Volt owners tell us they use even less gas than we do [Consumer Reports]

The "We" there is Consumer reports..

I find it funny they use a few readers comments rahter than the voltstats.net data which is must more statistically relevant.
I guess it makes their readers feel good to be listened to and cited.

At least they gave the prius a mention via

Of course, if you make long trips and cannot charge, why buy a plugin. Then again looking at voltstats there are some that must be in that category..

 

In response to your signature commentary on price/gal, green energy, etc.

Well "green" electric user...... Do you know where your electric supply is generated and what green source of energy is used to produce that electricity?

Also..... Please share with me the price you pay per kilowatt hour.

How many hours of charging time was required? How far did you drive on each charge? How many charging stations were on your route? (or did you drive these 5919 miles to and from work?)

I am a heavy distance driver and really need for one of you Volt folks to explain, and show proof, that you can drive from NY to Kentucky without needing a charge. If you need a charge.....how many would you need?

 

Not sure what you mean by "proof". The Volt has a gas tank. You can drive it indefinitely (with stops for filling the gas tank) without charging. In fact you could never plug it in and it would drive around (once again, with gas) fine. If you are a long distance driver the Prius will get better gas mileage on those long trips. All users needs vary. For me the Volt has been working very nicely on my 44 mile round trip commute every day. If I drove from NY to KY every day it wouldn't be the best choice.

 

What is your actual gas mileage (w/o accessing electric)? A Prius can go into Power Mode to do an actual comparison so I wonder what Volt gas only mileage is?

Also.......do you know where your green energy is coming from?

 

Consumer Reports assumes 32 MPG for the Volt, and 44 MPG for the Prius when on gas, so for longer commutes, the Prius can be cheaper even if you CAN recharge each. Or perhaps your weekday commute is pure electric in both, and you drive to the mountains for skiing each weekend, that intersperses plug in goodness with long distances. That said, as a single occupant people mover, there are many scenarios that the Volt (and Leaf) excells at.

 

I was, it is harder to out MPG a Volt with the normal Prius Liftback.

 

I think this was directed to me so I'll answer the first question since it relates to the thread topic. My actual gas only mileage is 36.8 mpg (out of 3657 miles on the car 604 have been gas only), however that's only one person. As Dr. I says above, voltstats.net has the data from a lot of Volt drivers. Take a look at that if you're interested in a better sample size.

 

The more important answer to etobia.. related to the actual point of this thread and the CR article.. is that the ICE only MPG it is largely irrelevant. What would your overall fuel saving have been if the car got 48MPG on ICE instead of 36.8? As I compute it given your data, the difference would have been about 16.413 gallons at 36.8 and would be 12.583 at 48mpg for a difference of 3.83 gallons of gas over the 3657 miles.. that would be average saving of
.0010 gallons per mile.


The CR report is really about how much variation there can be in a EREV. The large "EV" factor make the overall efficiency of the ICE far less important, moving the Volt ICE from your 36.8 to 48 MPG in CS_mode would only be saving one one-thousandth of a gallon per mile, in your case. How much added costs is that worth?

 

My 2011 Volt burns gas at the rate of 45-47 mpg after it warms up (after the first 5 miles or so) when I'm driving 55-57 mph on the highway in commute traffic. At 60 mph I get 42-44 mpg. At 65 mph I get 40-42 mpg.

At speeds under 62 mph or so, the Volt slowly charges the battery and then shuts down the gas engine and runs off the battery for 2-3 miles before repeating that cycle so the instantaneous mpg while the engine is actually running looks slightly worse.

 

I'm settling in to my new commute between San Francisco and Silicon Valley. I live on a bit of a hill so there is an elevation drop driving to work and a gain on the last part of the drive home.

Yesterday, starting with a full overnight charge, I drove the 45 miles to work and had 5 or so miles of remaining charge left. After a full recharge at work I drove 43.5 miles back home before starting up the gas engine near the top of a hill and then it was mostly downhill for the remaining 2 miles home.

I used a total of 0.03 gallons of gas over the full 91 mile trip which is around 3,000 mpg. Due to the Volt's gasoline use reporting granularity it might have used nearly as much as 0.06 so, worst case, I got 1,500 total mpg.