2011 Chevrolet Volt gets an EPA certified rating of 93 MPGe and 37 mpg in gasoline mode

Ford and Toyota cross licenced as you described with Ford throwing in extra intelectual property to avoid lawsuits. No money has been reported to have changed hands. Toyota and Ford are now paying paice for hybrid intellectual property.

Toyota Settles Infringement Case Over Hybrid Patent - Bloomberg

I do not know if the volt infringes on these patents.

 

I am no patent expert but from what I know almost any hybrid modern hybrid is going to use voltage boosting which is a key Paice patent.

 

You are repeating the same mistake that others have also called you on. You are (and your quoted article) are wrong.

You are saying the electric car will use 2500kwh in a year and saying its 20% more then an average household uses ALL YEAR. The average household uses 11,520hwh in a year. That is a not a 20% difference.

And that is basic math.

 

I've tried out Power Mode in gen3's for a couple hundred miles. The result - it doesn't change the fuel economy at all for me - I still get over 50 MPGs average.

Power Mode simply increases the responsiveness of the drivetrain per given pedal input. IOW, it makes the gas pedal more 'sensitive'. As long as one doesn't hammer the pedal for high acceleration, the economy will remain about the same.

Hard acceleration, hard braking and short trips in overloaded car in cold weather with underinflated tires bring down fuel economy, not Power Mode.

 

I was referring to when the Volt generator / ICE is running, the energy trail is like this -

ICE > generator > battery/electric motor > gears > wheels

Energy goes from mechanical to electrical back to mechanical just to drive wheels. I believe this is true and would help explain the apparent 31 MPG in CS mode.

Even in the Autotoob video, the guy said 'Volt gas engine doesn't drive the wheels like in a Prius .... '

But, the Prius energy trail is more like this -

( ICE > gears > wheels ) + ( battery > inverter > motor(s) > gears > wheels )

there is no redundant conversion from mech to elec to mech in the Prius. It may not matter what ICE GM puts in the Volt, it will not get near 50 MPGs after battery depleted.

 

No that not what the author or I'm saying. He is saying if you have an electric car you bill will go up about 20%. He may not have said it the best way but this is exactly what he meant. Also this is how I read it from the beginning. an additional 2500 is about 20% greater than 11520.

TED

 

That is 41 all-electric miles per day, 7 days per week, 52 weeks per year.

I don't believe for a moment that the average Volt customer will drive that many CD miles per year. That seems more like a three-sigma case.

 

After review, it became clear that that is what he meant. But if that is what he actually said, then his and your English teachers were not teaching the same language as were mine. I cannot parse it that way.

 

That is NOT what he said. You quoted him and he said:

"Electric cars use electricity — lots of it. In fact, the Edison Electric Institute estimates that driving 10,000 miles in an electric car will use about 2,500 kilowatt-hours, 20 percent more than the average home uses in a year. So, while electric cars reduce greenhouse gas emissions, they increase the need for electricity."

That clearly says an electric car will use MORE THEN the average household uses all year which is simply untrue.

Do you still think I am wrong?

 

Customers = Laboratory Mice ?

"Hey, eat this (The Volt 1st gen)!"

Incredible, I thought Toyota sold 1 Gen Priuses as ready cars. Poor japanese, had to chew early NHW10s...and then the akward NHW11s, and later the iconic-although-still-not-perfect NHW20s, and coming up with the ZVW30s, which in fact is a jump prior to the magnificent PHVs, which are not yet sold. Dear us, world consumers...13 years of testing...
Nevertheless, the price was $19995 back in 2001, and EPA combined was 41MPG. I wouldn't mind to help develop "early" cars like those back then.

 

well I was trying to correct your misconception. GM stated that the car would run as a pure series hybrid. Just before introduction motor trends review showed it to be a parrellel series hybrid like the prius, and GM admitted that they for performance reasons turned on the software to make it a parrellel hybrid. Bellow 30mph it is pure series, above 70mph it is series/parrellel and software has not been disclosed on when the engine is directly connected to the wheels.

