Popular Science reviews the Volt

A while back, I was a subscriber to PopSci. The articles began to get too ridiculous to believe and they stepped up their weird fascination with DARPA technologies. Cut my subscription and never looked back. I will occasionally pick up a current issue at the library, but skim through it only as an entertainment piece. I read The Onion for the same reason.

Popular Science responsible and thorough automobile review is an oxymoron.

 

Govt owns GM. Billions spent to produce Volt. IPO coming soon. So of course the press is going to be glowing over this car.

I'll wait for real world examples for real people.

 

How CAN you forget credits? Many things within transportation and energy get incentives. We subsidize our fossil fuels ... even by making tax credits for oil companies so that they pay no tax ... year after year, decade after decade. We subsidize PV, wind power, and other renewables. It not 'apples to apples' if you take away that factor from one, but not the other.

The way folks talk about the grid's antiquated condition (sorely in need of fixing) in the U.S. it would seem a good part of the reason the utility costs don't go up significantly is because of the deferred maintenance. That'd mean we will eventually have to pay the piper for all the cheep dancing, over the past 3 decades. Populations continue to rise, and the upgrades continue to be deferred. Hopefully the result won't be like the giant credit bubble we're all still paying for.

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From the article they went ~36 miles on electricity before the gas engine kicked in. From that point onward the writer seems to indicate that the vehicle used 2.36 gal to go 263 miles. This does not compute. I call BS on the story. The writer implies that he only charged the vehicle once.

263 / 2.36 = 111+ mpg or .90 gpc. That's simply impossible in CS Mode.

What he isn't saying I'm sure is that they took that 120 mile trip on Day 1 and averaged 74.6 mpg. Then he took it home and recharged it for Day 2, used it on Day 2 and took it home to recharge for Day 3, etc, etc, etc. This is nothing unusual. If the vehicle is never driven beyond it's charge range then the fuel economy is INFINITY. Yawn.

 

Indeed.

Turns out 214.4 of the 299 miles they drove (while burning 2.359 gallons of gas) were in EV mode.

Motor Trend Reveals The “Secret” To Getting 127 MPG In A Chevy Volt | The Truth About Cars

 

That's 31.5 MPG in CS mode! How fast were they driving?

I average 46 MPG in my 2004 Prius year around and just under 50 MPG in good weather.

JeffD

 

Actually, they averaged about 36mpg. And they had it up to top speed (100mph).

I'd expect regular drivers to get low 40s mpg in the Volt from the reports I've read.

 

I want to know real world data for electricity usage.

 

From reading about a dozen test-drive reports now, the journalists are reporting range for EV mode to be between about 26 miles at the lowest end (going fast on highway with AC etc) up to 54 miles at the top end (driving very gently and not at high speed).

That's using 8-9 kWh of electricity, so Volt uses from about 3 to 6 miles per kWh in the real world.

A bit more than that would be used at the wall of course given charger efficiency / battery conditioning power etc.

 

Yeah I calculate about 5 miles/kWh from the batteries and about 4 miles/kWh (or maybe just a shade under) at the outlet would be a good typical figure.

As above, and given the relative cost of gasoline versus electricity in your region you can calculate what that corresponds to in equivalent MPG. At $0.15 /KWh electricity and $3 /gallon gas for example it comes out to about 75 to 80 MPG equiv. That's not bad, but to me it doesn't seem all that spectacular for full electric operation. If gasoline prices rise significantly more than electricity prices however then that figure could get a lot higher.

 

Based on what I've read here, the Volt has one big problem: too much reliance on that 1.4-liter I-4 engine once the battery runs down. As such, the fuel economy really suffers the longer you drive.

On the other hand, the 2010 Prius can get easily get fuel economy in the mid to high 40's on daily driving because the gasoline engine has a reasonable displacement (1.8 liters) and Hybrid Synergy Drive does a far better job balancing the switch between drive by electric power and drive by gasoline engine power. That's why I hope when the PHEV Prius arrives about a year from now one advantage is that that car will run the gasoline engine less, since with a more powerful battery pack you can run the gasoline engine less, especially during coasting, braking and going downhill.

 

Here in the UK I pay 6p per kWh at night and £1.15 per litre for fuel (£4.35 per US gallon). If I got 4 miles per kWh compared to 50 mpg (in US gallons), it would cost me:

1.5 pence per mile in EV mode and
8.7 pence per mile on gas (or diesel)

So here in the UK, like much of Europe, EV mode would be about 6 times cheaper than fuel in terms of filling up costs at least. I think the USA fuel/electricity pricing structure is quite different from many other places.

 

I'll give the Volt one thing - It makes a super cheap alternative for kids who are still living with their parents and not paying any rent. If they play the game right and only charge their car, they will never have to pay for their cars gas again out of their own pocket! LOL

Parents beware.

 

Yes the relatively cheap price of petrol in the US certainly makes it more difficult for electric cars to compete right now.

Just making a rough list of "conversion factors" from Miles/Kwh (at power point) to equiv MPG (US) I get the following.

USA : $3.00/gal and $0.15/kWh gives a conversation factor of about 20.

Australia : $1.25/L and about $0.17/kWh gives a conversion factor of about 28

UK : 1.15/L and 0.06/kWh gives a conversion factor of about 72.

Wow there's some pretty spectacular differences there in the relative cost benefits of electric vehicles.

 

But what about normal daytime electric costs in the UK of about 15p/kwh? Not everyone has the cheap night rates.

Also, what are the costings for Canada?

 

Arh good point. Yes at that daytime price you'd be similar to the figure I quoted for Australia.

I suppose that's the thing with any attempts at calculations like this. There is a massive price difference in electricity depending on whether or not you can get off-peak rates. The 0.17/kWh is about what I'm paying here, but I think I could get under 0.10/kWh with off peak metering. The conversion figures in both US and in Aus could potentially be much better than what I posted.

BTW. Apart for the electricity costs the real problem that most people seem to ignore is battery depreciation. This is still the biggest cost for EV's. Full EV mode batteries are going to get cycled a lot harder than the Prius battery, and if say a $7.5k battery pack gets depreciated down to zero over 150k miles then that adds about $0.05 per mile. If I include that in my calculations then the US equiv MPG for the Volts full electric mode drops to just 34 MPG.

 

How about for those that work nigh shifts?

 

Update:

Results from journalists electric range driving competition, average range of the Volt in EV mode: 50.2 miles.



Further discussion of the challenge here.

 

Nice - if these guys are getting this far on 8-9 kWh - imagine how far they could get with the 24 kWh the Leaf stores - 133 mi+ - I'd only have to plug in once a week for my typical driving!