How will the Chevrolet Volt be better than a Toyota Prius plug-in hybrid?

You're original quote:

now means only using gas for more power? If so, then I guess I did take things out of context since the context keeps changing (moving the goal posts).

A couple of more quotes from fellow PriusChatters on their "no gas" experiences:

 

2012 Volt does track electricity used on a per-charge basis. Cumulative is not available in car, I wish it did, however it IS available via monthly Onstar report & the myvolt.com web site, displayed as kw-hr/100 miles. I most certainly do not treat it as free, and do track my consumption, which is between 30-30.5 kw-hr/100 miles.

Of course there is some point where too much electricity usage can be counted as worse than gas. But you have to state on what basis you want to compare. Is it fuel cost? MPGe as defined by EPA? GHG emission? Unless you state exactly what xx kw-hr you consider "equivalent cost" to 1 gallon of gas, it's kind of pointless to debate what is a better tradeoff. Plus there will be differences depending on where the driver lives.

At my 30 kw-hr/100, in bay area California, I'm comfortably ahead on all metrics vs. a 50 MPG Prius. GHG emission per kw-hr, according to PG&E, is less than half the national average, and the grid continues to improve over time. Why wouldn't I want to use electricity as much as possible. You often make some silly argument that gas use is inherently better for power or high speed. No it's not. EV is still cheaper & cleaner. The gas use is a *design compromise* to enable getting away with a smaller battery, for cost & space reasons. That's a perfectly reasonable tradeoff for people who need a bigger / cheaper car. But don't try to sell it as more efficient.

I've gone 5700 miles on 9.1 gallons in nearly 7 months (375 CS miles). That's saving about 105 gallons vs. a regular Prius. I estimate saving about 60 gallons vs. a PiP.

interior volume -- useless to me. I've never encountered a situation where I've wanted to carry something that would fit in a Prius, but not in a Volt. Bulky items can be delivered.

rear leg room / 5th seat -- I've gone decades without a fifth passenger. It's rare for me to be in a group of exactly 5, if there are as many as 5, often there are 6+ requiring a 2nd car anyway. Or if exactly 5, one of the other 4 has a suitable vehicle. I might feel differently about this if I was married with exactly 3 kids, or say 2 kids & a mother-in-law, but I'm not, so this is kind of worthless to me. As for rear leg room, it's not an issue if your passengers are < 6 feet, and in any case I use extra EV range nearly every day, I'm going to value that way more than comfort for a rear seat passenger that might be once every couple months. There are some people for which this feature is a dealbreaker, fine get Prius. But for others, it's going to be an almost total non-issue, so stop pretending that it's a "need" or even a "want" for everyone.

hurt gas MPG -- improving CS mileage to 50 mpg would have saved me 1.6 gallons over 7 months. I save more than that, over a PiP, in 2 weeks of commute.

more electricity -- rather use electricity than gas, see above

recharging time -- when are you going to stop using this ridiculous argument? Cars are idle for 23 hrs a day usually. There's plenty of time to charge. Furthermore, you can leave any time you want, it's not like the car refuses to start if it's not yet fully charged. Please posit one remotely reasonable scenario where the PiP being "full" actually helps you, or drop this silliness. Being able to accept more charge while idle, not being full, is an advantage, not a disadvantage. Do people clamor for smaller batteries on their laptops/tablets/cell phones so that it "fully charges" faster??? No. Smaller batteries = cost + space + weight advantage, not TIME advantage. For TIME advantage, you need *faster charger*, i.e. the 6.6 kw charger on the Ford Focus EV, rather than 3.3 kw charger on current Leaf/Volt/PiP. Smaller capacity != TIME advantage.

 

I had already answered that.. I guess you did not actually read what I wrote just respond with your standard diatribe.

Here is is again A prius would have used 89 gallons or nearly 4times a much gas, and provided less power. My estimate for a PiP on my commute is it would have used 78 gallons, or only 3.3x as much gas as the Volt.

But I'm not really trying to bash the Prius or PiP, there are people for whom it might be more efficient. The arguments depend on the family's usage patterns and power sources. Each car has its range of being better. I'm just in the group that needs/wants than 11miles of EV per charge.

 

How many gallon and how many kWh?

A barrel is 42 gallons. A barrel of oil produces about 19 gallons of gas. 15.8 barrels x 19 or 42 gallons?

What about kWh?

 

I was using the 19 gallons per barrel of crude, more visually interesting.

My one year anniversary is coming up at the end of the month, I intend to give a detailed annual report then but don't want to run down all the data points right now.

I'm generating ~45 kwh a day from the PV array,less than 8 goes into the car on an average day (get home with about half charge after charging at work all day note: a "fully charged" Pip would make it about half of the way home for me, being fully charged not being an advantage).

 

From a wells to wheels perspective, a gallon of gas ~= 33.7 KWh. I can go on and on about the various ways to calculate the value, but I think that is the best value to use when doing an "Apples to Apples" comparison with standard gas vehicle.

Using that figure and own statistics:
Odo: 2638.8 miles
OnStar Efficiency: 0.34 KWh/mile

(2638.8*.34)/33.7 + 1 gallon of gas .
I've used the electrical equivalent of 27.6 gallons of gas to travel 2600 miles giving me 99 MPGe.

Also my 0.34 KWh/mile is far from the best, as I've done lots of uphill drives sometimes at 100 MPH . Of course I can also be a really efficient driver on the other side getting up to 55 miles per charge.

I love the Prius, but Volt is simply a better American engineered car when you do the wells to wheels analysis. Of course the Prius has room for 5 + more cargo and much cheaper....

