oh dear... ABG writer gets 26.1 mpg in CS mode.

I have seen statements from Nissan that the Leaf range may be as low as 47 miles and high as 138. In my situation, I could go without charging a day, or have to limp half the way home. I believe the electric is the future, but such variable ranges will leave many people, that live in extreme weather/climates or hilly terrain, hesitant to take the plunge. At least until charging stations are available, or the vehicle's worst case range is sufficient for their daily use. The Volt has shorter range, but it eases those concerns for those you want to move to electric. Even when irrational, those concerns are still a block to the public excepting EV.

What's up with bringing up the electricity generation emissions used to charge the battery on the Volt? When it's brought up as argument against EVs, it is quickly swatted down on this site. Either with electric generation can improve overall, or it's easier to clean emissions at a central, stationary location. If the Volt isn't green because of charging the battery, then neither is the PHEV Prius or Leaf.

 

I was going by the 75-125 Nissan estimate, but until these cars have been out and about in consumers hands we won't really know what the real average range is. As far as emissions, EV's only have the one source, electricity from an outlet. Other threads have explored the pros and cons, but generally it is considered better than millions of ICE vehicles pumping out fumes of doom! PHEV's like the Volt and yes, the coming Prius, potentially pollute both ways if you drive far beyond the electric only range. The Volt is of particular concern since it's emissions in CS mode are so poor! 80 miles or so and you've done nothing to improve mpg's or emissions over a standard Prius and may in fact be doing more harm!

 

True, I agree if totally from plug.
But when in typical Volt CS mode, minimum SOC pre-charge moves from 35% to 45% (creation of buffer energy), and those 1,6kwh (10% of 16kwh) coming from gasoline in a terribly inefficient path on-board.

 

If the Leaf is going to leave you stranded half-way home, then the Volt is going to be burning gasoline 3/4 of your driving miles, and you'd be better off with a Prius, which costs WAY less and will get you better mileage overall.

The Volt only makes sense for someone who wants to drive electric, and seldom drives more than its real-world range (I'm guessing 25 miles) but still needs a car capable of driving unlimited range on gasoline and will only own one car.

This may fit a few people, but the majority of American households own two cars, and a Leaf plus a Prius would be a better fit. Most of the households with only one car cannot afford the Volt's extravagant price. In other words, the people who could benefit from a Volt cannot afford it. The buyers will be a tiny number of fanatical GM boosters who also want EV. This number is tiny because most GM boosters want a huge SUV or a muscle car.

Please note: I do not hate the Volt. I think it is a car designed to fail, by a company that desperately wants to keep people addicted to gasoline. I do hate GM for its past crimes. If they had simply brought the EV1 back into production two years ago, using the best battery then available, I'd have bought one!

 

Its variable range should be predictable, so a non-first run buyer should be able to figure out what they typically would get and then decide to buy or not. In point of fact a normal car has vastly different ranges, too, per tank partly environmental and heavily driving technique, similar to an EV, though perhaps not quite as huge. People do not care an iota about a gas car's range because they can keep filling it up.

So in a gas car you care about cost of mile driven and car not at all about its range. For EV it seems range is the only thing we care about; who here has read much or anything about varying electricity-per-mile costs? Does a dollar of electricity motivate the leaf further than the volt? Perhaps it's not so important since both are so cheap. But it must have some relevance and it's definitely not a highly advertised figure.

The Leaf is, unlike the Volt, likely to cover damn near everybody in their daily driving, though for obvious reasons you will see, from time to time, somebody getting their leaf towed and not the volt (at least for energy reasons). I wonder if AAA will raise its rates for EV owners

 

I agree, but the average car shopper doesn't tend to be a rational being. A poster at another board brought up their mother or grandmother. She has only had to drive a few miles from her house in the past decade or more. An EV would be perfect for her, and they have tried talking her into getting one. She refuses in case she ever needs to drive farther. The 'what if' seems to be a large part of most car shoppers thinking. The what if I need to tow something, drive in bad weather, or get into an accident help lead to rise large 4x4 SUVs on the road.

I want more EVs, but I think the public will be more accepting of the Volt than the Leaf at this point in time. They require a shift in thinking for most people to make use of and get over the concerns. Nissan is putting a free rental program of regular fuel cars in place for Leaf owners in Japan to alleviate that concern.

The price is a major hurdle for the Volt, but it supposedly will have a generous lease. Leasing isn't the ideal situation for most. It doesn't leave the consumer stuck with the car, if the batteries to hold up in the real world.

 

You are absolutely right. And this is known and rife in all genres of marketing, from banking cord blood if you have a baby to buying stronger Bosche headlights to "protect your family". We obsess as a race over minutia and are continually victimized by the availability heuristic.

The general public will accept a Volt type approach more than the Leaf. The Leaf represents a big shift in how they see what they car can do for them.

 

This so-called 'range anxiety' theme is no doubt present in the mainstream US populace, but they are not buying any kind of *EV for years into the future, so that argument is pedantic. A much better question is what the actual purchasers of *EV in the next 5 years care about. I very likely fall in this latter group, and for one can say that I have no such anxiety at all. In fact, I want a *smaller* capacity battery to better match my anticipated uses and to save money. As Daniel pointed out, my long distance car trips will be covered by our Prius.

 

Whats the point of any car that costs mor than a Prius? Maybe the point is that GM may be headed in the right direction, sure beats them making another Hummer. But yet more people seem upset with them about the volt.

 

isnt the point of Volt to be very efficient? It just fails at that.

 

GM thinks it is the right direction, or tries to sell us that image of it. But as a manufacturer, they should technically look at their Volt. As an EV, a bit thirsty, as CS mode, worse than a normal car. It's pointless that PHEV is part of the future, but let's start in a better way!

