As we reported in our last exciting episode, a big, fat EPA rating on the Volt’s hood is crucial to the project’s success. The LA Times reports that the Volt’s vehicle-line director Tony Posawatz now claims that the EPA has “agreed to a testing method that will produce a rating of at least 100 mpg.” The EPA says it still needs time to determine a fair testing method for plug-in models that burn no gas in their initial EV range. But GM wants it done soon, dammit. Posawatz says The General would share mileage data from the Volt’s onboard computers to verify real-world performance if the EPA would grant the certification now. Posawatz estimates the Volt’s theoretical EPA rating at 120 mpg to 200 mpg, “depending on assumptions about how much gasoline is consumed after the battery loses its charge on the road.” Meanwhile, Don Foley of the Automotive X-Prize would like to remind everyone that “reliance on an mpg standard alone will soon be outdated and will not accurately reflect the need for higher fuel efficiency.” Word. The X-Prize’s mpge (miles per gallon equivalent) is a far better measure of energy use. Hey! Why isn’t GM entering the Volt in the $10m competition? Maybe the EPA mpg standards are easier to game.
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The government needs to set a minimal standard for pollution per mile, and get over it. They should not be the arbiter of how much something costs to operate. They simply can’t do it.
ANY single number is BS.
Even mpge obscures that electricity tends to be much cheaper than gas per unit of energy.
Need two, maybe three sets of numbers: efficiency on electricity, efficiency on gas, and maybe range on electricity.
Admit it. ANY rating or numbering isn’t going to be good enough.
How about coulombs per furlong?
Jig-a-watts per rod?
The rabid PRO Pious crowd won’t admit a domestic playa to the fold.
So there…
I forsee lots of pissed off customer and a class action lawsuit if they play games with the mpg numbers……IF it ever makes it to market.
The GM people working on the lithium battery for the Volt don’t sound too optimistic. Somehow I get the feeling the early adopters will be GM’s beta testers for this car, hope they buy the extended warranty.
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/21387/
If they created some sort metric such as energy used (in kwh) divided by range, and applied this to all automobiles, would this work (the range would have to be calculated in a controlled way of course)?
I have very little knowledge of the math behind energy conversions so I may be way off base.
monkeyboy: I don’t think the pro-prius crowd is upset because of the volt being domestic, but rather that the EPA testing methods may give an unfair (see inaccurate) estimate of the volt’s energy efficiency.
The General, feeling pretty pleased with himself for successfully massacring hundreds of innocent civilian EV1’s back in 2003 just couldn’t and wouldn’t admit how foolish (not to mention criminal) this was when oil prices hit the stratosphere all of a sudden. In fact Bob Lutz solemnly swore that there was no chance in heck that the General would bring it back to life again.
Instead he went all Frankenstein and came up with something that’s mostly a late Jurassic ICE vehicle and partly an early space age electric vehicle. And now nobody knows how to rate the fuel efficiency of this abomination. Let’s face it: the latest creation of General doesn’t exactly inspire a “Eureka!” feeling. More something of an “it’s alive” vibe.
Oh well never mind the freak show. Luckily there are some little yellow people on the other side of the globe with some brighter ideas about the future of motoring. The 2011 Volt may have to compete with the Chinese made all electric BYD F6E.
Check it out here:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/04/byd-electric-car-e6-crossover-mpv.php
If the specs are anywhere near what they promise and the price is the $ 25 K it’s rumoured to be the General doesn’t even need to bother to show up with it’s hybrid extravaganza.
Maybe it will get an “Energy Star” sticker, just like a refigerator – the Volt will score a 1.0, and parallel hybrids (like the “Pious”) will score like… a point-two.
Chevy wins.
If it’s going to be a MPG rating — that’s a GAS mileage rating, then I want to know how far the vehicle runs on a gallon of gas while using gas. The electric part of the equation shouldn’t play a part in it because that is too variable (amount of starting charge etc.) and will skew the rating too much. And if you allow the car to run in electric mode fully charged for the EPA test — how do you calculate the “gas” mileage, or some equivalent measure of cost/consumption of electricity compared to gas? The whole thing then gets some sort of fudged gas mileage rating if you run it on an electric charge.
