USnews Ranking of 2012 models...

Also, with PIP, Prius, Prius c & v on sale next year, Then Toyota will unveil next Tuesday, January 10 at 8:45 AM in the Riverview Ballroom at Cobo Center, what they are calling: an Advanced Plug-in(Toyota NS4).

Also, GM said that they would come up with a solution to the battery issue before begining the sale of Ampera in Europe. We don't know yet what the advanced Plug-in will bring.

 

lol. I do believe you that that is what happened. Problems come up with statistics. If you were to do this every day and charge every day that would be your average gas use. Now you would be supplying it with more energy through the plug and that is what you seem upset about. I agree that it would be nice to have a CS display as well, to get the figure you are looking for. That does not seem very hard to do, and in 2012 they added the kwh display for usage so that you can calculate energy efficiency or fuel cost per trip.

Does this make the volt ineffiecent in normal use? Not at all. Normal use, at least in america uses about 2 liters/100 km and charge much more often and go at lower speeds. This results in a very efficient car. Which is what the US news rankings considered.

If you however drive the way you did in the example the volt is not for you. The prius or any other car will get much lower than estimated mileage on that trip. I'm sure it would favor a diesel in an aerodynamic car.

No its statistics, and you think a different statistic should be shown. Everyone knows that you can lie with statistics.

 

We can keep talking until the Advanced Plug-in is anounced!
The fact is: PIP will do 15 miles with 4.4 Kwh while the Volt does 35 miles with 16 Kwh, almost 4 times the size. Wait!, the Leaf has just 8 Kwh more than the Volt.
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KISS

The typical consumer is simply looking for a general idea what their fuel expenses will be, just like they do now.

Conveying that in terms of GALLONS per distance worked in the past. Now they'll see how adding KWH reduces GALLONS.
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I get what you are saying. You want to compare the CS mpg, that is the miles per gallon while operating solely in the charge sustaining mode (when the ICE is running). That's a fine metric and one that isn't displayed.

Using your example the 9.3 L/100 km value represents well the efficiency during that part of the trip, but fails to recognize that you actually drove 201km and that you got 0L/100km for the other 39km (because you were burning kwh instead).

In my own experience I am just over 15,000 miles in my Volt, around 11,000 were EV with no gas usage, for the other 4,000 miles I used around 110 gallons, so my CS mileage would be around 37 mpg, but my total lifetime mpg displayed in the car is around 130 mpg. If I break everything down to BTU's (a kwh of electricity and a gallon of gas) and then divide it over the total miles traveled and then convert back to miles per gallon equivalent units (based on BTU's in a gallon of gas) I find my total lifetime mpge is around 62 mpge.

Three very different figures, each that tells a different thing. Your right, for a part of the total trip the car was operating at 9.3l/100 km, but what was it doing the other part and how should you factor that into a total efficiency? Most American drivers don't drive that far a day so would burn much less gas and most don't 9or can't) drive that fast and will burn less gas as well).

 

You could use EPA figures right here for both vehicles, use 35 EV miles, or 25 to 50 miles for the Volt, but no need to go to Europe for lower speed hypermiling testings. Also, PIP mileage would be 10-15 in the same test?

GM: Chevrolet Volt Has a Typical EV Range of 25 to 50 Miles

 

I know I make no bones about it. I have posted on here, and gm-volt about what I consider to be pretty bad gas mileage in the Volt. Is why if I know I am going to burn gas to drive (other than for heating) I always drive the Prius. If we go on trips we take the Prius cause it gets well over 50mpg easily. The best I have ever achieved in the Volt is 42mpg, and that is over 638 miles calculated at the pump (not the trip computer).. The trip computer does lie, as on the Volt it factors in your electric miles with your gas miles. To me they are 2 totally seperate entities, and I calculate my mileage based on mi/kwh & mpg based on pump calculations. At the pump around town the worst I have ever seen is mid 20's.. Either way the Prius definately trumps the Volt in the hybrid department. No doubt about it. Whether the 10/15 miles the PiP offers will be up to the individual. I personally like the 30-47 mile range I get out of the Volt, and all of its little technology. After 4 months, and 3500 miles I still do not regret the purchase. It is an excellent companion car for our Prius, and a great daily commuter that does awesome in wall to wall traffic for long periods of time (an area I feel the original Prius lacks in, but the PiP will solve). My day to day cost of fueling my Volt costs me from .032 to .045 cents per mile. Not much less than the cost of fueling the Prius, but as gas prices go up the gap does widen. If it goes up as much as I am anticipating the gap will widen quite a bit, but only time will tell with that one.

