You know that strange viral marketing campaign popping up around the Interwebs as of late? Well, we know what it means now thanks to GM’s CEO Fritz Henderson and it’s somewhat impressive – and a tad dubious. GM is claiming that under the new EPA guidelines, the Chevy Volt will hit 230 MPG. The Volt would be the first car to ever earn a triple digit number.
Take a look at the current high-mileage kings and that 230 MPG rating really sinks in. The EPA handed the Prius a 51 MPG city ranking and the Insight a 41 MPG. The EPA says that the Ford Fusion hybrid can get 41 in the city and the Camary Hybrid 40 MPG in the city. With hyper-mileage tactics like killing the engine to coast down hills and fancy pedal work, a few obsessed drivers have pushed a few of these cars into triple digit territory.
None of these cars of course benefit from a battery pack that can power the car exclusively for 40 miles, though. The only real competitor to the Chevy Volt is the Fisker Karma as it’s fundamentally the same powertrain design but the EPA hasn’t had a go with that EV yet. There is the Tesla Model S too, but that vehicle is limited by the range of a battery pack and doesn’t have an on-board gasoline generator like the Volt and the Karma and therefore will not be ranked under the same guidelines.
The methodology behind the 230 MPG rating haven’t been released. There is no telling how the Volt’s 40 mile electric-only mode factored into this ranking. The EPA revised its formulas in order to generate a more accurate real-world representation of what EVs can achieve and the Volt’s the first car to benefit from this revision.
Frank Weber, the Volt’s chief engineer and the tour guide during my Volt test drive, indicated that the 230 MPG rating is based on combined electric-only mode and charge sustaining mode with the 1.4 L electric generator running. We’re still curious about the actual mileage to be driven during the EPA’s testing and how the car will rank in highway mileage ratings.
But despite my bit of skepticism, you can’t deny that GM has something special in the Volt. However it’s measured, 230 MPG is a gigantic improvement for a lot of people that can take advantage of the Volt’s 40 mile electric-only range. Now here’s hoping that the Volt makes its way into showrooms sometime in 2010 despite issues with GM securing government loans.
[image via Autoblog]
This figure is NOT from the EPA.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32370233/ns/business-autos/
+1
Really Techcrunch?
Really?
The article never said the EPA gave it 230 mpg. It says: “GM is claiming that under the new EPA guidelines, the Chevy Volt will earn 230 MPG.”
They should fit a mini low power diesel generator, which would always run at optimum rpm. So that range becomes infinite, if they stop the car for some time after intervals.
how would range become infinite? what the hell are you talking about? you still need to pump diesel into the engine?
Amen to the steady state engine/generator. I’ve always believed that type of ‘hybrid’ would be superior to the added complexity of interconnecting the IC engine and electric motor in the same drive train; it’s worked great for trains for decades. I’d like to see it go a step further and have the generator driven by a small turboshaft engine that can be tuned to run on darn near anything that’ll burn.
I’m so glad GM is finally heading into the right direction, next step, get rid of the unions.
Yes, because there is something absolutely horrific about Autoworkers being paid a fair wage. *rolls eyes*
Except American autoworkers take home the same as their non-union counterparts.
Get paid more yet take the same home? The extra goes towards the union which serves no real benefit except to those that don’t work.
I’m even willing to bet the US Automakers wouldn’t be in the mess they are in if the unions were not around.
You are an idiot. WIthout unions we would not have things like 40 hr work week, overtime pay and generally the fact that you are not required to work in a death trap. Unions have struggled to be relevant once many of the early 20th century workplace abuses were eradicated but you can’t blame what happened at the Big three on them. GM especially has been turning out pure crap for quite some time. Glad to see the near death experience has pushed them in a better direction.
Now can we please go back to reading/commenting about Twitter?
in all my life,i never paid anyone to keep me a job. i was told countless times i had to join.i usually found work in less than a week later.most times a better position.a working man has a rep.that preceeds him.if he has a good rep,no problem.
