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.

Comments

Vaporware

[sunderland56]

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.

Re:Vaporware

[hbean]

Hardly vaporware. Its in production.

Re:Vaporware

[networkBoy]

should be available by 2010 according to this morning news.
I'll be buying one as well.
My RT commute is ~24 miles. I can charge at work. Free gas anyone?

Not having to charge at home means just a little more in my pocket each month. Since this will be replacing no vehicle (I'll keep my truck thankyouverymuch) I doubt it'll pay for its self simply on saved fuel, but maybe it will. I burn ~550 gallons of mid-grade fuel per year just on my commute. At $3/gallon that's $1650/year. Assuming the car lasts 10 years I'll save $16K just on not paying for commute fuel. Any other driving I do with it will still be more efficient than my pickup (at 11Mpg).
-nB

Re:Vaporware

[hbean]

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.

Re:Vaporware

[Delwin]

The same thing that says that if electricity prices go up too much more putting photovoltaic cells on my roof becomes profitable.

Re:Vaporware

[Darth Sdlavrot]

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.

Re:Vaporware

[bkissi01]

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.

Re:Vaporware

[icebike]

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.

Re:Vaporware

[Sporkinum]

Screw the motorcycle. Drive a $1000 shittermobile. It's pretty easy to buy one that gets 30 mpg. Drive it for a year or two and either junk it, or sell it for a couple hundred dollars. You'll never approach the efficiency of that compared to buying any new car, hybrid or not as there will be no new manufacturing required.

Re:Vaporware

[bkissi01]

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?

Re:Vaporware

[jfengel]

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.

Re:Vaporware

[badboy_tw2002]

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.

Re:Vaporware

[Rei]

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.

Re:Vaporware

[Rei]

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.

Re:Vaporware

[Chris Burke]

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

Heat & A/C

[s31523]

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?

Re:Heat & A/C

[lymond01]

How does this thing provide heating/cooling and what impact does running these systems have on said MPG performance?

The answer is two-fold, my boy:

It's air conditioning is wind powered!

The effect on MPG is directly related to which way the wind is blowing.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask. I can provide detailed equations like E=mc^2 and c=pi*r^2 if you need them.

Re:Come on GM, at least make the lie BELIEVABLE

[east coast]

Look at the testing yourself and see the potential loopholes. There's no reason to guess here. The information is available.

MPG is outdated when you are using grid power

[PeterM from Berkeley]

How about miles per pound of carbon dioxide emission?

Or, or in addition, miles per PRIMARY unit of energy input?

--PM

Re:Come on GM, at least make the lie BELIEVABLE

[Daniel_Staal]

As stated in the summary, that's the EPA's rating, not GM's rating. It comes from the same place as the MPG rating on your car right now. GM didn't calculate it, or come up with it. They are just quoting it.

And yes, it's a plug-in. (That's the point.) And that is for driving using the power from the grid. Power plants are much more efficient than the engines in cars, so I assume that's being worked into that somewhere.

That said: This is the first time the EPA has ever tried to rate a plug-in electric vehicle, and their rating system probably has a few bugs to work out...

Re:Come on GM, at least make the lie BELIEVABLE

[DreamsAreOkToo]

According to GM, I guess if I never go on longer trips, my Volt will be getting infinity miles per gallon.

Ahh, only good old GM could make a car that gets 230 mpg when it could be getting infinity mpg!

One small detail was left out

[fataugie]

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.

Re:Worst of both worlds

[Daniel_Staal]

Getting worse mileage than the best in the world isn't exactly something to complain loudly about... Even on the engine, it gets better than a Prius.

Re:Come on GM, at least make the lie BELIEVABLE

[ImOnlySleeping]

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

Re:Come on GM, at least make the lie BELIEVABLE

[Chris Burke]

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).

Re:Worst of both worlds

[gad_zuki!]

>it has to lug around a heavy internal combustion engine

That tiny 1.0L engine that runs a generator? Id rather be able to put gas in it when I cannot find electricity, thanks. My neighborhood BP hasnt exactly switched over.

>Long range electric or efficient internal combustion. Please, please, pick one.

The battery tech isnt here. Perhaps you can wish for faeries to power the car while youre at it because youre being 100% irrational.

Hell, even if you do this, you still need to convince the gas stations to switch over, because you'll sometimes be in a situation where you need power, now, not overnight. Early adopters appreciate a little convenience.

Prejudicial Treatment

[Trails]

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?

Gallons?

[qmaqdk]

How many gallons of electricity does it hold?

Why all the hate?

[VoiceInTheDesert]

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.

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? .75 gallons? You're going to complain about that?

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.

Re:Why all the hate?

[Sir_Real]

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.

Re:Come on GM, at least make the lie BELIEVABLE

[Daniel_Staal]

That is not an argument to stop building electric cars. That is an argument to start building more powerplants.

Which is a good idea, and another discussion.

How many miles to pay off?

[wiredog]

From The Atlantic: GM's Volt Offers Amazing Mileage, But At What Cost?

I used the Toyota Corolla (regular, non-hybrid vehicle) as my comparison, since it's popular and similar in style. According to Toyota's website, it gets 26 miles per gallon in the city and starts at $15,350.

..[various assumptions]..

if you assume $4 per gallon, then you'd need to drive around 177,000 miles to break even.

Re:How many miles to pay off?

[NetNed]

Hard to understand why the writer didn't just compare it to another Hybrid. Ford's Hybrid Fusion I think is the most impressive Hybrid for what you get for your dollar and the performance of the vehicle (also doesn't feel like a tin can). It starts and $27,270 and is closer to the Volt. Heck the Camry would have been closer to the Volt. The two Stipulations as to why he picked the Corolla don't really seem to make sense when there are dozens of models that would have been a closer match.

Re:Come on GM, at least make the lie BELIEVABLE

[kannibal_klown]

I'm throwing the Shenanigans flag. No...scratch that...I'm throwing the COMPLETE AND UTTER BULLSHIT flag.

RTFA.

They discuss the electricity consumption/cost in the article, and that the number is an estimate that's hard to calculate since many people will use the battery exclusively about 75% of the time.

I agree, it's hard to calculate to give both an accurate and realistic number. If you drive non stop until the car both runs out of electricity and petrol, then calculate distance/gallons then that's an accurate number. But is it realistic? This car isn't designed for the cross-country road-trip in mind, but even still it would get hybrid (or better) mileage due to charging over nights.

So what number do I care about? Driving cross country or day to day driving?

Similarly I could try driving my hybrid on the highway, flooring it the entire way and I wouldn't get the advertised numbers.

Granted, it would be nicer to know "how many bushels of coal are needed to charge it to capacity" and then try to find an analogy between bushels of coal -> gallons of diesel -> gallons of petrol. Then you can say those 40 miles required so much diesel, which is about so much petrol. Then again, the entire country doesn't use coal-burning-plants so even then it wouldn't be accurate.

Re:Cost Per Mile

[sphealey]

> 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

stagnation of gasoline?

[notgm]

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.

Totally Agree

[sampson7]

Amen. People need to accept that is a progression of technology and that things are not going to happen overnight.

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.

So it's not the right car for everyone...

[Animaether]

...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.

Re:Come on GM, at least make the lie BELIEVABLE

[Animaether]

Miles per Newton (or whatever we can equate all fuels to)? (i have no idea)

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

Re:Unfortunately GM lobbied for the new system.

[RoboRay]

"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!

Why does everyone hate this?

[tprime]

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.