 

Absolutely misleading. MPG has always been about fuel economy. Gasoline miles divided by a gallon of gasoline.

Volt's MPG is political MPG (MPGp). The only purpose is to confuse the traditional MPG.

 

Absolutely correct. A gaming of the system I suppose would be simpler.. EV miles are still burning something, or have some kind of quantifiable environmental impact (unless you are on solar). So to me the way they factor every EV mile as a free mile is disturbing as it really does not take the energy usage into account. Which is why I had to create my own spreadsheet to track my overall kwh consumption, and figure it out myself.

 

Excuses. All I am saying is, if you use two fuels, report both. Each individual can come to their own conclusion.

If you want to focus on gasoline consumption, come up with something new - like gallons per year.

 

Nonsense. During the past year I got over "106 mpg" driving my Volt over 15,000 miles (roughly 6,000 miles on gas). That tells me that I used less than half the gasoline I would have used while driving the same distance in my 2004 Prius. I desire to minimize my gasoline usage (implied oil importation) so this is good news.

Split separately, I got about 42 mpg operating on gasoline and about 30 kWh per 100 miles on low carbon/pollution PG&E wall socket power when averaged across my entire year of driving which ended on December 21. Overall, when considering the combined use of both gas and electricity, that was a big improvement over driving my 2004 Prius (now driven by another family member).

 

At the PiP official introduction in Frankfurt last Fall Toyota published a target estimated all-electric range of 23 km (14 miles). So, for 3.6x the battery pack the Volt is getting 3.6x the electric range versus the PiP.

 

May have longer drives than I do. I know this morning I am sitting at 31kwh/100mi, and 14mpg. The Volt showed me I got 215mpg or something like that by the time I returned home from work. Either way I put all my numbers in to my spreadsheet and my cost for todays drive worked out to be $0.059 a mile. Where in all electric I average anywhere from $0.03/mi to a worst case scenario on my spreadsheet of $0.045/mi. All we are trying to say is the Volts own calculation of mpg is at the very least slightly decieving unless of course you are using solar power. Granted we are using less gasoline, and for me that is the whole point of owning the car. We just need to come up with some way to measure it better than the car counting EV miles as free points to stack the MPG measure is all. Case in point is my average on Voltstats for the life of my car is 36mpg with 71mpge with an overall lifetime of 184mpg. Which that number makes no sense cause if you take the miles on my car on there, and divide it by the amount of gas I have used in the life of the car (18.4gal) average comes out to be something around 181mpg.

EDIT: Actually my own figures were wrong. Scrolling down to the bottom to the raw data it says I got 12mpg on my drive today. So even my own numbers were wrong apparently (car showed 1.4mi using 0.10gal of gas).. November really wasn't much better either with 27mpg for that month. Good thing I only use gas once in a blue moon, and now I am just down to 4.9gal from the 5gal I last put it on Nov. 3rd..

Volt Stats: Details for Volt #2012-02395 (Steves Volt)

 

That's not it. kWh consumed should be easily available. For a car driven primarily with electricity it doesn't have instantaneous electricity consumption, only gas consumption.

It appears the goal was to make the driver "feel good" with white lies.

 

The car does report on kwh's consumed instantaneously as I am always checking it on my drive. The problem is it does not do anything with it other than tell me I used Xkwh over X miles. Which is why I came up with my spreadsheet to tell me my kwh/mi, cost/mi, and all of that. Which now it has evolved in to a hugely complex excel spreadsheet, but full of a lot of information at a glance. The Volt is supposed (key word) to give you a lot better energy usage information from www.myvolt.com . They have an Efficiency button which is supposed to do everything my excel sheet does, and they also are supposed to have a mileage button. Both say "Coming early 2011," but here it is early 2012 and they still do not work. So their thought process is there to utilize the information, but for some reason it has never gone live on their site. I hope at some point it does work, but I am not holding my breath. I certaintly do love the Volt, but for me the mpg just leaves a lot to be desired. Though that is why I also have a Prius in the stable.

 

EV miles reported as 'free-of-charge' miles (like shutting-off engine in conventional car on a down-hill stretch?
If this is not misleading, what is it?