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TGB4: 52 mpg HV, 95 mpg total

Discussion in 'Chevrolet Volt' started by Jeff N, Jun 16, 2013.

  1. Jeff N

    Jeff N The answer is 0042

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    I gathered my stats and calculated the numbers for my drive down from San Francisco to Riverside for the PriusChat TGB4 conference in my 2011 Volt. I'll do the same for the trip back.

    I stopped to visit a friend from college along the way down so I left on Thursday and had a leisurely drive with multiple charging opportunities.

    I started off early in the morning with a full overnight charge at home and added partial charges during breakfast in Mountain View and an early lunch in Campbell where I also tended to some work-related email while visiting Starbucks there.

    I then drove all the way down to San Luis Obispo on 101 at 56 mph in the slow lane on the cruise control and got a SLO full charge during a dinner layover. Nice town. I stayed overnight in the beach town of Carpinteria and got a full charge in the morning at the Amtrak station a short distance from my motel.

    Another pleasant drive to Santa Monica was interrupted by the usual LA freeway (did I say freeway?, I meant stop and go) traffic. After visiting a friend during lunch I stopped off downtown at the #7 garage for a charge but all of the spaces were full even though 2 of the charging stations were unused. Some people just park their plugin cars without actually plugging in.

    One spot was ICE'd by a Lexus hybrid SUV. After waiting for a few minutes for an accessible charging space to open up I had a brief "conversation" with the SUV owner who returned as I was taking a photo of his car for possible posting to iceshaming.tumblr.com. :)

    After getting to the hotel in Riverside I crunched the numbers:

    517.6 total miles
    282.5 Total miles HV
    235.1 total miles EV
    54.6% HV, 45.4% EV

    5.464 gallons gasoline
    51.7 mpg HV
    94.7 total mpg

    I don't have the kWh efficiency yet but will gather that up from OnStar later. It is likely to be around 260 Wh per mile. The gas consumption is from the Volt display but that is usually accurate to within 1% on my car.
     
    #1 Jeff N, Jun 16, 2013
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  2. dbcassidy

    dbcassidy Toyota Hybrid Nation, 8 Million Strong

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    Nice, if you have the time for a leisurely drive and the time for multiple recharges along the way . If that works for you, that's fine. However, the multiple recharges and the TIME WAITING for the recharge gets old and tired real quick.

    The general public does not have the patience nor the time to wait around for all these recharges to occur. They want it now, quicker than quick - part of the instant gradification, gotta have it now mentality.

    It would be a hell of a re-education to get the public to accept spending more of their personal time waiting for a full recharge. With gas, its: fill UP and go. It really does not get any easier than that.

    When battery development capacity equals or exceeds the total miles that can be driven by the energy from a full tank of gas, then you have a serious contender. Right now, EV are consigned to short daily driving, exception is the Tesla Model S.

    DBCassidy
     
    #2 dbcassidy, Jun 16, 2013
  3. jhinsc

    jhinsc Senior Member

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    Agree with dbcassidy. While it's worthwhile effort to save gas and use lower cost electricity, there is a time value too that's not calculated. My time is worth a lot more than the savings produced by multiple stops to charge up. Although it appeared JeffN planned his trip well with multiple stops and visiting friends, most people would not turn a trip from San Franciso to Riverside into a multiple day trip each way. If you divide the extra time it took to make the trip by the savings produced from plugging in, you will see the value that some place on their time - not very high. In JeffN's case, he purposely planned his trip to enjoy visits with friends, but exclusive of his visit with friends, would he have traveled just as slowly in a non-hybrid/plug-in?
     
    #3 jhinsc, Jun 16, 2013
  4. Jeff N

    Jeff N The answer is 0042

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    I understand what your saying and you correctly understood that I'm on a relaxing low-key vacation. That said, I certainly would appreciate an option for faster charging when I'm away from home. 32A instead of 16A would have changed some partial charges into complete ones.

    I'm heading back home a bit quicker so it will be largely HV mode.
     
    #4 Jeff N, Jun 16, 2013
  5. F8L

    F8L Protecting Habitat & AG Lands

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    What was the result of your return trip?

