece of det cord. After all, they're both cord, right?
"99 dead duelists of Dios on the wall. 99 dead duelists of Dios! Take one's ring, pass it around..."
China won't keep subsidizing us forever.
I sure hope so, for their sake. They keep putting their trust in us, and our politicians f**k them and those who voted them in office. When China tells us to screw off, I would ask in turn "WTF took you so long?" I'm afraid that we are a bad asset. Yet, it's momentum that keeps nations investing in the US dollar. But for how much longer?
Life is not for the lazy.
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
No, the people who blythely say things, like, "Finally, zero-emissions transportation I can afford!" are disengenuous in the extreme. Because most of them do (sort of) know that they're burning a trainload of coal
So... they know it, you know it, I know it... Apparently everyone knows it, but it's still disengenuous to say something completely true -- the car is zero emission -- because apparently someone might not know that this doesn't mean there's no pollution involved ever even though everyone actually knows exactly what is meant.
Got it.
And of course they get to have a chuckle at the poor fools who can't personally afford to buy a new vehicle chock full of toxic batteries, but who none the less are subsidizing Mr. Cool Green's purchase by having several thousand dollars of his tax dollars pushed over onto them. So progressive to make lower middle class people who can't play the same game help buy your car for you.
And how the hell do you expect the "poor" (and lol, I know actual poor people, "lower middle class" isn't poor sorry) to ever be able to afford any of this stuff in nobody buys it, both to reduce production cost and to introduce these cars into the used market? Subsidies are there to actually make these cars (well not the Volt but e.g. Civic Hybrid) affordable to even to the lower middle class. Maybe if you hadn't bought that shiny new Explorer as soon as gas dropped below $4, you'd be able to take advantage of the incentives yourself.
People on a forum like this should be exactly the ones to universally downplay developments like this, because when they wax poetic about their coal-powered car, they're contributing to a larger conversation in the wider culture that generally picks up on the "zero emissions" part and doesn't have a clue about the reality of burning those fossile fuels on the other end of the grid.
No. Absolutely not. Because this development IS a huge improvement. That is not debatable. You can babble about toxic batteries (cluephone: The whole LiIon battery pack is vastly, vastly less toxic than the Lead-acid battery in your smog emitter) and coal power (which still ends up being vastly superior in terms of emissions) all you want, fact is this is a great development. Only the retarded -- or the retarded by choice -- would want to downplay a positive development.
But I'm glad to see that you're concerned about hypothetical retards who don't read slashdot. Even though I've seen semi-literates on non-slashdot spout the same stuff about how EVs don't do anything because it just moves the pollution to the power plant. Who are these people who don't know coal plants burn coal exactly? Because even the dumbest people I can think of know that. In fact, the only case I can think of where what you claim happens actually happened was when you pretended someone else didn't know that when they said "zero emissions" even though you knew that wasn't the case and they actually knew it. Made-up people are not a good argument.
In any case, at best that means be realistic about what you're claiming an EV accomplishes. It does not mean that this development should be downplayed. Because it's a good development. Say otherwise, and demonstrate ignorance or disingenuity.
When it comes to actually reducing emissions, cars like this are lost in the noise, compared to just using more insulation in the attics of older houses, or replacing the windows on older commercial structures. But that's SO not cool, compared to talking about a vehicle that has built-in MiFi, and so it goes un-talked-about.
It's not noise, vehicle emissions are a huge problem, but yes those are great ideas. Great ideas I've heard a thousand times, anyone who is buying a new house, getting work done on their house, building a new office building, or otherwise will hear about a lot. I've heard it on Fox News segments about saving energy -- "upgrade your insulation, buy new windows!" So yeah, surpr
The enemies of Democracy are
So what is the milage rating of the tesla Roadester or the Nissan Leaf ?
... <insert infinity symbol>
How about
G
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.
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.
So... what's left? Maybe we should start doing things that are less bad to the environment right now and progress towards that, rather than just argue how we can't live without doing bad things to the environment and just give up on it.
Interesting.
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
And what if your IC-based car has the transmission crap out at 10 years?
In theory, the Volt's electric drivetrain should be really reliable and require almost no maintance, and the Volt's gasoline engine which only has to run occasionally and at a constant speed should likewise last a long time and require little maintaince*. On the other hand, the IC-based car, all other things being equal, will require more maintance and will probably require more repairs over the same time period.
Besides, if the Volt's gasoline engine is good enough to charge the battery while on the freeway, then even if the battery is completely shot the car should still be drivable and therefore not worthless.
*Not that I would be surprised if GM managed to screw this up
By that you mean the California voters who voted to deregulate to the system we got? I really wish I could blame the officials, but we did that to ourselves... sort of like our current budget.
Lest we forget...
Electricity deregulation began in 1996, not with an initiative as you implied, but rather with The Electric Utility Industry Restructuring Act (Assembly Bill 1890). Perhaps you were confused with 2005's Proposition 80 that re-regulated the industry.
Lest we also forget that this deregulation law was primarily written and supported by Enron and the utility traders. From that perspective, it worked perfectly. (Now tell me again why deregulation is axiomatically good?)
As a California resident and a voter, I agree that the initiative process is a crock and prone to manipulation (Perhaps not quite as trivially easy as Oregon's. (I'm looking at you Bill Sizemore!)) using the extreme rhetoric ("Oh won't someone please think of the children!") and feel good measures that it's wrought the current budget crisis. Initiatives that tie the hands of the legislature when making budget cuts, a 30 year old initiative that limit property taxes at essentially 30 year old levels, and requires an asinine two-thirds majority to increase revenue in order to pass a balanced budget? And oh yeah and the minority party is so beholden to Grover Norquist's dogma to become completely irrational and oppose any long term solution to the state's sadly predictably recurring and worsening budget problems.
We are state ruled be the extremes of the political spectrum, and thus so throughly a reflection of the schizophrenic political views of the populace. We are state that wants it all, but at the same time refuses to pay for any of it.
Or as Walt Kelly put it, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."
Fair enough, I just think it's a little jaded to think that all environmentally friendly labelled products (or cars, VW Diesel TDIs, Priuses, etc.) are not doing some part in helping the environment as opposed to other, less environmentally-friendly, options. I agree that greenwashing certainly occurs, but Luddism isn't a choice for pretty much everyone and that there are more responsible choices out there.
Interesting.
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/
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