Folks are a bit confused by these mysterious ads. The giveaway is the music, which reveals the spot to be part of the Volt campaign, but what is 230? It would seem that 230 could well be the Volt’s EPA MPG rating, a number which will be useful only to GM’s relentless hype campaign. After all, no single portion of the EPA test cycle is longer than 11 miles, meaning EREVs get their own testing method (summarized after the jump). But as Ad Age puts it, “why run a teaser campaign for a car that doesn’t go on sale until next year — and one that’s been known about for some time? After all, the marketer has been beating the drum for the car for more than a year.” Because that’s the Volt Way. Meanwhile, 230 MPG? Really?
Last we checked in with the Volt’s EPA MPG vision quest, GM was basically negotiating with the EPA for a 100mpg plus rating. Last September Bloomberg reported that,
obtaining a 100-mpg rating will require the EPA to develop a new way of measuring fuel efficiency for a car that’s likely to rely more heavily on electric than internal-combustion power, according to GM’s Posawatz. The automaker promised to share mileage data captured from the Volt’s onboard computers to verify real-world performance if EPA will grant the certification now, he said.
GM-volt.com‘s Lyle Dennis thinks he knows how the Volt will crack 230 MPG
Mike Duoba from Argonne National Lab devised a method to determine the MPG of an EREV; first the car is driven from a full battery until it reaches charge-sustaining mode, then one more cycle is driven. If we use the highway schedule, the first 40 miles are electric. One more cycle is 11 more miles. If the Volt gets 50 MPG in charge sustaining mode, it will use .22 gallons of gas for that 11 miles. Thus 51 miles/.22 gallons = 231.8 MPG.
What happened to 30 MPG in charge-sustaining mode? Is the 230 just a reference to the charging voltage rather than some concocted MPG equivalent? Expect more questions than answers at GM’s press conference on the 230 phenomenon tomorrow.
“Why run a teaser campaign for a car that doesn’t go on sale until next year?”
I suspect this is in fact part of a continuous campaign to sell the bailout/government takeover of GM to the public. This is no boondoggle, it’s an investment in a clean, high-tech future which will be brought to us by the visionaries at GM, in tandem with the advanced political thinkers in the Obama administration.
The more cash, tax breaks, etc. GM needs to survive, the more the Volt will be in our collective face.
I hate viral marketing, so much.
There are lies, damned lies and statistics. This statistic doesn’t tell me about the power required to top off from charge sustaining mode back to full battery and how that is translated into equivalent “mpg’s”. I have come to expect no less than this sort of dubious approach from my government.
“What happened to 30 MPG in charge-sustaining mode?”
30 mpg became the MPG-default after John Lauckner responded to idiotic speculation via fastlane chat and was subsequently taken way out of context by this website. 50 mpg isn’t far off from reported estimates:
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-10037173-48.html
MPG? Yeesh, It’s probably just input voltage for a home charger pack that plugs into the dryer socket.
http://applianceguru.com/dryers/dryer_outlet.jpg
The reason GM calls the Volt an engine assisted EV (not a plug in hybrid) is they want the EPA to look at it as primarily an electric vehicle.
It all comes down to how full the batteries are allowed to be when it begins its test. If the batteries are empty, it will be a 35 to 40 mpg vehicle. If the batteries are full, the results can be most anything depending if it has to do just a single cycle at a time or all 5 (54 miles) on a single charge.
Determining how to treat the Volt and other PHEVs is a regulators dream. The rules haven’t been determined and they can write the rules to help their friends and hurt their enemies. A year ago I felt certain the EPA would be tough on the evil, gas guzzling General Motors folks. But now the EPA and GM are part of the same company, run by The Most Benevolent One. So who knows?
GM will need as much help as they can get in meeting the new CAFE rules. They will probably get a break. They may even know it now, hence the 230 mpg promotion.
Let’s hope Lyle Dennis’ assumption is incorrect. If his logic is true, all one has to do to claim a car gets infinity miles per gallon is to design a car to go on electric alone with no ICE.
Edited
Well, just because GM has been marketing the Volt for the past year or so doesn’t mean most people know about the vehicle. I can bet the average American doesn’t know what the Volt is…yet.
I’m so tired of hype and fad marketing.
Either the product is a good one or not. Either it is advantageous to my bottom line or it isn’t.
Its part of the reason I have disconnected from pop culture and much of the mainstream entertainment (i.e. TV and first run movies).
I’ll wait to see if the Volt is any good and at that price and only 40 miles range I’ll prob wait until Toyota or Honda delivers something all electric b/c I don’t see the value of hauling around a whole second drivetrain when I could just use the weight and space savings to carry more batteries.
Preferably MiMH batteries which last and last. Not hearing any Lithium battery stories where the batteries have lasted more than 50,000 miles. I have on the other hand heard alot about NiMH batteries that have lasted over 150,000 miles in a full EV application and over 250,000 miles in hybrid applications. Both applications by the way were Toyotas.