 

Volt's emission is worse than their comparable non-hybrid. MPG is about the same as the Cruze Eco (Volt seems to be better in the city and worse on the highway).

 

How can you honestly say that? Its comparable non-hybrid, and heterosexual life partner, is the Cruze. They are more comparable than anything that was used as comparison to the Prius. While no one will say it from GM, the Volt is essentially a Cruze hybrid.

Carb has given the Volt a ULEV certification. Of the two drive trains for the Cruze, the EPA has given one a Bin 4 certification, while the other is unpublished. ULEV and Bin 4 are equivalent. For a more detailed comparison we need the actual pollutant amounts. The best I have is, "Based on the certification, it appears that the Volt met or exceeded SULEV requirements in most areas, with the notable exception of CO. Volt was certified to 1.3 g CO/mi. ULEV standard is 2.1 g/mi; SULEV requirement is 1.0 g/mi." - Green Car Congress: California ARB Certifies Chevrolet Volt as ULEV
Don't have as much for the Cruze, but its numbers have to be impressive to be cleaner than a borderline SULEV.

That's when just using gasoline on the Volt's part. Which makes this comparison suspect. The EPA has yet establish their standard for the testing PHEVs. If Carb continues with ignoring the EV ability of PHEVs, and the EPA takes it into account, then the two agencies results will not be comparable.

Why did Carb ignore the EV range of the Volt? It makes it an unfair test. It's like testing cars in their lowest selectable gear. If the point is to improve air quality and fuel economy, why discount a vehicle feature that would help?

 

If you check the source for GCC link you provided, it came from my post on PriusChat. I provided the Volt vs. Cruze comparison in post #28.

Probably because Volt assumes the owner will use gasoline in every trip. It reports MPG and ignores the electricity usage (kWh) from the battery. For example, if you drive 70 miles with 35 miles on the battery and 35 miles on gas (consuming one gallon). Volt will report you get 70 MPG instead of 35 MPG. This is extremely misleading.

Take the opposite case. Instead of the Volt displaying "miles per gallon", say it only displays "miles per kWh". For the same trip, Volt would report you got 7 miles per kWh (70 miles / 10 kWh). This is equivalent to 143 Wh/mi which is extremely low (half of typical) and misleading (downright wrong).

To make my point even more obvious, drive the Volt from full charge until both the battery and gas tank empty out. Is it right to report 350 miles per 10 kWh (28.6 Wh/mi)?

 

30 miles for around $1.00 to 1.50 it is efficent on electricity, just not good burning gas. i thought the idea was for people who don't have long drives not people who want to drive 100 miles a day.

The ford fusion hybrid, toyota camry hybrid, lexus hybrid, ford escape hybrid and every other hybrid is wastefull compared to a prius. So the prius is the only car thats not wastefull? I'm glad to see every hybrid. And for every person that does buy a Volt and drives around 40 miles a day, thats that much less fuel we buy from the middle east. lets be honest if you do drive short trips the Volt is a good car if you don't mind spending 40k or 33k after tax reduction. And i know that tens and tens of thousands would never spend less than 40k on a car, so maybe instead of a 40k 20mpg german car they may get a volt.

 

Well, the German 20 MPG buyer would pay his fair share of tax. Volt buyer would pay $7,500 less in tax.

 

Most of those spending $40k+ on a vehicle dont even look at american cars. Our family doesn't, and very few freinds do. If you want luxury then you buy Japanese, German, or Italian. So those buying a $40k audi might consider a hybrid, but it will be a Lexus GSh or HS that more than likely wins.

 

As long as it includes the electricity generated onboard, miles per kWh would be the best method. No other method comes to mind which isn't misleading, confusing, or requires qualifiers. Of course, it relies on a country, which couldn't adapt to metric, to accept kWh instead of gallons.

Where did you find the pollutant level data? My googlefu was weak.

While the Volt is dirtier than the Cruze, it is an argument that is open to being discredited by the listener. The actual measurement of pollutant isn't what is posted on the window sticker. There's a 1 to 10 score and a rating that is more readily available. When those that know the Volt and Cruze are both ULEV/bin 4 are confronted with statements of the volt polluting more than it's comparable non-hybrid, they'll either question it, or write off the person who made the statement as a zealot.

 

I think its quite a silly yardstick to use. Is mud dirtier than carbonic acid? Is blue sky dirtier than a clear running stream. If you are going to run the damn thing without plugging it in, I would say the driver is stupider not that the car is dirtier. If you do plug it in and cause fewer health problems in your city, but believe in the great green killer CO2 is making you sick like those commercials in California implied, I would say you have trouble reasoning.

If you talk about a driving profile and polutants we can get somewhere. Talking about the cruze being less expensive than the prius gets us somewhere too. If you go all the way down the stink hole of dirtier and cleaner isn't the prius dirtier than a hummer. You know if you use the right bad numbers it is

So what is the point. I did get 17mpg in my prius for one trip. I know people that have gotten over 70. I don't think ABG is a particularly good source of information. 25-50 mile ev range, maybe 80 hypermiling on a japanese cycle.30-40mpg in cs mode. If you are driving too far to lease it, wait, if not you likely will use 20-200 gallons of gas a year, which is not very poluting. If you want to cling to bad numbers and pretend all the buyers live in WV or Indiana and their electricity is dirty that is fine too, but you are only fooling yourself.

 

26.1 mpg on a test drive like this is somewhat irrelevant especially given his upper end was over 80mpg. I almost always get 50-70mpg avgs but if I drive the heck out of my gen III I can get high 20s low 30s.

I think this only shows it will do high and low mpg but we need some tank avgs and across a few drivers to see how this "extended range" vehicle avgs real world. I am sure dying to know. What of course really still sucks is the high price.