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

OK let's make it real world: take a Volt and a Prius both with a fully charged battery and give them one gallon of gasoline and see which one goes the farthest.

Second test: same scenario and see which one makes it to mile 50 first.

 

The data came from CARB. Link to the PDFs were provided in the same post #28.

 

I reject that idea as a valid test.
A better test would be to perform a distance test ... a reasonable, good days drive ....say 450 miles. At the end of 450 miles, which vehicle consumed the least fuel? Which vehicle arrived the quickest?

Neither test favors the other car. Because, the Volt is an expensive niche vehicle; the Prius is not. They are not competetors!! The Leaf is the Volt's competition. The Insight, and Fusion (plus others) are the Prius' competition.

To compare the Volt and Prius makes as much sense as matching Rutan's Gossomer Condor to a modern airplane.

A good man on a bicycle can go a hell of a lot further than either the Volt or the Prius and not even consume 1 gallon of fuel.............. and there quicker!!

 

That isn't real though. Reality is that consumers are tied to a budget. Feats of engineering have to balance out with how much someone can actually afford.

Isn't the point to sell the technology in very high volume? If so, engineering a vehicle without regard to price doesn't seem sensible. That's why the target of $30,000 has been so important.

In other words, greater emphasis should have been placed on engine efficiency. Examples like the 26.1 MPG show how poor of an overall design the vehicle is, making a decision to offer a smaller battery-pack to reduce price is quite unrealistic. That heavy dependence on electric capacity limits product diversification... which impairs business opportunity.
.

 

The result of the Volt came out to be a vehicle that displaces fossil fuel consumption and emission (elsewhere) rather than reducing them. Fossil fuel that used to generate electricity for the Volt is moved from the tailpipe to the power plants. The same goes for the emission as well. When the Volt do run the onboard gas engine, it is about as efficient as a comparable non-hybrid compact car.

So how is this a breakthrough? A breakthrough game changer running in circle without a meaningful progress?

Remember, Prius reduced fuel consumption (in half) and lowered the emission by 70-90%. It does not shift it to elsewhere like the Volt.

 

I saw the scanned PDFs, but if they were on CARB's site, they weren't easy to find. Even fueleconomy.gov has it buried, if available.

 

Yup, I have not found an easy way to find/search either. I had to go through all the PDFs for specific manufacturer to find the vehicle I was looking for. Hybrid and EVs are easier to find since the file name has "hevge" or "z_e" in it.

This link shows you the latest PDFs.

 

I don't think the difference is all that great, but I agree with your point. Those that think the prius is perfect, or think 450 miles a day is a normal driving day, or hate gm really are not the target for this car, and making those comparisons doesn't make much sense.

I don't really want to carry a gallon of fuel on my back, and wonder do I get to shower after my bike ride, and is that included. Can't we just skype and travel less. I think the volt going at my biking speed should be able to do better than me on a gallon of gas if I want to do something afterward, and isn't that why I don't just run?

 

That's where the projected lease comes in. Many people do just look at what the monthly payment will be. I've never looked into getting a lease, so don't know much about them, but the simple calculator on Yahoo result for the Volt's price is over a $1000 a month. If GM does keep the payment down to $350, it might be one of the best bargains out there.
Discussions on Why GM did it, and whether it's in person's interest to lease aside, this will let more people get one on the road.

No, it doesn't. My friend test drove the new Prius, and got the displayed mpg down to 20. It must be Toyota's crappy engineering.
It's one, extreme example. In the same article, they were getting in the forties with more reasonable driving.

Are you using this argument against the Leaf? Or what about the PHEV Prius? It's already one of the cleanest cars on the road. Won't plugging it in make it dirtier?

Shame on GM for not making it cleaner. If their projections on average daily commute pan out, and most owners use little to tiny amounts of gas, I can give them a pass on the first generation. The Cruze emissions are literally better by tenths and hundredths of a gram. Too bad it has to burn gas whenever you want to move it. The first Insight was just an Ultra Low Emissions Vehicle also. Actually, new emission regulations are in affect. Those early Insights may not qualify for the current ULEV.

Got to start reminding myself about this.

 

Apparently when used as designed the Volt does pretty well.

Right now one of the first members of the public has a nice log:

Chevrolet Volt Driving Log | GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site

Date Total Miles EV Miles CS Miles Gallons Total MPG
11-10-2010 63.5 52.8 10.7 0.32 200.7
11-11-2010 59.3 59.3 0 0 infinite
11-12-2010 60.4 30.6 29.8 0.72 83.9
11-13-2010 88.5 52.5 36 0.75 118
11-14-2010 79.9 42.2 37.7 1.09 72.9
11-15-2010 59 59 0 0 infinite
11-16-2010 59.3 59.3 0 0 infinite
11-17-2010 24.9 24.9 0 0 infinite
TOTAL 494.8 380.6 114.2 2.88 172

Simply stated, this car is designed for a driver that plugs it in daily and can make most of their driving electric with the given 40 mile range.