I urge folks to read up on GM, Chevron and patent encumbrance of NiMH tech. Wikipedia has it all.
Engineering told marketing and advertising that the Volt will charge fastest using 220V power, so they just figured 230V would be even faster…
Dr. Remulac… I think you got the idea confused. He didn’t suggest all cars drive 51 miles. He suggested the car drive UNTIL the generator kicks on, then one full cycle (11 miles). In the hypothetical case of a 40 mile per charge vehicle getting 40 mpg in assist mode it would be 51 miles on .22 gallons, for approximately 230 mpg.
Using the same formula but in a car with a 100 miles per charge rating and 11 mpg in assist mode, the car would travel 111 miles and use 1 gallon of gas for a rating of 111 mpg. ( 100+11)/1= 111.
This formula makes sense because it factors in both the electric and assisted modes. however, if you never exceeded 100 miles between charges in REAL life, you would use no gasoline. However on a 1200 mile trip without a charge, you’d use 100 gallons of gas for an average of a measly 12 mpg.
The problem with giving a one size fits all rating to a car like this, is no two drivers will drive it the same. With a 100 mile range, i’d fill the gas tank once a year. Someone who travels a lot would be better off with a Tahoe than my theoretical 100 mpc/11 mpg car.
Jeeze, just tell the consumers how it works straight-up. All this fooling around with outlandish, theoretical numbers is only going to piss people off.
I get why they do it, though. If you actually had to tell people that the car only gets 30 mpg in “limp home” mode, people are going to fixate on that and forget about the EV part.
Either the product is a good one or not. Either it is advantageous to my bottom line or it isn’t.
That’s the problem. People don’t understand how the car works, and GM has to be very careful (or manipulative) in how it’s presented. Case in point: there are still a lot of people who think you need to plug the Prius in, despite Toyota’s work and the product’s mass-market penetration.
It might actually be quite good, but if it can’t be accurately mapped onto the “bigger number is better” fuel economy scale, then GM has a problem that no amount of marketing will solve. “230 mpg” is nonsense, but GM cannot underestimate the pummeling they’ll take if Joe Idiot Consumer (or worse, Jane Idiot Reporter) misses the point.
I get why they do it, though. If you actually had to tell people that the car only gets 30 mpg in “limp home” mode, people are going to fixate on that and forget about the EV part.
Bingo. And said much more succinctly than I ever could.
Electricity is a form of energy. It takes fossil fuel and/or certain infrastructure to produce.
What’s the electricity to gasoline conversion rate used in calculation? Like, how many kW-hour is converted into one gallon of gas?
I just assumed that 230 was the number of billions of dollars taxpayers were spending to keep GM afloat.
@ Ritchie628,
I edited my comment for the exact reason you described.
However, the Tesla would get infinite mpg if using this line of thinking because gas would never be used.
wsn is correct to point out it that any vehicle takes energy to propel the vehicle. Any attempt at providing equivalent mpgs should include the assumptions and formulas used.
That’s the problem. People don’t understand how the car works, and GM has to be very careful (or manipulative) in how it’s presented. Case in point: there are still a lot of people who think you need to plug the Prius in, despite Toyota’s work and the product’s mass-market penetration.
Exactly. I owned a Camry Hybrid for a couple of years and the first question everyone asked was “Do you have to plug it in?” When I said “no,” there was a puzzled look followed by, “So, you just use normal gas?”
SherbornSean :
August 10th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
I just assumed that 230 was the number of billions of dollars taxpayers were spending to keep GM afloat.
It is 230B, it just hasn’t reached it yet.
These marketing of cars year before release reminds me of the early 60’s Mustang press release but, the Camaro is old not a new style and the Volt is more appliance sedan than something exciting.
Sorry Doc. You must have been editing while I was typing away :)
There needs to be some standard rating across any drivetrain, for that reason you describe. But sometimes there’s just no good way to compare an apple to an orange to a watermelon.
As far as I’m concerned no all-EV or PHEV is going to sell based solely on a MPG rating, even if it is 230. No car ever sold just on a HP number either.
Perhaps 230 is the number of minutes it takes to recharge the battery pack from assisted mode using a 220v circuit?
ie “less than four hours.” Of course, I’m probably wrong about that.
Nevertheless, there’s really only one way to do gas mileage if you don’t want to confuse people:
ICE only: MPG.
ICE + battery, no plugin: MPG
ICE + battery, plugin: RPA and MPG
Battery, plugin: RPA
Where RPA is Range Per Amp-hour (of charge), like MPG is Miles Per Gallon (of gasoline) — doing RPC (Range Per Charge) makes as much sense as MPT (Miles Per Tank), inasmuch as it’s a useful number but less consumer-friendly (being dependent on a couple of variables.)
