calculation details of Volt's 230mpg city estimate

I hope it gets better than 25 mpg in ICE mode. I know they have not released numbers yet. THe ability to go all EV for your daily commuting needs is huge and worth lower mpg on the rare longer trip.

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Not so sure of this, remember $4 gas? I also remember seeing a thread about what people drove before they bought their Prius and was surprised how many drove suvs and trucks.

Somehow we need to tie paying at the pump to supporting Al Quada and see how many big suvs remain.

 

The best way to go is to buy a Prius now while the prices are low and financing is low. Then wait until the plug in conversion for the 2010 becomes available and have it installed. The Prius with the conversion beats the volt every time.

 

Good luck on that!

That's always part of my spiel for EVs, but as much as Joe Beerbelly hates the Arabs, he's erected a mental wall between buying gasoline, and his money going to al Qaeda. He can't deny it, but he tells himself he's got no choice.

The aftermarket plug-in conversion has serious drawbacks, principally that unless you drive with a feather on the pedal, and accelerate even slower than my Xebra, and stay below 42 mph, the gasoline engine will run pretty much all the time. The conversion uses about half gas and half electricity. I agree this is better than the Volt, but it's a far cry from pure EV. And the conversion will add $10,000 to $15,000 to your cost for the car.

Hopefully Toyota will change that when they bring out the factory PHEV Prius. But I still think an EV for local and a pure hybrid for road trips is better.

 

Well lets say I attach a lead weight to the back of the car......

25mpg? There is not point in your math if you assume 25mpg for the Volt. Its pointless because its not going to happen. And it shows how far you have to go to make your point. The volt is going to get 38mpg or more on CS mode. How much more we don't know.

Current sales statistics are proving you wrong. The switch is being made, SUV sales are down. They have been down even as gas went back to $2.30, people are getting over SUV's.

Nobody= hundreds of thousands

Shock: Small Car Sales Up, SUV, Truck Sales Down in March - KickingTires

Ford Bets Small-Vehicle Trend Is Here to Stay | BNET Auto Blog | BNET

 

Two cars that are not out, kinda hard to say which one beats!

I love the Prius, and I am waiting to hear about its plug in though the range of less then 15 miles does not thrill me. What does excite me is the known efficiency in gas mode and the larger interior space VS the Volt and I think the Leaf as well.

We do not know the price of any of these cars yet, and that will be quite important.

 

For us, a 2 car family, one car will be long range, the other and EV.
The Volt (unless it gets 50mpg in CS mode) just won't compete for the long range vehicle position vs a Prius which we already own.
And it definately won't take the EV spot as it has a very short range.
Yes, the Volt will make sense for some people, but I don't think it will be too many.

 

I will propose this very situation and see if many drivers will indeed face the same situation. On wed (10pm)my fiance's mother had a heart attack in boston (i'm in nyc right now) so the long trip car is gone. I then had another family emergency in delaware. So if I had a leaf and a "long distance" car. I would literally been screwed. Life is not perfect and will throw curve balls your way. My family emergency needed my attention at thurs (3 am). So waiting to rent a car was out of the question.

I can't have my life hinged on always having a second car available. I know many people that feel the same. An EV world is really rosy right now and since the down turn in the economy many families have decided to become one car families. I need the distance of about of 200+ miles for emergencies and business. I can't wait for Tesla model S!

As time goes on I feel like there are too many other options than a prius that will be avialable in the next 1-2yrs (when it will be time to buy a new car for me).

 

Granted, we do not know what the fuel efficiency will be for the Volt's ICE. My suspicion, is it will be confusing and difficult to define. For example .... you have driven 40 miles, and the ICE starts to recharge the battery. You are in stop and go traffic .... the mileage will be very poor as the ICE runs to recharge the battery, and you are making very little headway. If it is cold outside and the ICE must warm-up, the mileage will be even worse. While that is true for every vehicle, the ICE on the Volt will be running at a much higher rpm than a non-hybrid car idling (at stop) so as to recharge the battery. Meanwhile, the Prius sits in the same traffic with the ICE off.