You obviously have never been to a GM plant, or any other union plant for that matter. I have seen with my own two eyes on numerous occasions where workers were being paid $30 an hour and all they were doing was playing cards or dominoes all day. I guess if you consider that fair and beneficial to the company then maybe you have some serious misconceptions of how a business works, and I’m not really sure what you’re doing reading a tech blog.
Unions are for the most part unnecessary in today’s workplace. They were necessary during the industrial revolution when child labor was prevalent and employees were being treated like trash. But in today’s world we have laws against such things, and an employer can be severely punished for abuse of its employees.
Unions are responsible for a large portion of GM’s problems, and they are an achilles heel for many other firms. Just Google “problems with unions” and I’m sure you’ll get plenty of case studies that exemplify this.
@Knowurhistory
Apparently you didn’t read the part in previous press releases where they were spending more per car on union costs than on R&D and thus unable to afford to do any R&D.
When unions first formed, they were needed. Now, they benefit the lazy.
HAHAHA. They get paid more than that.
@Igor: You’ve obviously never been to GM’s executive offices. There, everyone works hard all the time, lives only to serve the company, never cheats anyone, and gets paid exactly what they deserve.
Seriously, this bull*t goes on everywhere. Why pick on unions for getting their piece?
Unions are not inherently good or bad; they are political structures that give them members enough power to stand up for their desires, which are just as greedy, altruistic, noble, selfish and asinine as everyone else’s.
I know I sound like a jerk, but someone with barely a high school education should not be making $50/hr doing a job that requires little to no skill, and can be easily replaced by a machine.
Then the country wonders how the hell the US auto industry is in the toilet.
Who the hell makes $50/hr in the unions???? Older workers are currently getting $22/hr and Newer workers are getting $14/hr
Jerk is a good description
@getSomePerspective
Do you have any idea how ridiculous you sound? You are basically using an eye for an eye mentality so to speak. If they are slacking, then why is it not ok for workers to slack? Where does it end? Let’s just have the unions sign a contract with companies so that the workers just have to show up when they feel like it, or not show up at all, I’m sure that will solve everything.
There are certain things that have to be done to get business back on track in U.S., eliminating or at least diminishing the power of unions is definitely one of those steps. But, if you prefer to have the government keep on bailing out public companies, and eventually have United States turn into a Socialistic and uncompetitive nation, then by all means keep on doing what you’re doing.
There is a place for unions in this world, and that place is China, India, Vietnam and so on. United States, on the other hand has very strict workplace laws that most companies adhere to, and if they don’t, they suffer the consequences.
@RonK_Michigan…
$22 /hr is your take home cash, meaning your taxable income on your paycheck.
However… It DOES NOT include other benefits such as health care, pension, disability, overtime allowances, vacation pay, sick pay, etc.
I guess I should have said it COSTS the auto firms over $50 / hr to hire a UAW worker.
I loved the union I worked under at one of the big telecoms. Got $28 an hour for answer customer service calls and worked 9 to 5 M-F with full benefits. The job was one u could do while asleep at the wheel – no stress!
so one that was clearly not worth $28 an hour?
and people wonder why jobs are being pumped overseas
Exactly!
maybe it’s really 23 mgp and they got sneaky with the smiley face. oh, that’s not really a 0. it’s an electric outlet smiley face. our pr agency said to do it. reminds me of this. ^_^
http://failblog.org/2008/10/20/sneaky-restaurant-fail/
haha, was just going to post the same. I’ve been seeing the ads on Hulu and they didn’t register as 230. Just an ugly 23 with a power socket.
hahaha, i love that! clever. i mean, what else could they do?!
I had a long scathing comment about grammar and poor writing, but I think if you look hard enough you can find them.
I’ll give you a hint. Where can I buy a new Camary Hybrid?
Please also explain what exactly GM’s Chef Engineer is cooking up?
I think it’s ‘Calamari’, Tom. That’s what the author had last night; you need to forgive him. :)
OOH not only is there a “Camary”, there’s a “TELSA”! Isn’t that a famous scientist?
The article also incorrectly initially had “With hyper-mileage tactics like killing the engine while to coast down hills and fancy pedal work, a few obsessed drivers have pushed a few of these cars into triple digit territory.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/11/AR2009081101318.html
Pathetic, inchoate journalism.