Whatever mileage rating the Volt comes out with, it better have a big-ass asterisk attached to it.
The loophole allowing them to claim 100mpg is big enough to drive an Escalade Hybrid through! (I shouldn’t be giving them ideas)
Dutchchris:
… some little yellow people …
What’s your problem with Chinese? Such a stupid racist!
“Tony Posawatz now claims that the EPA has “agreed to a testing method that will produce a rating of at least 100 mpg.” Yes – towing it behind a Cadillac Escalade.
I spoke to a GM engineer that stated the battery pack gets 40 miles in normal conditions including running the A/C. So long term reliabiltiy is still being tested.
The ICE gets about 50 mpg.
People want to know what it costs per mile to drive. Give the people what the want to know per 100 miles driven in dollar figures.
It should be this now. 28 miles city 42 miles high way is hard to fit into budget.
Give the public a Web-page to look up for variable prices and miles driven for the informed. Simple
City driving ICE = $$ per 100 miles
Hi-way driveing ICE = $$ per 100 miles
City driving electric = $$ per 100 miles
Hi-way driving electric =$$ per 100 miles
The model does not look yellow to me. I would suggest to the web-master that he should make a statement to the racist. This web page has way to much class and a multi-racial support audience.
Don’t forget the inherent inefficiency in generating electricity. With well over half the energy burned to generate “Volt” fuel wasted in its production and transmission, plus whatever inefficiencies are present in the Volt itself, this type of car will not do anything to trim energy use nationally. Perhaps less imported oil, but certainly more coal. Nice dirty to mine, dirty to burn coal. No free lunch.
golden2husky :
September 29th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Don’t forget the inherent inefficiency in generating electricity.
This is assuming we stay on the coal/gas/oil generating platform
Assume we have to build more generating plants to create the new need for electricity for cars. This is not true because the need will be off hours capacity. This we already have but people are using this as an arguement.
We just build wind turbines that will generate electricity. Then the arguement comes what happens if the wind does not blow. Well we generate hydrogen from h20 with surplus wind energy (maybe we build 120% of needed increase) and store it in liquid form. When the wind doesn’t blow we use hydrogen turbines to create the electricity. Hygdrogen burns clean but somebody will still have a problem with this. Simple?
chinese :
September 29th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
Dutchchris:
… some little yellow people …
What’s your problem with Chinese? Such a stupid racist!
I bet the only reason he registered was to post this. Robert, a bit of pruning is in order.
When GM recently released the Chevrolet Volt I saw one claim that it would return 150 mpg.
I could not think how they could possibly claim such a high mileage per gallon, since the engine is not connected directly to the wheels, but runs through a generator+battery+electric motor. Even if the engine runs at a constant speed corresponding to its maximum efficiency of say 30% (versus 15% under variable speed), the addition of the generator+battery+electric motor (in)efficiencies could only result in an overall improvement in fuel consumption of perhaps +50%.
Then I suddenly realized how they were going to claim such “astronomic” miles per gallon!
All they had to do was to play on the overall range of the test (EPA tests correspond to relatively short simulated distances e.g. City: 11 miles Highway: 10 miles).
Let’s take some example figures (just rough assumptions to make the following calculations simpler):
Electric autonomy: 40 miles
Fuel economy of engine when battery autonomy is depleted: 80mpg
Using these figures we can now claim the following (if we deliberately mix-up electrical & gas consumption):
Range: 40 miles Fuel economy: infinite mpg (40miles/0gallons)
Range: 80 miles Fuel economy: 160mpg (80miles/0.5gallons)
See how easy it is to choose the fuel consumption claim you like!!!
Following the same logic a range of 60 miles gives 240mpg and a range of 50 miles gives 400mpg. AMAZING!!!!