It is not for the person who drives over 100 miles a DAY, or the person who is taking 200+ mile trips weekly.

 

... Or one who cars about non GHG emissions,
Or one who cares about GHG emissions

The Volt is a one-trick, very expensive pony that can do one thing well for some people:
Decrease petrol use in the car. Now, anybody who thinks that will translate into less *national* oil use should save the money/debt, and go to college and take a Econ 101 course.

 

Wonder why electricity usage was not tracked as if it is infinitely free.

 

Nothing so devious. The owner is using a 240V charger at home, so tracking by something simple like a US sold kill-a-watt is not possible. Maybe the Europeans have a device ?

 

Actually maybe you should be taking that Econ 101 course!

You put your asterisks around *national*, but that is exactly what the Volt could do, make our nation use less oil. (as the Prius is currently doing!) It may not make the *world* use less oil though...... your Econ 101 course will teach you that.

The US fleet of Prii is currently helping the USA use less oil... but that makes it ever so cheaper and most (but not all) of the displaced demand ends up in the growing economies of China and India.

 

I'm fine, thank you. I understand how price affects supply/demand, something you quite clearly do not. Ever notice how Prius sales follow fuel prices ? Or how fuel consumption decreased at peak fuel prices, but now that they appear to have stabilized below $3/gallon, large SUV sales are the hot vehicle on the lot, and Prius is not ?

Hogwash. Exclude the effect of recession, and Prius has done exactly squat for US oil consumption.

 

No, really, I think you just don't get it.

 

Of course it's not free but for the majority of the USA it's 1/3 the price of gas per mile and lower emissions.

 

I was slow to respond, because I assumed others would fill in the facts, but I assume this was in response to my post.

Let me see, IMHO if this car wasn't made by GM a lot fewer of you would have these reasoning problems. But let us take the first questions is it better for the country to burn more oil or use more electricity. Hm, doesn't seem very tough to me. Burning more oil consumes a scarce resourc controled by a monoply. This does 3 bad things - 1) puts price pressure on the resource with high risks of price spikes to damage the economy. 2) Creates a large trade deficit in fuel that takes resources away from the american economy 3) Forces the federal government to deal with unfriendly countries from a position of weakness beacuse of 1 and 2.

Now if you decide Ok, I don't care about any of that let's look at polution. Tail pipe polutants contribute directly to ozone and particulate problems in cities (especially those regulated by CARB + Houston area that have refinery polution). These have been shown to cause health problems, and we all also pay for these medical costs. The chief polutants from electricity generation have been capped, so more generation creates no new polutants the utilities need to scrub or rectify the polutants. So yes if you don't care about people getting sick or the levels of dangerous polutants why not say tail pipe is the same as power generating polutant. You can just ignore people that point out that these generating polutants have been capped, and convince others that your incorrect position is really right. The next level talks about mining, but as mining operations for electricity are getting cleaner, deep water drilling for oil and strip mining oil sands are getting dirtier.

Finally the I don't care about that lets look at just CO2. I really don't have an answer to that other than, most of these cars will be sold in places like austin, seatle, and the san francisco bay area where they produce less co2. Houston even has put a number of free recharging plugs out, and whole foods in austin, and a number of other businesses are starting to provide free plugs.

Not a breakthrough just a small step in the right direction.

I'm not sure the prius uses half the fuel of the cruze, or fit, or other things in your comparisons. The prius certainly does not emit half the polutants of a volt. Both are steps in the right direction. Less than 3% of drivers want to buy hybrids. Choice is key in making this number bigger so it can actually make a dent.

See above. Even in a coal state the volt creates very low levels of pollutants compared to other cars. I'm more concerned about those old cars in LA that leak more than 100 times the dangerous polutants and ghg contributers compared to the volt. Get them off the road and drivers into something better.

BEVs and PHEVs like the volt, leaf, and upcoming focus can definitely reduce the trade deficit and the american economies oil risk. For this to happen these things need to be sold in large quantities, and this will take time. The volt is a step in that direction. Even my little niece understands that, without attending the poor econ 101 course that you seem to have gone to.

I don't really thing the volt is very expensive. It is $350/mo on a 3 year lease versus $600 on the crushed EV1. It is a niche car, but if more of these make it to market it will be a good thing for the us economy in the long run.

 

The thing many of us still feel strange about the Volt is the terrible MPG with CS mode. Even if both properly driven, in a long trip, as allowed by a PHEV and acting as a family car (alone), Volt ends up by consuming much more fuel than Prius. Volt specs tell us that - 500km for 35liters tank. Resembles then so "niche" market that frankly, there would be more profit (and environmentally speaking) in buying a EV for daily use and renting another car for spurious travelling farther.
Definitely, Volt can put together two ways of travelling, but really, it doesn't make a new concept, it is only a (bad) fusion of a heavy EV and a lousy ICE car.
I can't agree with the "step in the right direction" sentence.

 

Same school you went to ?

The dumbing of America is something of a misnomer. How much worse can it get ?