The Volt's superior battery range will save more money!

Thanks POTUS for the satirical piece. Got a good laugh.
:rofl:

Wow some people actually fell for this feint, thinking it's for real, like the dust-to-dust piece. Well, we do get people on this board that are quite sensitive. Trolls & such.

However, this post should have been in the Jokes Thread that can be found in FHOP. That would clear up any confusion.

Posting in the proper section would have been more subtle...

I think we should ask to Mods to move it there, no?

 

8kWh was the hyped. I think the actual is 10.6 kWh in the battery but with the charger inefficiency, EPA measured 12.9 kWh from the wall.

 

Ok, assuming Potus is serious...Volt will save more money if always driven in the "sweet spot" of pure EV, never using gas, always doing more miles than the Prius PHEV. Over years.

Well, duh.

If you use the same parameters with the Leaf, the Leaf will win out. Duh.
If you quadruple the miles per very trip, to the "limit" of the Leaf, the Leaf might win if the years are greater than 10.

So what is the point? These are 3 different cars, you're not comparing apples with apples.

TCO (total cost of ownership) is the way to go, use Excel, make a spreadsheet of every dollar that needs to be spent per year on these 3 different cars.

Graph the costs in true $ per year over 15 years, see where the lines intersect.

Remember that depreciation needs to be factored in, which will vary depending on how many miles per year done.

Oh, say with a team of experts, lots of patience, probably a month's work, you might be able to make a rock-solid spreadsheet that everybody claims is fair, tells the whole story.

You could probably sell your hard work to Edmunds.com.

 

Volt's selling point is the fear - for those with range anxiety.

Leaf's selling point is the simplicity. It is mechanically very simple with very few items for maintenance.

Prius PHV's selling point is a well-rounded proven reliable solution. It has the best of both EV and HV worlds, packaged and priced to be affordable with the cleanest tailpipe emission.

Both Volt and Leaf are engineered for the best case scenarios. Prius PHV is engineered for the worst case scenarios yet still excel in best cases.

 

For the Leaf you are right, that and dollar for dollar its the most efficient mass produced car in the world.

Compared to a Leaf you are right about the volt being for those who fear range anxiety, compared to any non-EV the volt is about moving to higher efficiency and entry EV driving.

The PHV will operate like a neighborhood EV for a short time and a super high efficiency HV at highway speeds, I'm sure some people will be attracted to that.

 

Not sure it is the case.

we drive our Prius 30,000mi a year, 2,500 a month or 83mi a day. Assuming free electricity and one overnight charge a day Volt will cost us more per day then GenIII Prius, do the math

Volt requires premium, and his gas MPG sucks. YMMV

 

I read 8.8kWh from the battery from pretty early on.

 

I'd seriously think of getting on a plane and going someplace else. I drive by 3 Volts at 2 dealers on the way to the Toyota dealer. Waiting is always good too!

 

If you TRULY want it all - meaning:
Regular gas
Seats 5
American made
Regen goes to BOTH standard AND plug-in pack
40 mile all electric range
Meets strictest SULEV emissions standard
3 Modes of operation:

Standard Mode​

Blended Mode (Enhanced Mode)​

Electric Vehicle Mode (EV Mode) ​

Then you'd go THIS route -
You buy an appx 3yr old Escape hybrid for around $16K (ebay buyitNOW) price.
Ford : Escape | eBay

You have a 15kWh lithium "Plug-In Solutions" kit installed for around $11K (some rebate $$$ may make it less)
Products - Plug-In Supply

You're out the door for $27K

With this formula - you get quite a package:

Since conversion "low-volume" costs are WAY more costly than products made in the 10's of thousands volume, please explain why $40,000 is a reasonable price, when certainly a factory PHEV escape could get out the door for less ... and way more features. heck, the '08 PHEV Escape (and SUV, mind you) even had EPA numbers in the 30's like the Volt. Sorry, I just don't get it.

.

 

Something you have failed, miserably.

EDIT: Okay, as this is obviously an example of satire, I rescind my seemingly serious tone.

 

You're right of course, you could build it in this manner and have a nice plug-in for about $27,000. What you'd hear on here is that you could buy a new prius instead of that three year old Escape and end up with less emissions, etc...

As a practical matter, most depreciation occurs in the first 3 years, how much more expensive would that process be with a new car as the base. KBB is predicting the value of the Volt at the end of the 3 year lease is $17k something, why not get a used volt instead of building that thing and save $10,000.

What kind of warranties would be left or available on the kit and/or car? Would finance companies finance the purchase and kit install or would you need that all upfront yourself?

What kind of customer support can you expect from the kit company (GM's been bending over backwards)?

What tax rebates are available for it? The volt net would end up around $33k for a brand new car, really well equipped with full warranties available at attractive finance rates (money factor on the lease works out to like 0.4%).

Is that worth a couple extra thousand dollars? Depends on the consumer I guess, it is to me.

 

Hmmm, I am not so sure of that which is why some one else owns the Leaf I ordered. My understanding is that there are 48 cells in the Leaf battery and they each cost $404 to replace. That is a total of $19392. As near as I can tell, one will be fortunate to get ten years from a Leaf battery no matter the use level. In five years, one will need to depreciate the battery about $10,000 OVER the depreciation of the car. This does not fit my understanding of cost efficiency. The smaller battery of the Prius PHV is a hands down winner for me. Besides, the Prius PHV can be driven even if the battery is below 80% of its original capacity. It will just use a tiny bit more petrol.

 

Nissan just set 80% of original capacity as the bottom limit for warranty purposes.

 

Hi There!

If you read the Nissan Leaf warranty (as I have carefully), it makes no mention of warranty of capacity. In fact it specifically excludes that. The 80% of capacity figure is the generally accepted figure for a battery being no longer suited for use in a vehicle. Of course, one can continue to use such a battery in a vehicle with the reduced range. We do not have enough information about how long such a battery lasts at such a reduced capacity. It likely is not a straight line of depletion. But that remains to learn.

You may be inferring that a Leaf battery will last much longer than ten years in the real world. That would be nice if it happened. Lithium ion batteries only recently were doing well to last three years. That they might now last longer than ten years seems a stretch. I speak not of use deterioration but natural deterioration which is unrelated to use.

 

People said the same thing about my prius' large battery back in 2002, but after 8 years and 170,000 miles it turned out to be a non-issue for me.

 

Hello gwmort

I totally agree. They did say that stuff. Our existing Prius cars have NiMH chemistry batteries which have proven themselves as you point out. The Lithium Ion batteries, while they have a higher energy density, are a different story. Of course, the end of this story has yet to be written.

To obtain the performance of the Lithium Ion batteries, NiMH batteries would be ungainly in both size and weight. But Toyota has announced that they will keep them in the non plug in hybrids for the foreseeable future.

 

Public statements from Nissan indicated that they expect 70% to 80% of capacity to remain after 10 years of normal use. They did not say that at that point the batteries would not work.

80% just means that there is reduced capacity and reduced maximum output.

Degradation is likely to accelerate, but will depend on charging.

The Nissan batteries are not lithium ion.

 

Not true. NiMH have similar volumetric density as LiION, abate they weight x3 times

 

according to Wikipedia it's Lithium Ion

[ame=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf]Nissan Leaf - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia[/ame]