Volt owners averaged 1000 miles between fill-ups in March

It's wide enough but not long enough to close the hatch.

It will fit 2 275/40-18 and 2 215/45-18 tires mounted on 18X10 and 18X7.5 wheels, respectively, with room for at least one more, which was a surprise. Of course, my wagon will fit two full sets.

 

That's your department. Why should I care? You guys are the ones complaining about people posting outlandish "MPG" numbers w/o including electric usage. The rest of us can figure out that it was using electricity rather than magic beans even if Mr Volt Enthusiast isn't posting kWh to two significant digits.

Anyway, it struck me as hypocritical that both you and usb posted about great PHV MPG numbers w/o any mention of tracking electricity. I wanted clarification.


Essentials of a conversation I had three times today (I was at a party):
"You got a Volt. No way. How do you like it?"
"Oh, it's great. blah blah blah I haven't put gas in it for the last 1600 miles."
"Nice. How much electricity is it using?"
"About 12kWh to go 40 miles. That's about $2 in NJ."

It turns out people are not stupid.

 

It took me 3 seconds to Google the quote. It was a tag on a video that included info about his electricity cost. His previous post mentioned electricity cost. Two posts before, he mentioned his total electricity cost to date.

Lame, John.

VoltFanSite

 

You had me up to that final sentence. Shall I point out the hype of the past, perhaps starting with the "230 MPG" advertising campaign?
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No, actually it wasn't. That was a comment posted at the bottom of a published article. I have no doubt other references with greater detail were available though. Google will return multiple hits.
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While it is growing, the market share of hybrids is 3% maybe 4% by now. Which leaves >90% is still traditional cars. The Prius has made inroads, but not everyone wants one. Japan is a different culture and marketplace than the US.

Now, more people are interested hybrids and even EVs. So I welcome new models, even flawed pricey ones. They are one more choice that may keep another FSP off the road.

 

Someone needs a history refresher. There are many examples of half-hearted efforts in the past that hampered good intentions.

The most obvious example is Two-Mode. It most definitely falls into the "flawed pricey" category. 3.5 years later, it still does with no hope in sight.

A welcome improvement we had hope would come from Volt would be topics just like this, where actual consumption is addressed... gallons, kWh, and distance... because the low 20's for MPG from Two-Mode offers is a joke. Supposedly, it was far more scalable than HSD and Ford's system, yet still nothing is planned to compete with HSD or Ford's system.

Where does that leave us with Volt? Will "1000 miles between fill-ups" type reports become the selling point, enough to overcome the huge upfront premium it requires?
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I fill up every 500 miles or so, the a Volt would save me about 5 minutes a month. Figure $500 a month to own ...

People with salaries of $6000/hour can justify a Volt by time value of money calculations. Is this really the best GM can do to market this car ?

 

Read my post again. I was calculating the cost of Prius PHV and included the cost of electricity as well.

I was clearly not bragging how high the MPG it will get in term of fuel economy.

 

Electric costs less than gas so you'd have additional fuel savings as well (about $20 a month). That is not to say anyone should buy a Volt to try to save money, but you would spend less on transportation fuel and avoid buying about 150 gallons a year of gasoline.

 

This is a gigantic ymmv. Over the past 4 years or so petrol has ranged from $2-4 a gallon, and electricity prices range in the US from 6 - 18 cents a kwh. I do not know what the energy consumption in a Volt would be in my hands, but year round I average about 60 mpg in our Prius. This time of year I average around 68 mpg.

Volt consumption can easily average out to 2.5 miles/kwh in locales with real winters (if not worse,) so breakeven fuel costs if electricity ranges from 12 - 18 cents for me would be $2.88 - $4.32 a gallon.

This is before taking into account ~ *70% higher petrol costs in the Volt per mile compared to a Prius.

* Premium is 6% more expensive than regular, so I travel 63.6 MPG compared to 37 MPG in the Volt.

I know I am comparing Volt EPA to my personal drive cycle, but EPA's lack of winter performance data in an EV makes a Volt EPA to Prius EPA comparo quite misleading.

 

What do the batteries cost? $12-13K? Figure that into the cost of running the car.
It's more than just mpg. It's cost per mile that's important. And the electrical cost is high.

