So the plug is an option ?

EPA should again revise the rating system to include
- range on pure electric
- MPG on ICE (even if it is used to generate electricity such as in Volt case)
That way, the Volt will come out around
40miles/48(mixed)mpg
Prius (plug-in)
13miles/48(city)/45(highway)mpg

This new denotation shall cover tradition ICE and also pure plug-in to come as well.
Just my $0.02.

I dunno, I'm not exactly laughing. Please don't get me wrong, this is really rich with irony, but I don't think it has played out far enough for me know whether I'm going to laugh, cry, or just hold my head.

There's alot of things sort of just under the surface of this, but I think the most significant is that the EPA has really started to think about the way it tests FE on vehicels that have different types of primary power sources. My personal belief is that the EPA's initial FE numbers on the Prius did the car and Toyota more harm than good, even though they seemed to favor the car and the manufacturer. The bottom line is that tests that led to those numbers didn't really reflect the real world and in the real world average consumers had a hard time living up to that standard.

I think that GM may be in a real tight place on this one: with a $40K price tag, they need a high FE rating, but they really don't want it too high if the car doesn't live up to it.

So, time to grab some popcorn and sit back and watch what the EPA does with this. Whether it turns out to be a comedy, a tragedy, or a head-scratcher, it should be interesting.

With electric vehicles coming online the EPA may have to switch to a Dollar(cent)/Mile rating. Then electric costs for the first 40 miles can be averaqged with the gasoline used, if any. You would have to set baselines of course, say $3.00 a gallon for gas and 8 cents per Kwh/hr for electricity. The neat thing, and the difficulty, is that over time the baselines would have to change making comparisons of different models over many (5-10 year range) years difficult, but from year to year it should be pretty easy Also a good way to calc the cars true cost. The EPA kind of does this already beacuse it puts a yearly "average" cost on the sticker under the milage rating.

Just a guess, but maybe EPA is working on the CAFE standards (Congress decided to play it safe and leave the intermediate goals to the bureaucrats). GM has been downplaying the Volt in order to keep the standards soft on the rest of GM's products.

I agree that the above quote is a good start for a rating system. But I believe that there should be a estimated cost per mile on both electric and fuel. This should also be added to just fuel powered vehicles. By the way, all vehicles should have a rating. The rating could be something similar to the label on appliances with different cost of electricity and fuel. It would be complicated but so is life.

Miles per kilowatt hour would seem to be the best measure of electric mode usage. Next there could be kwh generated per gallon of gas, and finally kwh available from batteries per gallon of gas used.

No. But using it is.

This is very interesting, and something I hadn't considered. In general, the EPA requires that a vehicle meet its emissions ratings for the lifetime of the vehicle with no intervention required on the part of the owner. This is where the urea injection diesels are running into a bit of trouble in the US, as they require periodic maintenance. If you chose not to maintain it, it gets dirtier. Likewise with a PHEV, if you chose not to plug it in it will run dirtier and use more fuel. Since it requires owner intervention on a daily basis to keep the car running in its cleanest state, I would have to agree that its not really fair to only classify it at that operating point.

It does seem like they're going to have to come up with something new, but how to go about that will be a bit tricky. They have sort of faced this before, when the EVs were on the market in the late 90s, early 00's, but this is a bit more complicated.

2000 Toyota RAV4 EV, 104 MPGe or 29/37 kWh/100 mi
Model 1 Vehicle Characteristics

2000 Nissan Altra EV, 123 MPGe, or 29/26 kWh/100 mi
Model 1 Vehicle Characteristics

Rob

EPA and GM both have good points, so split the difference. Length of trip is critical to the Volt. If the EPA test distance was twice as long, the Volt would get mileage closer to the what the EPA requires--a recharged battery. Therefore use the average of the two proposed tests, one that doesn't require the recharge, and one that does. Then add in the *metered* electrical use one would get from the plug in to get back to 100% charge.

Once any significant number of EVs are on the road, most jurisdictions will slap an excise tax on electricity to pay for roads etc. So any $/mile comparisons will be out the window right quick...

The Volt gets 48mpg . . . aahhh hahahahaha . . . I love it! GM plays no small part in nudging EPA revisions so the prius doesn't look so high mileage ... to the detrimental revelation that their land barges get worse mpg's (like who didn't know that anyway). So, now, the Volt gets a 48mpg rating and they cry foul? Only GM can reconscile that line of thinking.

The point about road maintenance funding requiring adjustment is a good one. State and Federal gasoline taxes have not kept up with the requirement since 90+% of Americans believe cheap gasoline is a God given entitlement. Higher mileage vehicles and EV's make the problem more accute. The whole highway/road funding system requires revision in the near future...even without hybrids and EV's.

Could shift a portion of the state/Federal tax to tires... Tire use correlates with miles driven whether or not one uses gasoline, diesel, or electricity.

The biggest problem with the Volt won't be the EPA, it will be the $40K price tag.
Could be they are pricing the Volt to keep demand down, so they can sell their gas guzzlers. Trouble is, the Japanese don't think that way. They are serious about getting off gasoline.

$40K ??
Last I heard they are now hinting another $10K on top of $40K.

Tire wear is a good measure of road use, but wouldn't your idea make tires much more expensive than they are now? Multiple times more perhaps? Some people might delay buying new tires and safety could suffer. Although complicated, perhaps in the future our cars could be tracked/monitored by network/gps and we pay according to where and how much we drive. Continuous tolling...? Better Place (Better Place) is building a communication network between cars and the electrical grid, maybe this could be part of it.

GM already said that in their first full year of production - 2011, they will be able to produce 30,000 Volts, total. That compares with 480,000 Priuses alone that Toyota plans to produce in 2010.