Volt Sales Figures

You have been saying it stupidly in your signature with the electric miles divided by gallon of gasoline.

Never mind the 500 megawatts that your Volt consumed, you only focused on the gallons saved. So, I pointed out the gallons saved by the Prius family. Why such a response if all you care about is gallons saved?

"One" is not a strength. Prius thrives on "many". You can focus on singularity all you want. In the big picture, Prii saves more gasoline than Volts due to the sheer number made possible by affordability and choice.

Saving gasoline without any external energy is the greatest saving of all. Volt replaces gasoline with energy from the plug. That's not really saving, simply a replacing trick with different fuel. A gallon saved without electricity is greater than a gallon substituted with electricity. I don't care if the electricity is from renewable source, you are still taking away energy from nature.

PiP has the ability to save gas (with 49 MPG) and it can also trade gasoline with some electricity, but only when it makes sense without compromises. It has the best of both worlds.

So yes, sales matter and Volt is at 1 to 11 disadvantage.

 

How can something so simple be so confusing?

The comparison is to: RECENT SALES

Take December. 17,004 Prius were purchased. Compare that to the 1,529 Volts plus 15,475 of the next most efficient GM vehicle purchased.
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Compare to the same class non-hybrid. Volt is saving gas over a compact non-hybrid. I would say Prius V saves more gas over with the potential of replacing a small SUV or crossover, without requiring a plug (external energy).

Hybrids should be bothered because the gas saving over the non-hybrid is worth it. Gasoline saved by a compact Volt over a compact Prius c would be so tiny,yet requires a lot of electricity. Why bother beyond that diminishing return? The only good reason is energy independence but that doesn't hold much weight because Prius c is just good enough for that purpose.

The sales volume difference was due to a decade of GM not coming up with a Prius competitor. They were ahead with the 80 MPG GM Precept hybrid.

 

That's right! I forgot about how big Prius V was. Both Volt & Cruze are clearly in a smaller class.
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According to that site, Volt averaged 35 MPG when using gas. It'll use more gas per gas mile.

Volt substituted the rest of the miles with electricity.

Substitution != Saved

 

Remember in 2004 when Prius was called a "stop gap" because GM was going to start mainstream production of fuel-cell vehicles in 2010?

Electricity was going to be used to create hydrogen so that hydrogen could later be converted to electricity for propelling a vehicle. That was going to end our dependence on gas... even though a fossil fuel would be used to create the electricity.

Now, we just don't mention the electricity used.

Ugh!
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Oh I just have a a fuely image as part of my signature. I realize that may annoy your sensor of logic, but they define miles per gallon by miles travel and divide by gallons used. You can talk to them how they do their computations.

My comment was because your statement made little sense, and seemed to focus on the Volt as a regular car not a PHEV. I did not even consider the alternative interpretation that John1701a suggested. Your grammar appears to be almost as weak as your logic.

Given what john says you meant (you've never clarified), the prius will "save" more gas than the Volt for many years as the larger base of old technology wins. But by one your logic, one could have said that the Chevy S10 pickup saved more gas in 2001-2003 than the Prius Family, as there were way more of them and they were more efficient than full sized Chevy Pickups. And by your implications Totoyta should have abandoned the Prius as its was not saving as much! Wrong. Old technology needs to make way for the better new technology. And it takes a while for sales to catchup. Your statement about family size does not make the prius family better, it makes it older.

The Volt's total energy usage is lower that a Prius! Using a Prius is taking more energy away from Nature, renewal or not. My MPGe, i.e. miles total energy equivalent of a gallon of gas (i.e. including all electricity and gas used since end of Oct). is 85MPGe. That is 70% more efficient than your precious Prius.

If you focus on energy, then its total energy usage is what matters, not just what the car uses when its used it cheaper and cleaner power source. We'll have to see what the range of blended or AER is for the PiP. Without that one cannot make statements about the relative energy usage of the PiP and the Volt. And given that one still needs to know the actual usage patterns. In Japan, where the average driver does < 12miles a day. In the US where there is a lot of driving > 12 and < 40 we'll have to see how well the PiP really does.

If you want to use facts and logic I'll listen/discuss. However, you just spout your illogical "beliefs" without justification. When you get your Pip delivering 85MPGe over 1400 miles, I'll reconsider my position of which is more efficient. And I'm big enough to admit it if I'm wrong. Until then, you have only your warped opinion about efficiency.

Yes its nice that Toyota is following the GM's Volt lead and finally introducing a Plug In Hybrid. PHEV's are the best of both worlds ;-)

 

If the "substitution" is more efficient than it is a savings.

The Volt gets approximately 93MPGe when running on electricity and since it does that 70% of the time (based on the site data) the total energy usage is way better than a prius.

There is a reason that EPA ranked the Volt the most fuel efficient car with an engine. (A leaf or iMev is more efficient as they only use electricity and get 99 and 101 MPGe respectively. However they force owners to use a second car for long trips, which the EPA does not consider).

