Will the Chevrolet Volt be a failure or a success?

I demanded the same thing for the Prius.

***

$394M for Prius
$1.5B for Volt
Volt get 3.8 times as much.

 

Let's not forget how different the purpose was.

Prius was already a well established vehicle at that point (2006). The purpose of the credit was to expand upon the mainstream sales rate already achieved. That's 60,000 per year prior to the tax credit.
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But we already established (post after post after post) that the Volt will be an abject failure, won't it? GM will NEVER sell 250k of them, right?

No worries.

 

Your ability to just make stuff up out of thin air to suport your argument is just awesome. I never tire of it.

I stopped commuting in a supercharged sedan that returned 15mpg.

Except for gwmort and I, who live in Delaware and NJ, respectively, even assuming that was the actual point. Maybe it is for some. *shrug*

 

Don't take it personally. My statements used a comparable size cars and average emission from the grid electricity. I know you are the exception.

 

For those who are interested in some Volt performance data:

I had a 293 mile drive in my Volt this evening to travel from Middletown Delaware to Gettysburg PA and back. For this trip I got the following results:
Total miles traveled - 293
Total EV miles - 41.4 (my personal best yet)
Fuel consumed on the trip - 6.24 gallons
vehicle trip mileage readout - 47 mpg
mileage in CS mode - 40.2 mpg

Along the way I had to refuel for the first time since April 4, 2011. On the 4th I had purchased 7.6 gallons, that fuel took me 1001 miles until I refueled this evening buying 7.7 gallons

Lifetime numbers are now:
Total miles traveled - 1648
Total EV miles - 927
Total fuel consumption - 17.7 gallons
vehicle lifetime mileage readout - 93.4 mpg
mileage in CS mode - 40.7 mpg
approx. electrical power consumed - 333.7 kwh (using 36 kwh/100 miles)
cost of power consumed at local rate (11 cents) - $36.71
cost of fuel ($4/gal) - $70.80
combined power/fuel cost per mile - 6.5 cents

For comparison:
Amount of fuel a 50 mpg prius would have consumed - 32.96 gallons
Cost of fuel prius would have consumed - $131.84
prius cost per mile - 8 cents

 

^^ speed during the trip ?

I cannot help but shake my head in wonder every time a Volt owner has to guess at electricity consumption. Fwiw, you probably used less electricity than estimated since your petrol consumption is better than EPA. This correlation will be true until you heat the cabin.

 

Most of it was 65-75 mph, the 30 miles or so closest to Gettysburg are smaller country roads so maybe 45 mph average through that 60 miles round trip.

Temps were back in the 40s by the time we got home. I had the climate control set to "Eco", "auto", and 70 degrees the entire trip. I also think I likely did use less electricity than estimated, but I prefer using a conservative estimate anyway.

Overall I am very pleased with the results I have gotten so far.

 

One more stat I know you guys will appreciate:

Assuming fuel savings of 1.5 cents per mile over prius and average travel of 15,000 miles per year, the total time for fuel savings to offset $10,000 higher purchase price than Prius IV = 44.4 years

 

I was lazy, and figured 240 miles at 70 mph and 60 miles at 45 mph. 70 mph consumes about 33% more energy/mile than 45, so
300 miles
60 miles @ 70 mph
60 miles @ 70 mph
60 miles @ 70 mph
60 miles @ 70 mph
60 miles @ 45 mph

x = fuel consumed during 45 mph run
4x/3 = fuel consumed during each 70 mph run

300/40 mpg = 7.5 gallons

19x/3 = 7.5 gallons -> x = 1.184210526 gallons
4x/3 = 1.578947368 gallons
60/1.578947368 = 38 mpg at 70 mph. A tad better than EPA.

on the payback. Honestly though, if you include winter Volt consumption and compare to a Prius II you might hit a century.

 

Good data!

 

It's the Internets. I don't take it personally.