 

Oh .. we know we are picking nits here, and ignoring the obvious

A simpler way to estimate TCO/mile is to start with a monthly charge of about $500 for a lease to drive 1000 miles. That is 50 cents an EV mile in a favorable scenario. Add ~ 4 - 8 cents a mile for the electricity and you end up with 54 - 58 cents an EV mile.

When petrol hits US$ 6/gallon I'll be paying 10 cents a mile. If petrol was $60 a gallon Volt fans would have a personal finance argument that I should park my Prius and go buy a Volt -- but still lose because of GM's reliability record.

 

We've been over this ad nauseum, comparing monthly costs from a new car to an old used one. IF you want to talk about a purchasing decision you need to compare the TCO of the 2 new models you're comparing, and in my opinion it should be comparably equipped.

A comparably equipped Prius would have cost me $32,000. Tell me what a Toyota lease on that car would have cost me and compare that, the Volt still may not win but lets keep it real.

 

If we're still talking about whether gas is cheaper than electrons...

I've been getting better than EPA on my gas consumption, but lets say EPA is right and the Volt is 36 kwh/ 100 mile, my local rate is 11 cents per kwh, which I believe is also the national average, so $3.96. That price is pretty much the going rate for a gallon of gas now, so when the average fuel consumption of your prius is over 100 mpg, then you're gas is cheaper than my electric, at 68 mpg, it is not.

 

Really? You mean there were more than two people who thought that meant the car would get 230MPG of gasoline w/o some commensurate use of electricity? I know I personally chuckled to myself about it. Silly suits.

I just assumed it came out of a test on the EPA drive cycle started w/a full battery. Further, I suspect that the EPA told someone "sure, we're just going to use our standard test for you guys", otherwise they never would have made the claim.


Separately, I have something that I've been very curious about. Perhaps this is best done in a different thread but why is the Leaf getting such a pass on "lies"? Directly from the mouth of Hidetoshi Kadota, the chief engineer on the Leaf:

Then the EPA comes out with SEVENTY-THREE miles rating, a drop of 27% (the Volt's EPA EV range is 35, 12% below the "40 miles" everyone threw around. BUT WAIT, there's more! With the cars actually in hand, owners are being given the "recommendation" to only charge to 80% capacity! ZING! Another 20% off! Down to 59 miles?

GM kept throwing around 40, which I am on track to get every single day, and gets excoriated for coming in at 35, with lows of 25 in mid-winter. Leaf takes a 27% haircut in range, isn't release in any actual cold states, and gets a pass. Their range estimation is so bad that they've already had a firmware update and people have been left stranded. What's the story?

Where's the outrage? You (john) have ONE post on the Leaf subform and 278 posts on this one.

 

The initial ranges were announced before the EPA determined a testing procedure.
Since then, announced EV ranges have been cut back: Focus BEV, 100 to 80 and Prius PHV 14 to 13.

 

I did finally end up buying gas on Sunday, 7.5 gallons, went 1053 miles on that. thats me second tank in a row to get over 1000 miles.

My electric bill did go up $4 a month over the same time frame.

 

Your electricity bill does not say much about the Volt consumption.

Isn't there a way to check how much electricity the charger used?

There may be cases when you charge it outside home. In that case, your charger won't be able to track the electricity consumption.

Too bad Volt doesn't track the amount of electricity it uses.

 

I agree, you can't ignore the cost of electricity and the cost of batteries.

I do wonder why California seems to be the jumping off for all-electric vehcile sales? Doesn't this state have "rolling brown-outs" every summer? How will that affect the re-charging of these vehicles?

 

... only 18 cents? we can be tapped for almost 2X that much for electricity in parts of CA - where the majority of drivers are located. That's why so many of us EV drivers go solar.

As for rolling brownouts, that's invariably caused by huge power draws from window & central AC units on hot summer days. The amount of wattage pulled for EV charging is only a fraction of the amount of what most air conditioners draw. Fact is, the amount of wasted power from running an older SEER rated heat pump can easily charge an EV ... just by using the power difference between old versus new systems. Don't forget ... if we switch enough cars over to EV's, we'll be saving electric draw that'd otherwise be running gas refineries.


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