Featured WLTP to face Extinction?

It's about time.
Inaccurate mileage efficiency serves no one. Remember when GM thought they would pull a fast one on the high mileage GenII prius? They claimed the test was unreal? No longer was it around 60 MPG but immediately dropped to 50 mpg. Of course all their land barges' mpg's after being recalculated went even further into the toilet. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face
LOL
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The published WLTP figures do consider electrical consumption. It's why the real world numbers are so much worse than the official figure. It is because the official one is moronic. Anyone remember to very first EPA window sticker released for the Volt? It a mpg figure for hybrid more, a mpge one for EV, and a mpge one for combined hybrid and EV over some arbitrary distance. The last one was soon dropped as it was useless for consumers and research. Well, that third one what the EU posts on their window stickers.

At its core, the WLTP is a better test than the EPA. The EPA window sticker ends up more accurate to real world because of after the test adjusting. The raw numbers come from the test cycles developed nearly fifty years ago, which themselves were based on driving styles another decade or so older.

The WLTP has four test cycles. Two model the conditions the EPA city and highway tests are attempting. Then there is a slower one that models bumper to bumper traffic and city street grid driving. The last is a high speed one modeling interstates.

 

This, 230 MPG City and 100+ MPG Combined?:



Chevrolet Volt's official fuel economy: 230 mpg - Aug. 11, 2009
How Does The 2011 Chevy Volt Get 230 MPG? By Making Assumptions

... later downrated to this:




https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a18734558/chevrolet-volt-epa-numbers-revealed-dissected/

 

It was a sticker like the bottom image that had more thought from the EPA than the results of the top one.
It had a third figure for gas and electric. Something like 67mpge.

The European figures we see for PHEVs are gas and electric ones like that. There are gas and electric only ones, but it takes more effort to find them; might not even be on their window sticker.

 

Yeah, I agree. PHEV without plugging in is just plain hybrid run by gas only. The data clearly show this. The real world PHEV emission is just slightly better than ICE hybrid counterparts.

I just saw this article. Didn't even finish reading the garbage. Somehow it points to singular Toyota PHEV from the quoted EU study which seems to include all PHEVs sold in Europe.

Source: thedriven.io/2024/04/18
Toyota's plug-in hybrids emit four times more CO2 than company claims

 

For example, it's very hard to find the Prius's WLTP figures - but they're on the Certificate of conformity, as found here for the 19" wheel version

4.6 l/100km (51 US mpg)
15.8 kWh/100km (25.4 kWh/100 mi)
72 km range (45 miles)

I'd say that's all pretty accurate. But the only consumption figure you can find easily is 0.7 l/100km (336 US mpg), which is based on ~85% electric use, based on the range.

And of course if you're 85% electric, you need the electricity too, so it's really (0.7 l + 12.6kWh) / 100km from the WLTP, but the electric component is not generally shown.

 

The figure for the Volt was mpge, so it included the electricity used.
The EU is doing what was done for flexfuel ethanol vehicles in CAFE. Assumed E85 was used half the time, and completed ignored the energy from the ethanol for the figure.

 

Wait, they got the units wrong? That is very strange. mpg and mpge are entirely different units.

ge (gallon equivalent) is a unit of energy, while g (gallon) is a unit of volume.

1 ge = 33.705 kWh (kilowatt–hour)

 

Sounds like the good old confusion that comes from mixing metric with imperial calculations. It should have triggered some bells when the statement "For PHEVs the difference was not a percentage but about 3.5 times less efficient." I think every Prius PHEV owner in the world would be squawking if they were promised 200 MPG on gas and only got 51 MPG when running on gas.

 

It appears that the EU does not us mpge. They simply ignored the electricity used in a mix mode official figure. CAFE does this with ethanol for flexfuel cars.

 

So, basically, you fuel-economy-test a PHEV until just before the battery is depleted, and label it ∞ mpg?

 

The main figure that is quoted is based on an assumed utilization rate of the EV mode. Even if the energy from electricity is counted, there is still a large difference in real world figures if few are plugging in.

 

Don't get me started...but for ICE/hybrids we have Fuelly so real world experience is available. EV's that is more difficult to get at, but I bet Tesla knows how much elec is really used.

 

When the fed gov introduced EV rebates that applied to PHEVs, I started to see more of them run as cabs. Downtown I still see my fair share of Gen 4 Primes, and Gen 3 PIPs being used as taxis. There is zero world in which they are using the EV mode much at all. But when the government provides a discount and when the provincial government provides a discount too, why not take anywhere from a 5 to 7.5k discount on the car through a tax incentive.

Personally, if we need another car and there's still a discount, and if I need to drive the car regularly, I would probably get another prime even if I didn't charge it very often since we only have a 1 car garage just because of the incentives making it a similar price to the non-prime.

I love our car so much, idk that I'd want something with fewer features in terms of the TSS 3.0 and wireless android auto plus the fact it has a hatch back. Maybe the new camry? It would be always be outside so wouldn't need a plug. But I *really* like the fact that we spend next to nothing on gas since we can in fact use the electric range most of the time. 3k kms and only used 3/4 of a tank with intentional HEV use for engine break in...

 

Part of what drives the EV purist movement are these incentive structures that support selling the PHEV, but don't support charging it. While the Prius Prime is still efficient as a hybrid, there are many PHEVs that aren't. Some of the popular models in Europe weren't much better than the ICE version.

 

Exactly the same could be said for every BEV on the market. If there are going to be incentives, they should be incentives that promote the highest possible efficiency, not just the highest possible range per charge.

That's how we might be able to get a leg up on global warming. We won't get there by building thousands of chargers and subsidizing the sale of electricity to the BEV drivers.

 

Market & subsidize low drag cd ? Whether sedan - pickup or SUV?
Interesting proposal. Lucid's astounding 0.197 drag cd - which assists in achieving its whopping 500+ mile range. Subsidize it down to a $50K car?
i'd buy that

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No you cant compare PHEV to BEV that easily. If you dont charge the BEV you cant drive it.

The PHEVs @Trollbait was talking about were often only designed to profit from incentives - making them cheaper than their ICE counterparts. Basically they were ICEs with an extra motor+batterie and as such used more fuel compared to the ICE only version and people never charged them of course. Thanks to german "premium" manufacturs many of these were especially big and wasteful business cars.

Fortunately these loopholes are mostly gone now but on the other hand people unfortunately have a bad image of PHEVs now - this doesnt help the Prius (which has a much better approach).

 

or .... if you don't fuel a gasser ....?
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