The Camary is a joint venture between Chevrolet and Toyota. It seeks to take the muscle of the Camaro with the fuel efficiency of the Camry. The result? The new Chevroyota Camary, coming to showrooms in Fall 2009.
I’m excited about the Nissan LEAF that was mentioned. 100 mile range on battery alone and $10-15,000 cheaper than the Volt next year. I worry, though, about running out of power stuck in a traffic jam on a highway. You can’t pull over at the nearest exit and get some gas like with a car, you run out of power you’re just stuck and have to be towed.
You actually hit on my one issue with these types of measurements/ratings – that electricity that powers the first 40 miles of the vehicle’s travels was generated somewhere, but is not (I believe) included anywhere in that 230mpg figure.
(Still, two HUNDRED and thirty?!? I don’t think “wow” quite captures it…)
They’ve done a lot of studies using average cost of electicity/kwh and have concluded that the Volt’s all electric 40 miles will be 3 cents per mile cost of operation. Pretty damned good. Even if it is overly optimistic PR, it is still better than the cost of operation for a 45 mpg car($2.70 gal/ 45 miles) = 6 cents per mile. Go to a car that is of comparable size and acceleration, and you are talking about ($2.70 gal/25 mpg) = 10.8 cents per mile.
Plus, all electric drivetrains are going to be signifiantly lower on maintenance costs. The gasoline generator will operate in fixed RPM power bands, which will mean that the internal combustion component will be significantly more reliable. There’s a reason GE’s diesel/electric locomotives are so durable. All in all, if they get this thing down to the 30 K range, a lot of people will buy it. At the 40K plus range though, there will probably be a status symbol effect. That’s not necessarily a bad thing for GM’s image.
If this is really true, and everything goes as planned with the Volt, this could be the beginning of a turnaround for GM. The biggest challenge is the $40,000+ price tag for this car, but if gas prices climb in the next year, and the EPA confirms the 230 MPG rating, the price might not matter.
I love how people can’t seem to factor in that gas is (incrementally) not a reason to pay this much extra for a car.
$40,000 @ infinity mpg vs $30,000 @ 40mpg
Gas at $3/gal
You’d have to drive over 130,000 miles to make up the difference, but I’m sure there would be plenty of people flocking to it so they could claim higher mpg. Then drive it for 60,000 miles, ditch it for another new car, and we’ve just saved the environment, right?
I have a 2004.5 diesel pickup with almost 300,000 miles on it and a 98′ 4wd pickup with 250,000 miles on it, so mpg IS a viable factor – what’s to wear out – DC motors? They have to have some massive bearings in order to support the weight of the car, the battery and plus passengers. Only problem is how long will the battery last (# of full charges)?
You, sir, are the exception, not the norm, and I commend you for it.
The price tag is going to be a sticking point but for many who stay exclusively in cities this could make a compelling case, buying gas a hand full of times a year? Also the Karma will not be much in the way of competition as it is listed at $87,000. I guess next up will be Nissan.
For a vehicle that is not completely powered by gasoline, an MPG rating is meaningless. The Volt should really be measured in kilowatts per mile then you can compare your real operational cost of the vehicle against other gas powered cars.
It amazes me how many people think plug in electric cars run for free.
Agree. This 230 would be 20% nuclear, 70% coal 10% other, Great just what we need a Nuclear powered car!
yeah! then the assh*le driving drunk can plow into me and everyone can blow up…. yessss… one more step and will achieve GTA status….
maybe nuclear car w/ obama logo + teabaggers/deathers
Nope – it’s not meaningless. The operational cost of the car is measured in MPG. The on-board generator is using GASOLINE to create the energy.
Kilowatts is a measurement of POWER -measuring something in kilowatts per mile is senseless – it’s equivalent to saying “horespower/mile”.
The Volt is a plug in hybrid. If you pull power to move the vehicle off the electrical grid, you can’t just give an MPG rating. The majority of the energy used is not part of the calculation.