    You know. Part of the benefit of EV use and charging is spending more quality time in various locations (or with friends/family) and possibly spending money. That can really benefit local economics in smaller towns with charging infrastructure.
     
    #5 F8L, Jun 26, 2013
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  6. Jeff N

    Jeff N The answer is 0042

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    Sorry, I've been meaning to finish tabulating the numbers but I've been too damn busy since I got back. I found a minor 10-mile discrepancy in my numbers that I was going to track down...

    I ran into strong afternoon headwinds on the last 150 or so miles that resulted in 42-43 mpg during that segment and dragged down my overall numbers.

    Here are numbers I have:

    Total round trip

    15.467 gallons gas
    740.1 miles HV
    47.85 mpg HV

    1039.5 total miles
    309.0 EV miles
    730.5 miles HV?
    67.21 total mpg

    As you can see, the HV miles are off by 10.5 miles between the first and second groups of numbers. I'm not sure which is correct without some forensic accounting but it doesn't make more than about 0.5 mpg difference on HV.
     
    #6 Jeff N, Jun 26, 2013
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  7. F8L

    F8L Protecting Habitat & AG Lands

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    Aye, 10 miles wouldn't make much of a difference with such a high total of miles. :)

    Good job! I'm glad you came down.
     
    #7 F8L, Jun 26, 2013
  8. cwerdna

    cwerdna Senior Member

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    Interesting... I didn't know of that tumblr page (not that I use tumblr at all). People were posting their pics of shame at My Nissan Leaf Forum • View topic - ICED - Images of Offending Vehicles Board of Shame.
     
    #8 cwerdna, Jun 27, 2013
  9. Smurf1000

    Smurf1000 Junior Member

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    At least you have a Volt, which makes faster charging simply "something that would be nice" as opposed to a pure BEV, where faster charging is a "necessity".....
     
    #9 Smurf1000, Jun 27, 2013
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  10. austingreen

    austingreen Senior Member

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    As Jeff noted with a phev you have the option to plug-in or not, and showed the effects of not plugging in on the trip back still seemed to get quite good charge sustain mpg, I believe 44 mpg on the way back, and over 50 mpg on the way there. YMMV
     
    #10 austingreen, Jul 16, 2013
  11. usbseawolf2000

    usbseawolf2000 HSD PhD

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    Did you pull the actual kWh usage from the report?

    If we use 309 EV miles, 730.5 HV miles and your 260Wh estimate, you got 58.2 MPGe composite (30% EV) efficiency.

    I drove to Canada with PiP for 1,110 miles trip. I got 59.1 MPGe composite (6% EV) efficiency with 65 mph target speed going and 70 mph coming back. If I drive 56 mph, the figure would be better.
     
    #11 usbseawolf2000, Jul 19, 2013
  12. Jeff N

    Jeff N The answer is 0042

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    No, I never did look up the kWh. I'll see if I can find it later tonight or tomorrow.

    It's fun to calculate various efficiency numbers but I'm not a real fan of combined fuel MPGe.

    An interesting alternative might be CO2 emissions. I haven't done the numbers yet so I don't know how our trips would compare. I would have to estimate the local utility emissions for each charging location.
     
    #12 Jeff N, Jul 19, 2013
  13. usbseawolf2000

    usbseawolf2000 HSD PhD

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    You used ~80.3 kWh and 15.5 gallons for 1,039.5 miles @ 56 mph.
    I used 9.4 kWh and ~18.5 gallons for 1,111.5 miles @ 65-70 mph.
     
    #13 usbseawolf2000, Jul 19, 2013
  14. Jeff N

    Jeff N The answer is 0042

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    I did some quick "back of the envelope" calculations and I think we still come out almost the same on CO2 emissions if you assume a simple 19.4 pounds CO2 per gallon of gasoline and around .85 pounds CO2 per kWh of electricity. Most of my charging was in PG&E's territory. I'm guessing your electricity was also relatively low in CO2 emissions per kWh.It would work out to around 0.355 pounds of CO2 per mile traveled.

    If you assume GREET values of around 24 pounds CO2 per gallon of gas then my trip works out to around 0.424 pounds CO2 per mile and yours was around 0.406 pounds which is about 4-5% lower CO2 per mile.
     
    #14 Jeff N, Jul 19, 2013
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