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

[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

[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]

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.

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

[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).

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.

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: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.