TrueDelta reliability numbers on Volt

The devil is always in the details. The Fit price I mentioned of under $16k included TTL and was not a demo car. As I said, easily a $10k difference.

Sorry, you are cherry picking.
Use the average annualized rate for all your driving, and EPA for Volt and Prius. You posted earlier that

That breaks down to 4,700 petrol miles and 10,600 EV miles.

• Assuming that the petrol miles are EPA 37 miles/gallon, you bought 4,700/37 = 127 gallons. I don't know specific petrol prices for KS, but in the US premium has averaged about $3.5 a gallon, so a generic you paid 3.5*127 = $444 for petrol
• In a 4-season climate EVs average about 400 Wh/mile from the wall. Retail electricity cost in the US ranges between 7 - 15 cents a kWh, and averages 11 cents. You can provide a local cost, I'll take the average: 4.4 cents a mile. Over 10,600 miles the generic you will pay 10,600*0.044 = $467 by average rates.

The two fuels together cost 467+444 = $911 for 15,300 miles, or 5.95 cents a mile in your Volt.
The Prius averages 50 mpg, and uses regular fuel that has been about $3.3 a gallon -> 6.6 cents a gallon.

See why I say that the blanket statement that Volt fuel is 70% cheaper is nonsense ? It might be true compared to your prior car, but that is the detail that matters if you are not just throwing out spin, and in any case does not matter to me at all, or to someone looking for a low fuel cost car. Anf of course looking at fuel costs in isolation is folly.

 

Since I bought the car with 2300 already on it and those Texans didn't plug the car in much, I can't do an accurate calculation of costs to date.
I don't use premium fuel. Don't tell....

All I know for sure is:
>I don't visit a gas station for months at a time.
>It costs my < $0.03/ per mile in nice weather.
>My gen3 prius never averaged 50 mpg. You have to hypermile/drive slow to get that. Not nonsense.
>And it is a fast, sporty, quiet, fun car compared to my gen3.

But those last statements are hard to put a number on. Drive one and you'll see what I mean.

Later, I'm off to D'Lake. I will have the 'stinker' in the front of the car power up for the first time since the last road trip!!! I save the EV for each end of the trip.
Dang, I'll have to change the oil in 2 years at this rate,, due to time, not miles on the engine...

 

Look whose cherry picking now....

You're using EPA for gasoline but making up your own Volt estimate for Wh per mile? Many plugin drivers easily exceed the EPA electric efficiency estimate of 350 Wh per mile when driving the Volt in mild weather. Your 400 Wh per mile value works out to about 32 miles of range as an annual average.

I'm guessing a typical U.S. Volt driver averages closer to the EPA's 38 mile estimate. There's no way to know since neither voltstats.net or GM/OnStar publish that number.

I average 44 miles of range annually in my 2011 Volt at around 270 Wh per mile with a full charge of 11.75 kWh from the wall at 240v but I live in a mild climate coastal area and rarely use the heater. In March I averaged 280 Wh per mile and 45.6 mpg HV over 2,939 miles with 64% of those miles on grid battery charge.

 

Many a Prius driver exceed 50 mpg overall, and I average 70 mpg in mild weather with our '04 Prius. So what ? I use Prius EPA to offer a median value for argument*.

The reason I add a surcharge to the EPA value for *EVs is due to an additional hit from winter conditions in 4 season climates that occurs over and above the hit that conventional cars experience. That of course is cabin heating from the battery rather than waste heat from the ICE. I think my estimate is fair and perhaps too low. A very nice write-up from a car magazine in Winnipeg gives data you can crunch if so inclined. A thread here on PC has the link to the article.

Is starting from a 4 season climate cherry picking ? To coastal californians it might be LOL
And remember, Bill Norton lives in exactly that climate.
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*I offer the following example of Prius cherry picking for your amusement, although keep in mind the data are honest: As I said, I average about 70 mpg in mild weather in our Prius. 87 octane costs about $3.1 this past year in my locale (at the cheapest fuel stations, naturally,) and I use a credit card that discounts my cost 10%. This works out to just under 4 cents a mile.

 

I repeat ... doesn't your low grade coal fired electric plant make power for your refinery too? Do you wana use that low grade power just once on an EV? ... or then use it to make another polluting fuel
.

