Anyone waiting for PIP getting the "itch" to consider a Chevy Volt instead?

So what? He still used grid electricity and the battery continued to discharge in the entire trip.

When he gets home, he'll just have to recharge an hour instead of 3.33 hours for the Volt. See how using some gas saves you time and prevent it from being a 37 MPG garage queen?

150 to 650 gallons in gas saving is not significant for a compact car that use additional 21,857 to 26,857 kWh electricity.

 

At 60 MPH you could get 42-43 miles of battery range in mild weather. At 70 MPH it would drop to around 35 miles. Realistically, most commutes involve 1-3 miles of local roads at lower speeds before entering the highway and many times there are stretches on the highway that are at least somewhat congested and moving slower than 70.

I expect many people can commute to work entirely on battery in the Volt even when driving on the highway and even when using some amount of climate controls.

 

Your numbers are all over the place. Charging one hour vs. 3.3 after some trip for how many miles? 26,857 kWh additional electricity versus the PiP under what assumptions? I have no idea what you are actually claiming.

Show your math.

 

No worries I just dislike factual inaccuracies, it wasn't personal. When I lived there it was 70/65 everywhere except I-10 to el paso and other slower spots. So I wasn't sure where the 75 came from. But for all I know they changed the default as well.

 

Uh, no. How is time saved?

- if he's staying home for the next 4 hours, it's completely irrelevant, the Volt's going to be fully charged anyway
- if the goal is to take a 13-15 mile gas free trip as soon as possible, you have to charge the PHV for an hour, whereas the Volt, still having some 30+ miles left, you just go right away.
-don't get your "garage queen" comment. 37 MPG is only horrible in the minds of Prius super-fans. It's way better than most other cars on the road. While Volt owners try to avoid it as much as possible, it's not so horrible that we are going to refuse to use it when necessary, relegating the car to parked+charging status. If we thought 37 MPG was too horrible to contemplate, we'd have bought Leafs!

There's no requirement that the Volt be fully charged before you can leave. You can just go any time. Eventually one has to go home and sleep, and any extra charging time is made up then. It is not at all a burden, you were going to be home anyway, you aren't being prevented from going anywhere.

Your "charging time" arguments never make any sense at all. A smaller battery doesn't save you time. A larger battery is better able to take advantage of the time a car is going to be spent idly parked (which is the entire night, for most people).

The smaller battery is a cost/space advantage. It is not a time advantage.

 

Please explain why you consider the logic faulty. usbseawolf2000 said
"So What? Prius PHV will continue to use the grid battery charge until it runs out, whether the gas engine come on or not."


The dangling modifier "whether the gas..." is modifying the Prius PHV.. the sentence is equivalent to So What?. Whether the gas engine come on or not, the Prius PHV will continue to use the grid battery charge until it runs out. . In the context of usb's response to Jeff the use of So What? Is ment to imply that it the blended model is equally efficient, which it is not.

The example showed that it does not use grid battery until it runs out (i.e runs out of grid energy.) The trip example I gave could be done using only grid energy and yet the PHV uses gas for that trip. Thus it did not use grid energy "until it runs out".. because it saved grid energy in reserve, returning home with grid energy, while it uses gas. If it had used more grid energy, and less gas, it may have been able to complete the trips and "run out".

If the PHV was smart enough to use gas to save energy only when it knew that it would exhaust all grid energy before it returned home, I'd be happy to say the statement was correct. In such a case i would agree that in that case for the PHV was correct to blend as that would be more efficient for it. However, it was not more efficient to blend when the car returns home with excess grid charge.

USBs point was that it was being efficient since it was continuing to use the energy even if it used the gas engine. The faulty logic of the implied efficiency is better seen if you consider what would happen if a PHV used only .01% of the grid charge per mile, so that it did not use a full grid unless it was driven 1000 miles.

If one replaces "Prius PHV", with Volt, the statement would be generally true because the Volt use grid energy until it runs out of grid energy, then use the engine. (Though its is not true when the Volt runs to use the ICE as a heater.. which annoys me, but that is a different issue). It may return home with grid energy from some trips, but it will keep using just grid energy until it runs out.

 

The implication that usbseawolf2000 stated the blended model is equally efficient is just that, an implication. It was not what he stated, which is that the Prius Plug-in will continue to use grid power even if the the ICE turns on. Certainly, not all of the motive power in such a situation comes from grid power.

No, the driver could easily make the trip using EV only by keeping at 62 mph or below and not accelerating aggressively. As I stated before, losing a few seconds driving at 62 mph (assuming it is outside city limits and the limit is 65 mph, not 55 mph in city limits) for one freeway exit is a perfectly acceptable tradeoff for someone concerned with conserving gas. Said person would also not be accelerating aggressively and could easily stay in EV.

I suppose you could argue that the Volt would save gas for a more aggressive driver in such a scenario, but I personally could care less about that. In such a scenario, the Volt has a larger battery which allows more power to be drawn for more aggressive acceleration and higher EV top speed, but it has nothing to do with how smart the car is.

I think "way better than most other cars on the road" is overstating it. For a fair comparison, the Volt should be compared to cars of the same class and year. Compared to compact class cars of the same year, the Volt is only a little better than than the average high MPG compact car.

The charging time argument is the time it takes to charge to drive an equivalent number of EV miles. The Volt uses 0.369 kWh/mi while the Prius Plug-in uses somewhere between 0.200-0.300 kWh/mi, so a Prius Plug-in does indeed charge more quickly per EV mile.

 

I don't think you have to be a purist to want to NOT contribute to the balance of trade deficit by buying oil from people who hate us and fund terrorism. And while there might (?) be places where electricity is as dirty as a Prius, there are places where electricity is considerably cleaner. Mine is nearly 100% hydro, with a bit of wind in the mix.

