Keeping EV battery 40% full?

I don't bash other cars, I just defend the Volt from misinformation. Sorry if having your assertions challenged by facts annoys you. I challenged your direct claim that your cost per mile was lower -- not good for people to see such potential misinformation unchallenged. I don't know your data (I asked for it). I did not say the Beetle "blows" , in fact, I think they are cute little cars. I just provided EPA data and then pointed out that based on EPA measures the volt MPG "blows away" the beetle in terms of official MPG even when the volt is running on gas. Okay I guess that may be harsh because its only a 15% improvement when running on gas.

Though in summer I do occasionally get 260Wh/mile, I don't get that in winter and my long-term average is 275wh/mile when on EV. Then again I did not claim 260Wh/mile, I reported cost/mile -- so part of your error was incorrectly conflating price and efficiency -- I guess I just pay less for electricity. (Until the recent rate change night time TODU was .059 kWh) .

I must say it is ironic that you claim 50mpg in your beetle which is 150% of the EPA combined average but then say that you would not believe 260Wh/mile wich is only 138% of EPA combined average for the Volt.

While you make "know" that EVs are more efficient than standard cars, your claims of lower cost per mile were not consistent with such knowledge. And having spent some time on the TDI forum, there are plenty of people there that don't seem to believe it either. Just trying to correct misconceptions and stick to facts.

BTW, if they had made it a a diesel volt, especially one that could run on Bio-diesel, I'd have preferred that. (that reminds me, what ever happened to the Ford Reflex?)

Finally, if you do 200 miles and can only charge at work and and use the battery for the start/end of the trip so the rest is highway then using EPA it would likely yield 200/((200-38)/40) = 49.3 MPG. If you could charge at both ends it would be 100/((100-38)/40) =64.5. If you can squeeze 50mpg out of the beetle's 39mpg high, you would probably get better than 40 in the volt on the highway as well, so should be cleanly over 50mpg or 65.

Though if you canot charge at work and do 200 miles a day, a PiP would be more fuel efficient, as again you would probably exceed EPA.

 

The price of electricity varies widely state to state compare to gasoline or diesel.

For me, a 50 MPG regular Prius costs less per mile than Volt running on electricity.

My PiP's electric mile cost slightly less than it's gas mile because I use EV miles for short local lower speed trips where electricity triumph over combustion engine. I used EPA figures to calculate. YMMV.

 

You said my calculation was in error. How is it wrong? You pointed out no errors. I gave MPG computations for both one charge (at home) and two charges, so that you asked 3 companies and they would not their employees charge does not make my computation incorrect.

But if you want to switch and argue with MPGe, then remember diesel is more energy dense so even if you get 150% better than EPA and average 50MPG (not just on the highway part), that is only 44.8 MPGe.

If you are regularly doing 200miles a day, cannot charge at work, and do 1000 mile weekend trips then the real issues is you drive too much -- almost a classic Jevnons paradox.. since cars can are efficient enough for you do drive that much, you use more resources, in terms of petrol, because of the efficient vehichles.

But if life circumstances make that the only practical choice, then a Prius or PiP would be better. Part of what I was arguing was that if you get 50mpg in a Beetle that the EPA rates at 37mpg highway, then you'd probably do better than 40mpg in a Volt. There is no magic in diesel, the only way to beat the rates is to drive more efficiently, which will improve MPG in a volt or a hybrid like the prius. But having fuel is just one of many dimension of vehicle choice. Enjoy your beetle.


With respect the choice of pure EV, I did consider it. If I had bought a leaf instead of the volt I would have used 29 More gallons of gas because my trips to the airport, denver and the Boulder campus, all beyond Leaf range, would require use of the wife's subrau that only gets 27MPG. And I'd have the hassels of dealing with swapping for those days -- which are about 15-20 times a year. And I found the leaf less comfortable and ugly. Tesla's are nice looking, comfortable and I consider them. My net cost for the Volt was 30K, the Tesla that could do my regular medium trips would have been >80K. The "59K" model tesla would not get me from work to the airport and back home, so I would need at least the 60kWm and to get to boulder and I'd need the big one. I could not justify the added cost for the rather modest fuel savings, and I would have had to wait 2 years to get it compared to my volt. Next car may be a BEV, but that is a decade away for me, 7 years for my wife (who will demand AWD, so I hope they have that as an option on the Model X).

 

As another data point, I get about 260 Wh per mile all year long in my own 2011 Volt (I rarely use electric cabin heating). That includes winter driving on dry highway at 40-50F with some headlight use in the morning.