 

No, it doesn't. We have been over that point, Hill.

The ~ 13% energy cost from refinery to car-tank for petrol is almost all crude. The carbon intensity of crude is not that much better than coal, but we might as well put that argument to rest.

Incidentally, this is why I use 40 kWh/gallon in my calculations.
40*0.87 = 34.8. Close enough for my purposes when calculating carbon emissions from Prius driving in a power_plant to wheels analysis.

 

Nothing prevents a 2013+ Volt owner from starting off in Hold Mode in order to warm the cabin from ICE waste heat (like a Prius) before switching to electric for the rest of the trip.

Of course, the initial miles on a winter cold engine will be less than the EPA rated mpg as on the Prius although you aren't assigning any 4-season penalty against ICE efficiency.

Aside from the Volt, some other EVs have heat pump systems (instead of resistance heating) so modest winter conditions will have less electrical efficiency impact on them.

There is only about 0.1 kWh to 0.2 kWh of grid electricity used to refine an average gallon of gasoline. For many refineries, only some (or even none) of that will be from burning coal.

 

That sounds like a very poor strategy to me if the goal is to minimize Wh/mile or fuel_cost/mile. Certainly it is an approach that Volt owners are (thankfully) not going to embrace since they bought the car to enjoy their time in EV mode.

 

really? .... iirc the prius is made in japan, & the volt? ... 46% north America (ie 50/50 Canada US) and the rest? take your pick between Mexico Korea china etc.
I know they manufacture 100% of Leafs in the Nashville area ... maybe that's what you bought?

.

 

Picky picky

Anyway, I think you meant that 100% of LEAF is assembled in TN

 

I haven't seen an EPA window sticker recently for the 2014 Volts but the battery cells and engine that previously were made in Korea and Austria are now made in the US.

 

I may be wrong, but I thought the battery plant in the US was a packaging plant.

 

I duno. Maybe all the articles I read that say manufactured or produced actually mean they first bring the parts here?
Nissan Leaf - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I thik I'll LEAF the interpretation to minds greater than mine.
(I couldn't resist)
We're actually in the Nashville area this week and had hoped to see the battery manufacturing plant as we've been on one tour thru their plant just a couple years ago. No tours of battery manufacturing ... they told up it's too proprietary.
.

 

Huh? It's an excellent strategy for minimizing Wh/mile of grid charge from the battery in cold winter weather because the large majority of initial cabin heating will be from ICE waste heat just as in a Prius being started and driven away for the first bunch of miles. After that, the Volt driver (but not the Prius driver) can switch to that wonderful EV mode and bliss out on efficient electric driving on grid power.

And while doing that in the Volt or Prius you will be getting the standard EPA gas mpg estimate in 4 season conditions, according to your calculations.

The plant that assembles the battery cells into complete Volt packs has always been in Michigan. LG built a battery cell plant in Michigan but only began producing cells there last fall.

 

I'm skeptical.

Heating the cabin in cold weather with ICE heat as soon as the car starts just steals heat from the ICE it needs to reach high efficiency. That by definition is not waste heat. Waste heat is available in an ICE AFTER the ICE is warm. This is why I turn on cabin heating after 5 - 10 minutes of driving. First the ICE gets comfortable, then me

So sure, you can game the system to only use EV when cabin heating is minimal but you better not post your petrol MPG. Heck, you might as well use to the ICE to reach 80 mph, and then coast in EV down to 30. Rinse and repeat. We'll call it VP&G.

 

It would be nice to distinguish between transportation issues (e.g. engine problems) vs. amenity problems (bluetooth issues). I also raised my eyes to some of the reports. One Prius problem reported was the car "surging" when hitting slick spots. I bet if I look long enough I could find reports for both the Prius and Volt of the engine stopping while the car is moving. I don't think the fundamental trends are affected but it was interesting to note the Prius has a decreasing problem trend while the Volt has an increasing trend for just the two sampled years.

 

I think this one is my favourite:

Whoops! Someone forgot to disable an ISR lol

 

That was a pro of the PPI over the pre 2013-Volts.

 

Yes, but the limited range of the PPI usually meant that the ICE was going to run at sometime during the drive, so the driver might as well turn it on early. The Volt is not in that case a lot of the time.