I think the Volt is a poor design. But when it's running on electricity, and for someone whose driving habits avoid running the ICE most of the time, is it better for the environment and the nation. I burn gas for long trips, where the only alternative is to say home (I'm not THAT much of an environmentalist) but when I'm not on the road, electricity is SO much better, for the environment and the nation, that there's no contest.

Mostly I agree with you that the PiP is, overall, a better car than the Volt. But for anyone that can really keep their Volt from running the ICE, then it's the better choice. (Of course, for that person, the Leaf is better yet.)

Bottom line: The PiP on gas is better than the Volt on gas; but the Volt has a bigger battery and can therefore go farther on electricity before it has to burn gas. Give the PiP a Volt-size battery and it'll be no contest.

 

Pretty outrageous statement coming from someone who's solution to beat the Volt costs about $120,000.

If adding a larger, Volt-size battery to gain real "EV-ish" range would have been feasible, they would have done it.

 

The volt is a very nice design actually. If a person looks at the simulations from ANL it is actually quite interesting to project the CS mpg out to the volt size instead of 25 miles which is where they end blended mode and go to a series design, which the volt is not.

 

Toyota could have put in a bigger pack, and expended its EV range. I believe it would also need re-gearing and/or a bigger EV motor to be able to sustain higher speed EV.

Engineering wise, Toyota could have done it.. years ago. And if they did I'd probably be driving one. They seem have failed with innovators dilemma, following the classic "we are ahead with our past innovation, so no need to innovate now" It was a business decision and gave GM a window to catch up. The limits of the PiP were a bit disappointing but I would not count Toyota out. They have the HV market mindshare and a long history fo quality.

Both the PiP and the Volt are great cars, aimed at slightly different segments. Both companies have great engineering ability, its all about what they choose to do. The next year or two should be quite interesting.

 

Both the PiP and volt are great options but neither is add good as 100% EV.

rationalize range cost or anything else but fact is gas is bad. Sure better gas mileage is nice but when you get right down to it a 10 mpg improvement sounds good but when talking about 100 million cars it simply is not enough

Now electric is the right choice but might not be the right time for some

In a Volt that gets 400 miles per gallon might be ok for now but it still ain't good enough

As for aLeaf, Tesla or what have you, you can't breast 100%

 

Well a Tesla might be work able as an EV if I could afford it.

The Leafs range is too limited for many people. I could not do trips to the airport or my condo in a Leaf. You are relatiely uncommon with a Leaf + Prius. For others that push the Leaf, if they drive another family or rental ICE for longer trips, then its not saving gas. If an EV owner drives trips on something getting < 40mpg highway then a Volt or Prius PHV might reduce your total gas usage overall. If there was an affordable awd CUV/SUV EV it might be different but second vehicles often have other constraints for which there is no EV solution.

Pure EVs require too much compromise for me and for many people until the charging infrastructure is deployed. Maybe in some cities a BEV will work, but in much of the country its not viable as the only car or in a two family setting without a Prius or 40mpg second as the primary "trip" car.

 

Since when is development and rollout of lithium batteries not innovative?

And what about Camry & Highlander, both quite different from Prius?

Cost reduction doesn't come without a lot of effort either.
.

 

GHG emission is a very important aspect of the environment, and on US national average the volt emits more than the regular Prius and the Prius PHV will emit less (even if we add the upstream emissions of both fuels).
We should not ignore the big picture, electricity must become much much cleaner before the Volt can be regarded as clean as the Prius PHV.

 

Maybe that is true in Israel, but you are certainly incorrect in many US locations which actually have very clean energy. We don't charge vehicles with the US national average mix. We charge them with electricity where we live.

 

Your local grid maybe cleaner than average (I don't know) and your fellow American's local grid may be dirtier, that's what averages are for. We must not ignore the big picture and it's not in favour of the Volt right now.

 

I've never advocated the Tesla Roadster as "the solution" to beat the Volt. Read my past posts. I've advocated the Leaf. In my case, I was unable to get a Leaf, and I can afford the Tesla. (The value of my Tesla plus my house is probably less than the value of Prius + house of many people reading this who feel the Tesla is too expensive. I made the choice to buy a less expensive house so I could afford other things.)

In fact, for four years "my solution" was a little Zap Xebra, at a base price of $10,500 plus some aftermarket improvements.

We cannot ignore regional differences. There may be places where electricity is dirtier than gas (though keep in mind that an EV uses roughly half the energy of a Prius). But there are places, such as California, where electricity is far cleaner than gas. And where I live, my electricity has zero GHG, since my electricity comes from hydro.

So we can electrify transportation in those areas where electricity is clean, and concentrate on cleaning up the grid in other areas. Note also, that a gas car gets dirtier with age as it wears out, while an EV gets cleaner with age as the grid is constantly being made cleaner.

And the more money we send overseas for oil, the less we have for building sustainable, clean energy. EVs use domestic energy, thus helping to reduce the balance of trade deficit. Petroleum also has critical uses in chemicals and pharmaceuticals. But burning it all as fast as we can we're leaving future generations up a creek without a paddle. EVs conserve a critical resource. There are far more benefits to EVs than just GHG reduction.

 

Daniel,
Of course there are other aspects where EVs have benefits (Volt is not EV).
My post was relating to the GHG issue only, as response to posters (including you) stating that Volt is better for the environment than Prius PHV. It is not.

 

You have no idea if that is true. You would have to determine where each volt is sold and how it is driven before you could make such an assertion. Basically you are making stuff up, which is fine, but sort of silly.