Consumer Reports on PIP

First, their article is only a preview, and second, writing about kilowatt hours and tiered pricing puts most people to sleep.

 

As journalists, it is career objective to make the "sleepy" topics interesting.

 

Are you asking about the CS mileage or a composite?

I posted the Volt's CS mileage at Consumer Reports most efficient cars list has added the Leaf and Volt | PriusChat but later CR corrected it in some issue.

Their composite figures are at The most fuel-efficient cars.

I found the corrected CS mode figures at Update: Chevrolet Volt sees fuel economy increase.
23 city/41 highway, 32 mpg overall

 

There are a few other advantages of a Volt..
The volt has better accelerations/power, better overall fuel efficiency (thanks to its longer AER), better handeling, allows more driving on cleaner renewable energy

Who is claiming what? You really like make broad unsupported statement. The market is not one thing, it is a multi-segmented group of people, and the car can appeal to many different types.

And in reality, the Prius is the #1 car traded in for the Volt.. so seems to be there is a definite market overlap.
Of course BMW is #4 on the tradein list, so its not all about the efficency.

The "boost" depends on what its compared to. the PiP is a boost compared to a Prius or Corolla, but for the vast majority of drivers, they'll get better MPG in a Volt, and for many spend less on fuel.

Agreed that is the marketing advantage for a PiP.. its a small incremental improvement on a well trusted brand.. easy to say yes.

 

Wow, you're getting 410 MPG! That's awesome.

I'm not a Volt fan, but Chevy DEFINITELY got the battery capacity right, and Toyota got it wrong. I accept that cost and chassis placement were probably the reasons, but in two or three years, when Prius Plug-in has the same battery capacity as Volt, people are going to be VERY happy.

 

Don't forget that petroleum has to be extracted, transported, refined, processed, and transported again before it hits gas stations, using lots and lots of electricity!

 

Prius PHEV gets 95mpg equivalent according to EPA, current Volt gets 92mpg equivalent. I'm not sure what mix of electric-gas driving was used to make this determination, but I am aware that Chevy has made it a priority to reformulate(read "expanding the battery's allowable SOC margins to sacrifice battery life to increase electric range") specifically so that they can make the claim that volt gets more miles per gallon equivalent than the Prius. For model year 2013, the volt will be rated 98mpg equivalent. Just goes to show that Prius is still the benchmark while Chevy is playing catchup.

Chevy Boosts Volt's Mileage; It Now Beats Prius Plug-In Rating - Forbes

 

Let's not imply a one-size-fits-all approach. We already know Toyota strives to offer choice. By the time Li-Ion batteries drop enough in price, having both big & small would make sense. After all, that's the way traditional vehicles have been sold for decades with engine size.

 

Yes 35-40mile per charge on battery is a good number for a lot of people allowing mostly EV for daily use and the ICE fro long trips. 50MPG on ICE would be nice, but more important for me (and many) that it has enough EV for the daily drive. And 40MPG on ICEis still pretty good.

Both cars have their advantages.. Choice for the consumer is good.

 

That is already factored into the wheel-to-well studies which were, unfortunately, done with older data. The Grid is getting cleaner very fast. But with a PHEV one can choose to buy green energy if your local grid is dirty.

The 2011 Volt was 93MPGe, the 2012 94 MPGe, the 2013 will be 98MPGe. This is nothing to do with using more of the battery back, its them tuning the control algorithms. MPGe is a measure of how effectively you use the battery. Overall however on need to consider MPGe on battery and MPG on gas and the ratio of the two.

The new chemistry impacted battery capacity (16.5kWh vs 16kWh), and combined with the efficency gains allowed them add 3 miles to the EPA electric range.

GM did NOT come out saying its better than the Prius PHV, here is the GM press statement
2013 Chevrolet Volt Boosts EV Range to 38 Miles

The press is making the comparison. The original volt was already more fuel efficient overall than the Prius PHV.. so GM is not playing catchup, just improving their systems and extending their lead.