Now if they are calculating the MPG rating without ever plugging the vehicle in, using only the gas generator to power the car, then I am perfectly happy with using that MPG number.
I think people typically say kW and mean kWh.
But the industry should embrace kWh/mile – who picked mpg to begin with? And why not gpm?
If you average 10mpg and 20mpg cars with the same mileage, you get 13.3mpg. Come on industry, it’s making you look bad!
The problem with gas is not as much its cost, which is cheap, as complete dependency on the foreign sources of it – this is why electric vehicle is important. Basically it makes sense even if it costs more.
Something for nothing! What a great idea! Now, let me see if I can tap my investment with Bernie Madoff to raise the cash to buy one!
Personally, I can’t/won’t let GM off the hook for their behavior surrounding the EV1. They could have owned the electric car business back in the 90’s. The lunacy (and bad business) behind destroying perfectly good EV1s, replacing the EV1 production line with the Hummer production line is just too much. Sign me up as a Conscientious Objector to all things GM.
I don’t think you can blame GM. I distinctly remember filling my beat up Oldsmobile with 89 cent/gallon gasoline in the summer of 1999(the last year they leased EV1’s)
With a two seater car and gas this cheap, how can you expect them to sell these cars in mass numbers?
The real culprit is the fact that the US gov’t subsidizes the true cost of crude oil. Our military secures the supply lines(I don’t think we would have invaded Iraq if it was the second largest exporter of hog bellies in the world), we all pay the cost for its negative externalities, but none of these costs is tied to its price in the form of a tax.
Sounds like someone watched “who killed the electric car” and lapped up the loose accusations a liiiiiittle too readily
Tyler – Happy to listen to opposing points of view. Please provide some substantive counterpoints/links/resources to validate your claim. I would definitely appreciate listening to other perspectives.
The perspective is profit. If GM thought the electric car business was worth anything in the late 90s, they would have pursued it. Probably had something to do with high cost, low range, and crap battery technology. A small group of fanatics doesn’t translate to nation-wide popularity, and we still see people today reluctant to buy electric vehicles for these same reasons. It is not (or was not) GM’s responsibility to lead any kind of climate initiative; they have fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders.
Of course, since US citizens are now shareholders, you could argue they have a responsibility to improve our air quality now!
But not only GM. Why didn’t Mercedes, Toyota, Fiat, VW, Honda, BMW, etc., produce an electric? I mean if electric vehicles were viable in the past, why did not all the auto companies in the world produce them? Were they all part of the GM/U.S. government conspiracy? Just curious.
JP
Reread the post and you’ll find your evidence. Simple. No profit, way too much cost, not practical (2 seats, limited range). If it was such a great idea, than why is tesla (whom every loves because of their idiot CEO) having such a hard time figuring out how to build a car. I know dozens of engineers who worked on the EV1. It was a great science experiment that was doomed to fail because of no public support and way too much impracticality. For heavens sake, they were still using NIMH batteries for that thing I think.
If the Volt can go 200+ mpg, it will be a truly amazing accomplishment for GM.
Does anyone know how many ‘Gallons’ it will actually hold? If it gets 200+ per gallon and only holds 3 gallons – it can go 600 miles without refill. If it were to hold 12 gallons (like a normal car), it could go 2400 miles without a refill. That’s almost an entire oil change!
While $40K is high, I do value my time. As an in-town driver, I only fill up my car once per month and it gets around 300 miles per fill up. At 600 miles per fill up, that’s a trip to the gas station every 2 months. At 2400 miles per fill up, that’s almost an entire year without visiting a gas station. Truly amazing.
I agree with Tom Woolf (above) in regards to the ‘Power has to come from Somewhere’. TVA has raised our rates by 20% this year – if we’re not careful, charging our Volt could become a fairly expensive line item on our house utility.
Regardless, I think the Volt could be a game changer for the industry, the power grid, and our personal habits/lives.
You don’t want to try and drive on gas that has been sitting in a car for a year.
Especially if it has Ethanol in it….
By GM’s math, if you never drive far enough to switch off of electric, you’ll have roughly infinite miles per gallon. So 200 “mpg-e” would be achievable.