Now that the Sun comes up earlier and temperatures are a bit warmer my EV range is back up. In January I was just barely getting to work on my 45.5 mile morning drive without using gas but this morning I had 6 miles of range remaining.

Here is part of my most recent OnStar monthly efficiency report email which shows a 30-day EV average of 26 kWh / 100 miles (260 Wh per mile). I also got my typical 47 mpg on gasoline in hybrid mode as well 646/(2087/142). I do better than most but it is certainly possible and pretty easy to get.

My overall mpg is down to 142 mpg because they recently took away our 120v charging at work in preparation for putting in new 240v charging stations.

 

The Federal Government spends our tax dollars tracking the average price of gas and diesel, and right now, diesel costs 36 cents/gallon more, on average.
Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update - Energy Information Administration

Beyond that, if Chevy needs premium just to make Volt run, switching to diesel is not so simple.

50 MPG diesel Beetle? Probably has a "special" odometer, and that's all I'm gonna say.

 

And if all Volt owners, or even the majority of them, were Troy Heagy, you might have a point.

Although probably not, because then you would avoid the car for price reasons, if not the worse EV range due to the heavy diesel engine and GM's track record with diesel. I also suspect that the Volt program would have died by now with a diesel engine because they would not have succeeded in meeting SULEV pollution requirements, and been blocked from the HOV lanes.

The Volt is a lousy car as is; diesel would have been a cruel joke to kill it off ASAP.

 

Hmm where do you live. your other posts suggested things like the philly area where according to gas buddy, prices for Premium there are about 3.69 for, and Diesel is 3.72. or Wilmington where Premium is 3.61 (3.54 at costco) and disel is 3.72. The national averages (see U.S. Gasoline and Diesel Retail Prices), put Diesel at 3.92 and Premium at 3.78 in conventional areas. So your prices are good bit of an anomaly, and on average users would not save much with a Diesel Volt. (Unless they made their own biodisel ;-)

The 2003 49mpg was the old EPA numbers, the new computations result in lower mpg.
Compare Old and New Estimates
(which is 44mpg highway, so better than I had been using for you as I was looking at 2012 (which are lower because of changes to clean up the emissions) and and yours is a manual which is better than the automatics even back in 03:
Compare Old and New Estimates

 

The EPA estimates switched to a more conservative system in 2008 but you can lookup an older car and see it's equivalent newer rating.

A 2003 manual Diesel Beetle was rated 42/45/49 (city/combined/highway) which is equivalent to 35/38/44 using the current EPA calculations.

Compare Old and New Estimates

A number of people buy plugins like the Volt to qualify for the HOV lane sticker and that requires SULEV. The Volt actually failed to get SULEV by a narrow margin when it first came out and that didn't get fixed until mid-2012. The CA $1,500 plugin hybrid rebate also requires SULEV so a ULEV Diesel Volt might have less appeal in states like CA even if the hybrid mileage was a bit higher. Diesel also has a higher carbon content (20% higher, I recall) so even with higher mileage it would necessarily emit less CO2.

Actually, a total mpg value like "400" is a perfectly good statistic if the thing you care about is reducing petroleum consumption. There are Volt (and Prius Plugin) drivers who are primarily motivated by "national security", for example.

 

Thirty-eight MPG, according to the EPA:
Compare Side-by-Side

European MPG's are higher because a British gallon is larger than a US gallon.

 

Actually European MPG is higher because their test is on average much lower speed/acceleration, see the curves at
New European Driving Cycle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

So you have an idea to add $1,000 cost to a car so that it will consume more expensive fuel. And the advantage is that a car that gets 400 MPG will now get 425. Unfortunately, this kind of thinking probably makes you an excellent candidate for an executive management position at GM or Chrysler, particularly if you figure out how your solution can reduce dependability.

 

Thanks
Accurate, and funny.

 

Of course diesel-hybrid is possible, the point has always been that the two techs are a poor match because they are not synergistic.

Re: BMW, are you thinking of this concept car ?
BMW X5 goes hybrid | Autocar

Want to compare ?
The Prius on the NEDC emits ~ 90 grams CO2/km.
Hybridization of the diesel improves fuel economy 25%, while hybridization of petrol cars is usually in the 33 - 50% range. Since diesel usually has ~ 25% better fuel economy of an otherwise similar petrol car, the combined diesel-hybrid ends up ~ about the same as a petrol-hybrid, perhaps 10% better in MPG but not CO2/mile.
As for price -- well, that is in the LOL department.

Lastly, Troy the marketer, feel free to add up the total number of diesel-hybrids sold to date. Go ahead, it will not take long.