In the prius in most cases there are 3 paths. Engine to wheels,

ICE > gears > wheels
ICE > mg1 > electricity > mg2 > gears > wheels
battery > mg2

ofcourse there is also heretical mode where

ICE > mg2 >electricity > mg1

The volt has all these modes except heretical mode. Bellow 30 mph because of software and gearing it always in a pure serial hybrid. The inefficiency therefore vis-a-vis to the prius are likely the software/weight/aerodynamics/rolling resistance engine efficiency. People seemed to be quite upset when gm admitted that the drive train was parellel serial. I think it is a shame because it adds mechancal complexity, but they picked a traction motor that could not accellerate well by itself at high speeds. The general architecture is similar to the prius except the traction motor has eCVT gearing and can run at high speeds without the engine on. Motor trend's opinion is this is superior for a PHEV since it should do the bulk of its mileage without spining the engine. Your opinion man very.

Depending on how you count generations, toyota's gen 1 was japanese only. This would correspond to the volt being domestic only. From the reviews it looks like the volt is ahead of the NHWIIs and almost to the NHW20 level of development. Early adopters are early adopters, and in my estimation they will be fan boys and very happy with their volts, just as early prius drivers were happy with the early prius.

 

The EV Project will be provided 2,600 Volt cars for the program. And 5,700 Leafs.

Check out the project -

The EV Project » Home

FAQ's page talks about gas savings during the project. We could stand to do that:

Apparently the US consumes about 178 million gallons of gasoline ..... per day!

Yikes

Answers.com - How much oil does the US consume

btw, if you want to hear some interesting conversation on adv. tech. cars, find a Leaf forum. Owners have begun taking delivery this past weekend. One new owner was wondering if he'll make it 85 miles home to Ridgecrest, CA in the new car. Interesting, real world talk about EV's. Another took delivery here to Redwood City, CA. Cool.

Sorry, way off topic.

 

Personally, i think the only reason the Volt doesn't act like more of a hybrid (ie use more direct ICE power and probably better MPGs) is to meet the federal requirements of the $7,500 tax credit which requires "It must be propelled to a significant extent by an electric motor which draws electricity from a battery which

• has a capacity of not less than 4 kilowatt hours and
• is capable of being recharged from an external source of electricity."

"

 

Here's a good review from the founder of gm-volt.com

Living With the Chevy Volt: the First 1300 Miles

One thing that was a little disturbing is he estimated spending $99 total over 1,291 miles with gas at $3.34 / gal and elect. at 20 cents / kWh (gas consumption reduced by 75% though).

Assuming 48 MPG which is very doable on my '09 Pri @ $3.34 / gal, I would have spent about $90 total on fuel.

electricity rate inflated?

 

No reason to assume gasoline prices will remain at $3.34!

Here in the UK we pay $7.20 per US gallon, but only 6 pence (9.5 cents) per kWh for off-peak electricity, so it really makes sense for us.

 

The car is not designed to have a child-seat in the centre of the rear bench seat. It just happens that the inner points are spaced about the same distance apart, on the Gen 2, as the spacing between ISOFIX points. However, there is no anchor point for the top tether behind the middle seat. You should not use a child seat without anchoring the top tether.

The Gen 3 Prius has the ISOFIX points further apart, so you can't put the child seat in the centre.

 

Yes. That is about 2x the national average.

 

Wow, I find there some reasons to confirm my view of a Volt-not-ready-therefore-should-not-be-sold...
You have listed as much as everything in a car.

I do not agree. NHW10-11 has hugely different from the other tradicional compact cars, but effectively delivered outstanding FE.
Volt 1 Gen cannot even meet FE of this "early" Priuses, as proved...
So, comparing generations, I must say that Volt 1 is a less-value.

 

GenII has a top teather point for all 3 seats in the rear. There are only latch connectors for the 2 sides seats (I've heard you are not suppsoed to defeat this by using the 2 internal latch points to position a seat in the middle) but no reason you could uses the seat belt in the standard method to attach a car seat in the middle back seat. This was also recommended as the safest spot (despite no latch) from our AAA office where the agent was supposedly a car seat installation specialist.

 

I listed what is different between the volt and the prius. For those same items the volt comes out better than the lexus hs250 and tch. It all depends on your yardstick.

If your only consideration is mpg, the prius nhw-11 did worse than the geo metro. Problems with both are anemic accelleration and poor handling. If you want to improve the volt doesn't do much worse than these cars even if you don't plug it in. Add creature comforts like the ability to play your ipod, nav, comfortable seats, better handling, acceleration, NVH, etc. Now what if you actually bought the car because you wanted a phev and actually pluged it in. How many uncomfotable miles would you need to drive in that nhw-11 prius a day to use less gas, 400 or more? How many people would look twice at either of these cars if they were insane enough to have that kind of commute? What do you think slower and less refined is further up the development food chain?