Or you could ride a bike, man — you live, what, one mile from work?
We note that you’ll plug it back in every time you park at home. Unless you have to park on the street, in which case I don’t think plug-in hybrids will work for you very well.
It doesn’t work quite like that. It will get a 40 mile pure electric range. See my post below about how the volt MPG was calculated. If you are going the full 300 mile range (this is what they estimate it will get in order to keep weight low), you will not get the full 230 because almost 260 of that distance is not pure electric. They still believe the volt will get over 75 MPG while in generator mode. If anyone is interested in this I would check out gm-volt.com. it is not a GM site, but is a site dedicated to tracking and reporting on volt progress. The site host is really involved with a groundswell of support for the volt, and they have really been on top of all of the technological developments. There are many things that have to be taken into consideration when dealing with an EREV (extended range electric vehicle). GM is pioneering in this area and gm-volt.com has many insightful posts that discuss the ramifications of the new technology and the challenges that accompany it.
My Truck gets 14MPG
This.. was the most exciting thing for me from the test drive mule (http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/05/20/test-drive-chevy-volt-test-mule/) from earlier this year. At one point in the video he says you can recharge the battery to full with a quarter of a gallon of gas. Consider that a full battery goes 40 miles, and you get a 160mpg rating right there. I was wondering when this story would take the lead instead of the “it’s electric!” one.
now thats the story right there, if true no need to plug into the wall… use a quarter gallon, drive 40 more miles with no gas, repeat.
I wonder if this will become a cycle of Electric car sales go up, gas prices go down, Electrict car sales go down, gas prices go up,…
Maybe gas stations will start adding charging stations or you could carry a pedal charger in your car just to get you to the next outlet.
“I’m looking for an outlet”
“Have you tried tennis?”
I would really like to see the actual EPA report and how this is calculated.
Until then, I am not buying this – sure it sounds wonderful but come on…. this smacks of being too good to be true.
And let’s suppose the EPA comes out with a lower figure – alot lower – then once again GM has egg on its face.
I know they are in trouble but counting your chickens before the eggs hatch is partly what got GM in trouble to begin with.
Holly
http://www.thessayist.com
Holly
From what I’ve heard they calculated this using a suggested method from a scientist at argonne national labs. They ran the volt on pure electricity until the range extender kicked in after the 40 mile electric range. Then they ran the EPA city cycle like a normal car. At the end they took the gas expended divided by the total miles driven. Since the EPA cycle is about 11 miles, they drove 51 miles and consumed enough gas to reach the 230 MPG number. On the highway the rating will not be as high, but then gain if you don’t go more than 40 miles you will never have to fill up. Also, you don’t have to deal with range anxiety of a pure electric. If a tesla dies on the highway you have to wait at least 16hrs. to charge and hope you have a long extension cord.
My Maserati gets 12 MPG and does 185 MPH and I’m never gonna trade it for a Volt…
Yes, because they won’t be selling Volts with 4 inch letters on the side saying “I have a small penis, but you should sleep with me anyway”
230 MPG!!, holy molly, i hope it’s true..
Nat
http://www.loopcity.net/
This type of marketing makes me sick.
Yes, it is great that you can drive roughly 40 mile only using electric power.
Drive the car 500 miles and then tell us what the real MPG are once the on board generator starts burning fuel.
But don’t fraking use convoluted methods of presenting a number that most people will just believe out right. “Oh look I can drive for 230 miles on 1 gallon of gas.”
*puke*
Fuel Economy is stupid. It should be vehicle efficienty. Efficiency is going vary based on a great many things. Driving style, driving conditions, fuel type, vehicle fuel efficiency, vehicle styling (coefficient of drag), and many others I sure. The best way I’ve seen to measure efficiency is the way it is posted on the Tesla Motors website, km/MJ or mi/MJ.
Forgot to paste the link:
http://www.teslamotors.com/efficiency/well_to_wheel.php
If the motivation for buying the Volt is to save money on gas, it doesn’t make great sense – at least it’s not a massive breakthrough. You will need to spend $40k to save roughly $900 per year compared with a 25mpg car that you can buy for under $30k, assuming you travel 10k miles/year and gas at $2.50/gal.