Tell me my MPG and my tank size, and I’ll have my ICE range and my per-mile cost. Tell me my RPA and my amp-hours on the battery pack, and I’ll have my Battery range and my per-mile cost (since electricity is billed in amp-hours.) Less confusing (and less accurate) would be RPH, Range Per Hour, which would really mean Range Per Amp-hour without people having to know what an amp is.
Unless I’m smoking crack and have been misreading my electric bill all this time. It’s possible.
Just for fun, I did my weak-ass math on the Tesla. Their blog says a complicated EPA-style run returned 244 miles on a single charge. Some folks on a forum worked out (from information in a Tesla blog post) the total amp-hour rating on the battery pack (except the portion dedicated to non-motor things like the radio) is 151.8Ah. 244 miles / 151.8Ah gives us 1.6MPA (forget my RPA, MPA makes more sense) abbreviated from MPAh (which is, again, more technically correct but less consumer-friendly.)
Let’s say someone else makes a car, and it has a range of 40 miles and a battery pack rating of 60Ah. 40/60 is 0.66MPA. This fictional second car uses its batteries much less efficiently overall than the Tesla (perhaps it weighs more, or the batteries just aren’t as good; doesn’t matter to the consumer any more than the differing MPG ratings between two cars might be because of an inefficient engine or additional weight.)
Much like MPG, MPA doesn’t tell you the range; for that, you need the battery’s Ah rating (as you need the tank size for MPG.) It also doesn’t reflect how fast the car is, any more than MPG does, and like MPG the MPA results in the real world will be heavily dependent on how the car is driven.
I really can’t think of a better apples-to-apples comparison number to use; it even comes with a nice easy-to-recognize (and completely arbitrary) baseline number — 1.0 — that’s not unlike the old baseline arbitrary “this car is fast enough” 0-60 time of 10 seconds or the current “this car is efficient enough” MPG rating of 20.
Tesla: 1.60MPA
Fake Car: 0.66MPA
You may not know what the range is, but you sure know which one is more efficient at getting somewhere.
Oh, and let’s say we have the Chevy Volt at 40 miles to empty (or what they consider empty) and the same Ah rating on the batteries (they claim it’ll actually be more efficient): 1.60MPA * 40 gives us a battery pack with 64Ah. The battery pack Ah rating is the tank size, the MPA is the number of miles you can go on a single Ah. Gets messy for determining cost-per-charge, though — I was on crack when I said my electric bill comes in Ah, it’s kW, and the calculation requires knowing the voltage as well.
To determine efficiency while running off batteries, figure out how much electrical energy is used to recharge the batteries after the cycle and what the average cost of that energy is in the U.S., then determine how much gasoline that amount can buy and we have an equivalent mpg value. The values can be adjusted annually – or at any appropriate interval – to account for changes in electricity or gasoline prices.
To determine efficiency while running off the engine, just run it using the gas engine.
Provide both values for each cycle, and we then know how much it will cost to operate it under both conditions. Was that so difficult?
Any attempt to declare the Volt a 230 mpg vehicle will be met with immediate public ridicule.
Maybe it’ll end up as: 230 mpg CITY / 30 mpg HWY.
And there still is no ICE performance data – that’s where people will be disappointed in their $40k purchase.
rpn453
Which electricity rate
Normal, night time, special recharge rate?
I think that its not 230. i think that it stands for 23 hours to charge on a home outlet. yeah thats it.
Errrr…. there is already an accepted measure of energy efficiency for all forms of transport.
Grams of CO2 per km.
It even works (mostly) for electric cars.
charly : Which electricity rate
Normal, night time, special recharge rate?
I’m not familiar with the concept of variable rates here in Saskatchewan, but the average national rate would work to begin. If it can be shown that the cars are usually charged at times with different rates than the average, then use that. Those are just details though. All I’m saying is that the MPG rating needs to reflect the cost of driving, because that will be the determining factor as to whether it makes sense to own an EV relative to an equivalent gasoline powered vehicle. Well, except for those who just feel better about consuming energy and resources in a more roundabout way!
Yes, it does stand for EPA 230mpg city cycle, on EV alone. Not surprising given the Tesla Roadster gets ~240mpg that way.
Oh, and let’s say we have the Chevy Volt at 40 miles to empty (or what they consider empty) and the same Ah rating on the batteries (they claim it’ll actually be more efficient): 1.60MPA * 40 gives us a battery pack with 64Ah.
Dave Jay:
While I like your approach (are you an engineer?), I don’t think it will catch on because the typical consumer’s eye’s will glaze over trying to process anything unfamiliar to them, like this new fangled electricity thing. Second, your math above is incorrect. You wolud divide the range in miles, by the Miles PER Amp-hour to get the size of the battery pack, resulting in an effective battery pack size of 25 Ah (the battery pack doesn’t operate to full discharge, so its actual capacity will be greater).
Second, I too am tired of GM’s marketing approach of hypig a vehicle years before its release. I could see them beginning to hype the Volt now, but this began, what 2 years ago?