 

It is your comprehension (or the lack of). Go back and read my post #394, what I was replying to. That should give you a hint.

 

Not if you compare well to wheel, the entire effiency.

Sure EV is superior for plug to wheel (what EPA measures). However, electricity generation is inferior to gasoline for well to plug/pump.

Where is the saving if you are substituting one fuel with another? This is why gallons saving without a plug is preferable.

 

Your post said

Lucky for you, I teach technical writing so can help you with the grammer here.

In that sentence the modifier "without a plug" is associated with the object of the sentence "the Volt" (and not the subject "the Prius Family".)

Thus what you said in post #394 was

P is saving more gas than V

where P = the Prius Family
and V = Volt without a plug.

And my response was a comparison to the Volt without a Plug is silly.

But this is not really helping anyone undertand either the Volt or the Prius so I'm done playing grammer games.

Funny how you picked on that part but ignored the larger part of my response on actual efficiency.

My argument was that, per car real world usage, the Volt is overall far more efficient than a Prius and saves more gas and overall more energy.




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Why are we fighting over this kind of numbers? Along the same logic, don't we need to subtract all the years of Prius fleet sales? (All the taxi and local/federal governmental fleets ...simply because Prius is best selling hybrids also would easily cause Prius to have most total fleet sales over the years)

 

Your arguments are based faulty logic. You have to be very careful using "averages" unless you goal is to compare averages. Also have to be very careful what your study is measuring.


Making your argument against EV-based power for a vehichle using
"Wells to wheels" studies that assume an average energy mix is like saying diesels cars are better than gas because, on average, diesel cars get better fuel economy than the average gas-based car. By your logic, there is no point in substituting one gas car (say driving a Prius) for another because, on average, a diesel would be better.

However, you have a choice in what car you drive, so average US efficiency does not matter to you. You are choosing your car, not the average. The prius is more efficient than most gas or diesel cars, so you made a better choice, even if on average the diesel would be better.

Same is true with wells-to-wheels. I have a choice i where I get my electricity so the average US mix does not matter to me or my arguments. If I choose to buy renewable energy, which I do, your argument about wells-to-wheels using an average mix does not apply. Furthermore, not only am I driving greener, I'm helping to clean up the US grid by supporting renewable electricity. And lots of Volt owers are paying extra for renewable, hydro or solar.

You, however, have little to no choice in where you get your gas. In NY, its almost all generated from imported crude!

 

But this is again that by burning gasoline that otherwise could be saved can't really count as gallon saved. Energy/electricity takes to refine of a gallon of gasoline is enough to power current generation of EVs 40 miles...http://www.plugincars.com/extend-ev-tax-credits-why-washington-post-editorial-team-wrong-111313.html

 

In this post averages did matter to you...

 

Don't know how the sytem works in your area, are you buying renawable energy for all your home needs or can you buy just for the Volt needs?

 

Not fighting, just clarifying the misleading information. I think Edmunds summed it up.

“The story that GM gave us that Volt sales were constrained by supply doesn’t hit the nail on the head. It was constrained by demand,†said Jeremy Anwyl, vice chairman of Edmunds.com, an automotive research website based in Santa Monica, California. “GM asked the dealers to sell the demonstration models but it didn’t seem to make a difference.â€

Source

 

That is an Odd idea, that someone would buy renewable just for the car.

We buy renewable energy for our whole house, and we do a lot of conservation as well. Our 2700.st.ft. 4bed/3b house + Volt used ~450kWh last month and we pay ~$65 for renewable energy.
The car used about 207kWr (at the night time rage which is by far the cheapest), costing about $14, including the car's share of infrastructure/delivery and other fees). Compared to last Nov/Dec, when we did not have the Volt, our total bil was $9 higher. (The switch to TODU also reduced out other costs).

 

I am not in charge of an automotive review site so it's hard for me to command on the grand scheme. But this is what happened when I tried to negotiate with local dealers after I learned the report that there are ample supplies of Volts now...
For three dealers near me that I tried to talk them down in pricing, two of them simply won’t budge. They are still holding on to the belief that sooner or later someone would come by and pay what their reasonable demand of MSRP. Even as one of the cars has been sitting there since September, some dealers just don’t want to sell them off the showroom. And there is another dealer in DFW area even refuse to negociate on the demo they got... And amazingly, one of the before mentioned 2012 was actually sold about a week after I decided to go with a more intelligent dealer out of area for my purchase. What can I say? That the dealer that refused to discount actually earned more from some other guy? In the end that dealers insistence paid off for him…

 

There is nothing wrong with substituting with another source of energy as long as the amount used is reported.

BEV owners keep track of kWh used because electricity is the only fuel it uses.

The problem is with the Volt owners hiding the usage of their primary fuel (electricity). It is not really the owner's fault. GM purposely designed it so the exact kWh usage is hard to get.