If the motivation is to reduce carbon emissions, as others have implied, the 230mpg figure is not the right metric unless it is specifically calculated to reflect the carbon contribution of plug-in charging – and that will depend on the specific power source.
What’s more, the lower the annual mileage, the lower the return, which is especially problematic when you consider the upfront carbon footprint of manufacturing a new car and recycling the old one.
I’d like to see a proper scenario-based comparison of both costs and carbon impact of the Volt against both hybrids and other good commuter-oriented engines like turbodiesels. It should also compare new/used car scenarios, because of the massive carbon cost of manufacturing.
Lee Iacocca said “People want economy and they will pay any price to get it ” The Volt, like the Prius makes absolutely no economic sense. Greenie weenies and do gooders will buy them to feel better about reducing their mythical carbon footprint while they relax in their climate controlled, coal powered mansions.
Driving in electric mode is expensive, not because of the electricity, but because of the battery.
Elecricity is about 3 cents per mile as mentioned earlier by JP Kab. However, the cost of the battery is about 25 cents per mile.
Lithium ion batteries cost around $800 per KWh, and you get about 400 charges out of it. But lets be generous and give you 800 charges. Everytime you charge and discharge your battery, the cost is about $1 per KWh, which on an electric vehicle is good for about 4 miles and hence the 25 cents per mile. Now add the 3 cents for the electricity (who cares?) and you are pushing 30cents per mile. You do get to deduct 5-10 cents per mile for lower maintenance.
All the electric car manufacturers bury the up front cost of the battery in the price of the vehicle, which is why they are so expensive.
Camry is misspelled.
I’ll be less glib –
this IS too good to be true. Energy is energy, and if you’re not counting the energy it takes to charge it you are cheating. Simply cheating, nothing more. It’s shameful and disgusting and proof that you simply cannot trust these guys.
Let’s take this one step further. Gasoline taxes average among the states about 47 cents per gallon, and this money generally goes right into keeping up the roads. If we all went electric, there’d be no more money for roads from this tax, so it’d have to come from somewhere, yes?
at 20 miles/gallon average (we run about that overall) the 47 cents per gallon works out to about 2.5 cents per mile. The average American drives about 12k miles per year, which is $300 a year in taxes. Electricity may look really cheap at about 8 cents per kW*hr, and at about 0.3 kW*hrs per mile most electric cars only cost 2.4 cents a mile. But add that tax in and it’s close to 5 cents a mile.
A Prius getting 50 miles/gal at 2.80 $/gal is 5.6 cents per mile, including everything. The savings with an electric are there, but they aren’t that large – and have to be reconciled with the additional expenses of replacing the batteries.
It’s all a matter of when and how the tax structure catches up with electric cars, since the cost of roads is indeed a huge hunk of transportation expenses. The big advantage that electric cars have is really just a tax dodge.
So solar and save more….
Sure, go solar. Don’t forget to amortize the cost of the panels into the cost of the electricity.
I’m not against any of these technologies, but people have to be realistic about where they are. A passenger automobile is ALWAYS going to be less efficient than mass transit in an urban environment, for example. Tech alone can’t save us.
…with rebate, incentives, and dropping cost of the panels the ROI break even point is now close to 5 years.
Let me get this right. Obama has seats on GM’s board, the car is full of GE parts whose former chairman is one of his czars, and the president’s EPA grants the car a 230 mpg rating.
Wasn’t there a time when the 60’s generation was appalled by the coming together of corporations and the government? Wasn’t this exactly what they feared?
Are you buying this crap?
We have been a sheep for the past 8 years, why change now?
baaaaa
Good laddy, good laddy…. now have a faux cracker and run along.
I’d be all for the government being run more like a corporation, just not GM!
One reason why “230 MPG” sounds so out of this world is because here in the US, we do the fraction upside down. It should really be measured as gallons-per-mile…with the resource you’re interested in conserving in the NUMERATOR.
If you look at the GPM instead of MPG, you’ll see that extraordinary MPGs actually means incrementally smaller fuel savings because because you’re just making a small number even smaller!
