GM Volt: What Are They Hiding?

If you owned this vehicle the first two questions everyone would ask you are, 1.) How far does it go for a full charge? 2.) how much gas does it use when the battery is depleted? So why is this so hard to add a line and a definition to the epa chart?

It should look like this
PURE EV Range = XX
Charge Sustaining* MPG = XX City, XX HWY, XX Combined
*(meaning while battery is depleted)

A Traditional vehicle and hybrids that do not have an EV mode get 0 for the EV Range, just as a PURE EV such as the Leaf gets a 0 for MPG. Its really simple.

 

You could cheat that, though, by doing a combination of heavy battery use and gas initially In essence it's good, though. I think EPA is looking at new stickers. Another way to look at it is:

List the amount of gallons of fuel to drive:
25 miles
50 miles
75 miles
100 miles

Then have one more single figure that represents "indefinite range", which would be range without a charging station. This would be your "battery depleted state".

 

I don't think we should worry too much about exactly what these cars are; I'm glad the different companies are trying different designs and that there's so much good debate! The market will have to decide the optimal design, and I'm sure there will be more than one.

I really want a plug-in hybrid because most of my driving is around town, but the car needs to be able to handle road trips and have enough storage space for four suitcases, a cooler and a couple of boogie boards... So right now I'd take the Prius plug-in over the Volt even though the Prius has a shorter range. I think 13 miles covers most daily errands, and most of my husband's commute. If we could consider both plug-in designs, I wonder which would really be the most energy efficient for us?

I wonder how the Volt will do relative to the Fusion. I really wanted to support Ford and we loved the drive and the safety of the Fusion, but the trunk is simply too small. The Volt will be too small, too, but it looks sportier and might attract that nonfamily performance car demographic.