My point is that it was a false comparison. Neither of us have any idea what kind of cars are being replaced by the Volt.

 

My experience is that I'm destroying the EPA numbers in electrical consumption now that it's warmer (AM temps in the high 40s) and I have no need for climate control. So much so that I was questioning whether my Kill-A-Watt might be defective but I just noticed that the EPA sticker shows a full charge taking 12.9 kWh and I did 12.6 last week for a day that had left me with one mile left.

My typical daily drive is at 35-50mph. I occasionally take a 10 mile highway trip at 68-70. There are probably 4 of those reflected in the data below.

Anyway, I don't know how to do a table so I used the code tag to make it somewhat readable:

Code:

MILES       kWh        kW/100mi   mi/kWh
  42.2       12.6       29.9       3.35
  30.9        8.75      28.3       3.53
  30.2        8.5       28.1       3.55
  29.8        9.15      30.7       3.25
  40.6        11.85     29.2       3.42

EPA says 36kWh/100mi or 2.78 mi/kWh. I'm averaging 20% better than that the past two weeks. I'm not cherry picking data, that's just what I've remembered to record. It's better than anything I see on the Leaf forum (of the few who report wall power data) but, to be fair, a lot of them live in the hilly Bay Area.

On the other end of the spectrum, I know my wife once broke 45 kWh/100mi with an 85-90mph highway drive and I know I hit 35 at least once but I no longer have the raw data.

To get back to gwmort's drive, any time you kill the battery (EDIT: assuming you started with a full charge and didn't do a partial charge in between), it's easy to convert back to electrical use. Just use 12.9 kWh. 41.4 miles is 31.2 kWh/100mi or 3.2 mi/kWh.

 

IF you start from a full charge.

 

Thank you, I did start from a full charge in this instance.

I can't really use that value for the lifetime numbers though because I do a lot of partial charging (usually get to work with 20 miles range left and plug in again to top off, etc..).

To get the 1001 miles since last fill up I had to push it into the low fuel warning. It was kind of interesting, first the last blue bar in the fuel tank graph turns orange, then after 40 miles fuel range left the estimate turns to just "low", then I got the low fuel light and a message saying low fuel in the center of the display, then the nav screen changed to say I was low on fuel and would I like it to show nearby gas stations. Funny part is it was one after the other and not all at once so it was like "come on I get it I need to get fuel". I had been in mountain mode trying to save some all electric driving for my nephew to see, so I swapped back to regular and did the last 3 on electric til I got to the next gas station. Still had a good12 miles of electric range when I picked him up.

 

Its tongue in cheek, but looking down the road rising fuel costs will work to the advantage of the volt in this analysis, particularly once my PV system is in and my electric costs will be more or less stable for the next 15 years (barring some huge increase in demand beyond the capacity of the system).

At $10/gallon gas the payback period would only be 8.9 years.

When you consider that some drivers in other countries are already close to this figure it makes the European version appear to make a lot more sense.

 

:thumb:

Recall his average US GHG emissions from the grid excludes everyone in CA.

 

Remember YMMV. The epa inflates the number they get on their tests by 30% to account for real world driving habbits, HVAC, hills, speeds, etc. It has not been well calibrated for evs. I get 16% worse than epa in my prius. Your mileage is with in. I don't think people need to be so precise and buy a kill-o-watt. A couple of runs using all ev power should allow you to guestimate your real numbers relative to the epa's 2.78 mi/kWh.

 

Never underestimate my level of nerd-ness. Note that I previously data logged ICE warm up with my scanner because I was curious how long it took.

 

Well too bad bob isn't still on the board. I wasn't criticising your nerdiness, but there was some criticism that gwmort didn't have a device to know exactly what power was being used. If you need to go to the extreme we need you to team up with a phv prius and a gen III prius, drive exactly the same route and tell us your readings. But really if its 0.38 or 0.28 kwh/mi I doubt it would change your choice.