The biggest impact on fuel economy will come from improving the existing cohort of vehicles by just a few MPGs, not from inventing new cars with supposedly stratospheric MPGs.
at least someone else understands this.
i wonder if techcrunch can write a piece about this (i remember a while back car & driver had an article on this)
Sorry to say, but neither of you understands it.
A 20mpg car is twice as nice as a 10mpg car, just as a .05gmp car is twice as nice as a .10gpm car. Check out the associative property of multiplication, interesting stuff.
Mathematical nuance, I’m not talking relative savings, but absolute savings (measured in gallons, not %!) which is what matters:
I’m saying that IMPROVING a car from 5 mpg to 10 mpg is twice as good as improving a car from 10 mpg to 20 mpg.
Say you’re driving a car for 100miles:
The 10 mpg car consumes 10 gallons, upgrading to 20 mpg consumes 5 gallons for the same trip, thus saving 5 gallons
The 5 mpg car consumes 20 gallons, grading to 10 mpg consumes 10 gallons for the same trip, saving 10 gallons =)
What if we were like the rest of the world, and measured gallons per mile? Then we see a 10 gpm >> 5 gpm and a 20 gpm >> 10 gpm change. Both are 2x improvements, but 20 gpm >> 10 gpm is clearly better! That is why I say that MPG is an unintuitive fraction.
are you serious here? what the hell are you talking about?
You are basically saying a car rated at 1 gallon per mile is better than .5 gallons per mile?
This is the most senseless post I have ever read.
Is it me or does the socket smiley face look nervous. I know a few senior designers on the Volt. They say it’s amazing.
“Prius a 51 MPG city ranking and the Insight a 41 MPG…” Big woop
If VW ever decided to import the Polo that gets up to 88.3 mpg highway then you would not be driving a sub-par mileage car that increases the green house effects. (Strip mine the materials for the lithium batteries, ship materials to the manufacturer, manufacture batteries, etc…)
http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/#/new/polo/which-model/engines/fuel-consumption/
My parakeet flies a gazzilion MPG. Oh wait – It does not drink gasoline in the first place so the mpg number does not make any sense.
My beamer drives 5000 miles per KWH – oh wait that engine doesnt run on electricity.
What next, Techcrunch boasts 1M impressions per gram of newsprint ?
This is a marketing gimmick.. So if it’s an all electric car the MPG will be unlimited?
Cut the crap.. It’s total BS..
What?????
A marketing gimmick from a press release/junket?????
The nerve!!!!!!!
HI THERE I WILL SKEEP THE PATHIDIC 250 MILES PER GALLON I WANT TOO BECOME GREENER THEN THE BORG COLLECTIVE AT A WHOPPING INFINT UNAVERS PER NANO GRAM OF ANTI-MATTER AT 500,000 TIMES THE SPEED OF LIGHT OR WARP 500,000 IUPG INFINT UNAVERS PER GRAM
0001000110110100110001110111010001110-
0010101110010011100110, 00101001110100110!
You can’t compare Prius MPG with this application.
Q: How many miles per gallon will the Chevy Volt get?
A: A bit of a trick question. For the first 40 miles it will get infinite mpg, because no gas will be burned. When the generator starts, the car will get an equivalent of 50 mpg thereafter. One can calculate the average mpg per for any length drive starting with a full battery: Total MPG = 50xM/(M-40)
Plugging this formula into a spreadsheet yields:
TRIP DISTANCE / MPG AVG. OVER TRIP
40 / infinite
50 / 250.00
60 / 150.00
70 / 116.67
100 / 83.33
110 / 78.57
120 / 75.00
130 / 72.22
140 / 70.00
150 / 68.18
160 / 66.67
170 / 65.38
180 / 64.29
190 / 63.33
200 / 62.50
210 / 61.76
220 / 61.11
230 / 60.53
240 / 60.00
250 / 59.52
260 / 59.09
270 / 58.70
280 / 58.33
290 / 58.00
300 / 57.69
Finally, thank you.