OTOH, while on the road, the fuel efficiency should be much more favorable. How the EPA will "score" the Volt's city/highway mileage will be interesting. City driving less than 40 miles will be fantastic! City driving beyong 40 miles could be very low. Highway driving in EV mode is going to consume more battery power and surely deminish the 40 mile range.

I have said all along, the Volt is a niche vehicle .... and it does not fit my niche. I imagine it will fit some's drivers niche .... but the cost will be a major factor for many. How much incentive is congress willing to grant buyers??

 

The amusing thing here is that your numbers are as speculative as mine. I don't trust GM, and I note that they are not willing to give us a real number, so I assume a low number. You assume a higher number. But we are both blowing hot air when we make claims about these numbers.

I honestly cannot imagine a situation that would require my immediate presence at 3:00 in the morning. If it's a medical emergency, your family member needs an ambulance and a team of doctors.

When I was 17 I wanted to go to a school in England. My aunt offered to pay the air fare, and the tuition was less than the school in California I was going to. My father would not give his permission. His reason was (now his exact words: ) "If anything happened to you I could not get there quickly." But if "something" had happened to me, his presence would not have helped!

Refusing to own a short-range car because "something" might require you to get up at 3:00 in the morning and drive 200 miles, seems to me an extremely weak and artificial argument. You might as well say you need 17 cars:

I need 2 cars because car #1 might be out of commission. But I need 3 cars because if car #1 is out of commission, car #2 might also be out of commission. But in that case, car # 3 might be out of commission so I need 4 cars. And so on, up to 17, where I stop because it's all completely preposterous.

You can stop there, because according to GM the Volt's ICE will not recharge the battery. Once the battery is depleted, the car will go into CS mode and become a serial hybrid, with the ICE running to provide all power to the car, and the battery will not contribute to the car's motion again until it is re-charged at the plug.

 

That is a rather convoluted set up circumstances. However, since you proposed that situation, I can tell you I have never faced such a situation and do not expect that would ever happen to me.
Now, if circumstances in a persons life makes these events likely or common, I would definately say a pure EV is not for them.
However, since I can't see that ever happening to me, a pure EV and a vehicle with a longer range is in my future

 

[Quote: Granted, we do not know what the fuel efficiency will be for the Volt's ICE. My suspicion, is it will be confusing and difficult to define. For example .... you have driven 40 miles, and the ICE starts to recharge the battery....

You can stop there, because according to GM the Volt's ICE will not recharge the battery. Once the battery is depleted, the car will go into CS mode and become a serial hybrid, with the ICE running to provide all power to the car, and the battery will not contribute to the car's motion again until it is re-charged at the plug.

 

I'd expect that if they ever do sell it, and if they don't carefully control who can buy one, there will be independent people testing it and publishing their reports. With all the hype, I'd expect Consumer Reports to test it, if they can get one, and the various car magazines as well. Of course, CU won't accept a demo from the company. They buy their cars and appliances at retail. So their test will have to wait until you can walk onto a dealer's lot and buy one.

But then, I still don't expect the Volt ever to hit dealer lots. Though I wouldn't put it past them to sell a pure gasoline-powered (non-plug-in) serial hybrid, and call it the Volt, and promise a plug-in version "as soon as batteries become cheaper." (All while people are driving 100-mile Nissan Leafs.)

 

It does not make any sense. Series hybrid use both ICE and battery at the same time; battery buffering power to maintain ICE at optimum RPM.

That explains why their top engineer left.

 

It's not that convoluted, it might a little hard to believe, but in this world two things can happen at once (or in a close span of time). People take that into account when buying a car.

 

just an update, i found this picture from autoblog, when they test drove the volt. They achieved 42 mpg in cs mode so certain people might have to get over their 25 mpg presumption.

 

Really, many other people have been quoting VERY slow numbers in their comparisons. 40mpg CS is fine though I would like to see more. Again most of these have been done with pre-production models, I do expect some small improvements. I am betting on 45mpg CS on the real thing.