 

per your article:

"engineers have expanded the state-of-charge window to use 10.8 kWh of the total battery energy – up from 10.3 kWh used in the 2012 model. The battery system maintains a buffer to ensure battery life, but that buffer has been reduced."

Sounds like tweaking the SOC. And skipping out on all the improvements they could have made: real back seats, more efficient gas generator, more comfortable cabin, despite claiming

“I always like it when our numbers are bigger — when bigger is better,” Andrew Farah, Volt chief engineer, said in a conference call with reporters.

and instead spending millions for a 3% gain on efficiency so a 2013 volt can just edge out a 2012 Prius plug-in on eMPG rating. Sounds like desperately playing catch up to me.

Save the "extending their lead" crazy talk for when Chevy actually figures out how to start catching up on a more important number that would be nice to be "bigger": sales.

 

No doubt it's a cost/size issue for Toyota, but it would be fantastic if PiP had the EV range of a Volt.

 

Gas consumption (MPG) is interesting but not the electricity consumption? I think both are of interest equally when purchasing a car that uses both fuels. I want to know how much of each fuel were consumed and how long it took to refuel them.

It looks like they translated the kWh into MPGe. Knowing the raw kWh would allow individual to calculate their own cost and recharge time. With MPGe, I wouldn't be able to figure it out. In a sense, gallon equivalent is suggesting that recharging battery is as fast as filling up gasoline. It is not.... to recharge 33.7 kWh (equivalent to a gallon), it would take about 28 hours on a standard charger. Let the consumer decide when and where they can recharge/refuel. I am just saying the raw numbers should be reported at minimum. I hope they do in their review.

 

I was asking for the figure to compare Prius PHV with Volt. From what I gathered from the links you provided, Volt got 61 MPG composite (electricity+gasoline). It should like Prius PHV also got 61 MPG from their preview.

 

NS4 looks promising. We'll have to wait 3 years to find out.

How much interior room are you willing to give up to gain EV range? You may need to sacrifice some gas engine efficiency which may increase the overall carbon footprint.

We'll have to see how NS4 would be balanced out which I think is going to be Gen4 Prius PHV.

 

And somepoint when demanding more EV range you need to take charge time into consideration

 

What is your actual CS MPG?

 

I did not claim they did NOT dip into the battery buffer a bit more.. since they added .5kwH and all of it is in the usable buffer they have clearly done that.

My comment was that digging into the buffer does NOT improve MPGe.. that is about vehicle efficiency not battery size or depth of discharge.

Do you have any citation to support you statement they spend millions on these improvements. If the improvements were mostly chem in the battery, which is the IP/product of LG Chem, they may not have spend much at all on that dimension. Maybe they spent some money on improving efficiency.

Don't know where you got 3% gain.. guess that is a typo or math is not your thing.

Sales are a measure of sales, not quality or efficiency. But since you suggest they are important, the launch of the Pip, which has sold more? Which car was first PHEV? Which has overall higher sales? Which is the highest total selling EV/PHEV in the US? So sorry to tell you but I'm already justified in using the phrase about GN extending their lead in the EV market.

 

Voltstats.net reports my lifetime MPG_CS at 36.31, but that ignores the MM games I play and which are not properly managed by the tracking. Accounting for them I'm at 38.2. It would be higher by my wife accidentally put cheap regular in for one tank and on that tank, which lasted from October to April (so also had the winter cold temps and cold starts /short runs while in town), we were down at 31MPG_CS, which brought down the average a bit. Highway trips at 75mph, I generally get 38-40, if I slow down a bit I can get 43-50 (though most gas trips are to/from the airport so I'm often running late and pushing the speed).

 

Right, I'm sure LG did their research pro bono. We can argue over efficiency all day but this isn't the right forum so let's just agree to disagree. Don't be sorry, I didn't buy my car from a company that designs cars so poorly 400,000 of them could one day choose to end the agony of their existence by self immolation.