CNN also called them on it.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/08/11/autos/volt_mpg/?postversion=2009081108
It will take you at least 3.8 gallons of fuel to go 230 miles.
I think they use this formula plus some probability of trip distance to come to 230mpg.
Like, 70% of miles driven are within 40 miles; 20% are 50-100 miles; 10% are >100 miles.
So from an environmental standpoint, a lot of folks seem to agree that the 230MPG rating is misleading, as it doesn’t take into consideration the greenhouse gasses required to produce the electricity that charges the Volt. This makes comparing a regular hybrid (a la Prius) to a Volt an apples-to-oranges comparison, and is ultimately misleading.
If that’s the case, what’s a better measure?
dollars per mile
Anything to pacify the Jap fanboy sheep. “Waaaaaaaa! My Prius is better! Waaaaaaa!”
I drove in the Volt yesterday, with Frank Weber at the wheel. While obviously a great engineer, he is also an incredibly aggressive driver. I held on and had a blast as Frank raced the car.
Dang… I hope that really happens. Driving now is barely affordable .. and i make six figures! (well, it might be my car too…) You get the idea though. This type of MPG will really help the economy A LOT!
A better measure would be to have a “typical monthly driving schedule” made up of
100 miles = 30 x 3 miles to store/school,
400 miles = 20 x 10 miles to work)
400 miles = 4 x 100 miles nearby
200 miles = 1 x 400 mile trip every other month
————————
1100 miles/month or 13K miles/year
————————
Assuming the Volt costs about $0.06/mi on its conventional engine and about $0.03/mi on electric, thats a cost of $48/mo (or 16 gallons
equivalent of gas).
Which effectively means the Volt should
be rated at 68 mpg. That sounds about right to me.
As stated in many posts above, it just doesn’t work like that. The MPG will all depend on how many miles between charge. While MPG may not be the best measure for cost of use, it is still pretty stunning how much more efficient the range extender is over a parrellel hybrid (aka prius, camry, etc.)
id rather go with the hybrid tahoe
Camary?
hope it finally find the right track
Finally a car that is logical. I saw this car at the auto show in Detroit a while ago and wondered if it would ever be but into production. However i wonder how much this is going to cost because everything that is good for the environment always cost a lot?
As I see it (being a fan of the Prius, myself), there are two reasons to drive a hybrid:
1. Eco-friendliness and/or
2. Wallet-friendliness.
Sounds like the verdict is still out about the total cost of ownership of these cars until we see what the MPG really averages out to in normal usage, but I recently learned something else about the move to electric cars.
Apparently, the environmental aspect of electric cars is drastically overhyped. In fact, it’s possible that the fuels burned to produce the electricity for electric cars produces even more CO2 than that produced by gasoline-powered vehicles (http://www.newsy.com/videos/all_charged_up_over_the_volt).
This falls squarely on our power grid, though. As we get away from fossil fuels in our power plants, we’ll start seeing our hybrid cars becoming more ecologically responsible as well.
I think a Camary is a nice car and I own a Lexus and Toyota is part of that…it’s all good!!!
You didn’t mention the real mileage king: The Volkswagon Jetta TDI (Turbo Diesel Injected). 55 MPG. Diesels have long been ahead of gasoline in terms of efficiency, mileage, torque, and lasting ability (I just sold a diesel mercedes with 300,000+ miles on it). With recent improvements they’ve fixed the only problem they’ve ever had, which is pickup (adding a turbo and changing the injection method). Now all we have to worry about is american oil companies price fixing diesel higher than gasoline when its far cheaper to make.
did GM outsource their marketing to Nigeria?
Forget all the Hybrid / gas electric “Hype”…if you live outside a city or commute from a city to another city for work…Hybrids are not good for you and make little sense….Bring the European Diesels here to the states!!! Upfront costs are going to be high and the first 2 years of sales will be low do to re-coupe costs for US conversion, but this will help with the BioDiesel stations and also the MPGs….For you enviro geeks Diesels are also better for the enviroment, look at the new VW TDI, and its only 24K.
You only get 230 mpg if you drive in the city, but take the Volt on the freeway and the mileage will crater.