Compared to PHEV Prius though, no contest...

 

That's not well-to-well. It is just plug-to-wheels (vehicle efficiency). You did not include well-to-plug (fuel production).

Electricity is very efficient in term of vehicle production but it is very inefficient upstream generating it. On average, about 2/3 of the energy is wasted according to US Energy Information Administration. So only about a third is usable.

For electricity, the total energy required to generate 26.6 gallon equivalent (897 kWh) would be 79.8 gallon equivalent (26.6 x 3).

For gasoline, fuel production and distribution is about 85% efficient. Your 1 gallon consumption would require 1.18 gallons.

In total, 2638.8 miles divided by ~81 gallons equal ~33.6 MPGe-WTW.

If we apply the same 85% efficiency for gasoline production and distribution to the 50 MPG Prius, it came out to 42.5 MPG-WTW.

We really need to increase the efficiency of generating electricity in the US. Until then, using electricity for lower speed city traffic makes sense. Using it for high speed / high power acceleration would increase carbon footprint (vs. 50 MPG hybrid). Of course that's a general statement using average electricity so YMMV depending on where your electricity comes from.

 

Can I ask a question here?

What's the difference in cost between the Prius Plug In and the Volt in the US?

Here in the UK, the price difference is £2,000/US$3,200, making the short comings of the PIP not worth it (I'm affraid to say).

Saying that, you could buy virtually every model of the BMW 3 series for less than the cost of the Prius Plug In. The PIP is going for a LOT of money here. In fact it's cheaper to buy a Renault Fluence EV with a 100 mile EV only range AND a small Hyundai i10 hatchback and having over £3,000 left over, than it is to buy a Prius plug in.

Toyota have lost the plot - at least in the UK.

 

Yes, on average in the US electricity uses too much coal is not as efficient.

Nat Gas generators are far more efficient, nuke and renewable even better. Jedi2155 seems to be form from Cali where his electricity generation is more efficient and produces less GHG. See the discussion at
Why Electric Cars are Efficient

And with an EV, one has the choice of sources and if you buy renewable energy they EV it the ideal source of power for all driving.

 

Off the top of my head, it's in the neighborhood of $10,000. The federal incentives bring the cost difference closer to what is over there.

 

Not sure how well equipped they are in UK. The price difference is about the same in the US after sales tax and Federal tax credit. In the US, this is a comparison of two base models.

For Prius PHV smaller battery pack, you get a better equipped car with larger interior and cost about $3k less. Per EPA, fuel cost to operate both are exactly the same ($1,000 annual). With gas prices higher in UK, Volt may cost less to operate with more electricity.

 

Well, to put in proper context:

2012 Toyota Prius Plug-in Hybrid - Prius Plugin starts at $32k

2012 Chevy Volt | Electric Car | Chevrolet - Volt 'as low as' $31,645 - But in small text, $39,145

The (1) around the Toyota's $32k is excluding the Delivery, Processing and handling fee.

So, realistically, the base difference is $7145. Since both qualify for the US deduction, their costs would be $24.5k and $31.645k respectively. Not counting additional incentive reductions, the Prius Plugin will come out ahead just on the base pricing level, or at least, allow more options to be included.

On the 'face', the Prius Plugin will look to be a good value, offering more at the same price than the Volt, which is where people would 'lean' more towards the Prius Plugin at the face value versus the long term.

 

The U.S. federal tax credit is variable based on the battery pack size.

The Prius Plugin only qualifies for about $2,500 of tax credit whereas the Volt qualifies for $7,500 so you need to add an additional $5,000 dollars to your estimated PiP price.

The end result is that the PiP is around $2,500 less.

 

Remember, the purpose of the tax-credit is to establish HIGH-VOLUME sales QUICKLY.

Heavy dependency on the tax-credit means that's going to be quite a challenge for Volt, especially with sales low despite a subsidized price.

Toyota expended great effort to contain costs, with the realization that the tax-credit may abruptly no longer be available.
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Did you read the legislation? The purpose was to encourage manufacturers to build plug in cars to reduce oil dependency. The tax credit hopes that this will encourage development of these gas saving technologies, and prices for these technologies will go down.

You seem to be reading the fox news 2011 version, which is far from fair and ballanced.

Re-Volting Development: Chevy Volt Sales Surged in March - Forbes

They simply put a bigger battery in the prius, as many aftermarket shops have done. If you look at the original legislation, Toyota got the lowest size moved down to 4kwh, the size that happens to be in the phv. No optimization. GM also got the max rebate to be for 16kwh, again the size of the volt. I hope both cars in the gen 2 will be highly sucessful. Current indicators are the prius phv will mainly sell in california this year to drivers that want a prius and an hov sticker. It is a great battery size for the domestic japanese market.

Both these cars are gen I really. The incentives work if just one of the companies builds a sucessfull gen 2.

 

too little, too slowly

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Mostly fleet orders can't be good.

 

The forbes article said the opposition, that they could not find high fleet sales to account for most of the jump. They were trying to find if there was evidence to back up the fox news story line that only the government would buy plut-ins. We know that there will be a certain amount of fleet sales to set a basement on production for the volt, leaf, prius phv. The bad fleet sales are to the rental car market, where cars are dumped at low prices.

 

I think it may have been corrected mid-day. 160 fleet sales per various articles.

 

Via "kickincanada" at gm-volt.com
After Record Sales, Chevy Volt Production Will Resume One Week Early
After Record Sales, Chevy Volt Production Will Resume One Week Early | TPM Idea Lab