Car most traded in for a Chevy Volt is a Toyota Prius?

Your right, I have some gasoline in the tank, but it hasn't been burned at anywhere near the same rate as I was using in my Prius.

I do discriminate between electricity and gasoline when I can plug in to a source of electricity from renewable resources. I have not found a source of gasoline from renewable resources.

I have also found that any convenience of fast refueling with gasoline easily replaced with the ease of refueling from a plug.

 

eGrid 2012 uses 2009 data, and there has been significant reductions since then. No one charges on the national grid, they charge on their local one. If you want to reduce ghg, use renewable, if your local grid is not low enough.

YMMV. USBseawolf2000, you seemed to pick the best car for you. I do not know why you persist in this strange national grid ghg argument that somehow it makes the prius phv the best phev for everyone. For many ghg is much lower in the volt. Many that buy volts don't care about the back seat, but like the styling, or handling, or ev range. Similarly there are preferences for the leaf, tesla, ford energis. One size does not fit all, and especially when it comes to ghg YMMV. Many perfer to plug in than fill up.

 

Should a Volt owner discriminate against electricity if the source is coal?

 

National grid is a collection of local grids. Sure, it is easy to cherry pick just the renewable ones and refusing to acknowledge the whole.

A better designed plugin hybrid is the one that considered emission using national US average electricity, out of the box experience. No new electricity to purchase, solar panel or faster charger to install, etc.

No car is perfect for everyone. However, there will be one that is better for the mass out of the box (same reason Camry and Accord outsell the rest). That's what I am getting at.

If someone trades in a Prius for a Volt, chances are that he would be in the state where grid emission emitting higher than his Prius tailpipe emission.

Note, when I point out the average, I am not picking on the Volt owners running on renewable electricity. You guys are the exception and I do understand the urge to defend.

 

Your kind of poking the pooch here, you are saying that because you are ignorant of how someone is charging, we need to use a bad 2007 estimate for the country. That is just wrong. YMMV, individuals should use their own driving habits and there own grids when determine a car. If they think their grid is not clean enough they should choose renewable. As has been mentioned numerous times, phev are not universally distributed, they are concentrated in locations with better emissions. If you really want to lower your carbon footprint you should buy renewable for your home and your car. To do that you need a car that can use that renewable electricity a high percentage of the time. Most that buy bevs and phev have other criteria than ghg, and then the national grid makes even less of a difference.

That just is dumb, I'm not calling you dumb, but its a really stupid argument, and you should know it. A good design is a good design for people that use it. You can't call an ipad a bad design because it doesn't run excell. There is a purpose, and many choose a better vehicle for them. Who really cares that inidana is full of coal power plants when you live in texas and buy wind electricity. And if you are in indiana, why care about me in texas. One size does not fit all, and the best design is not for the lowest common denominator, although the tata is a really high selling car.

Well from your criteria the camry and accord suck, they produce much more ghg out of the box than the volt. Stop applying your own arbitrary standards to everyone.

Really? Do you have a map of that? California is the number one state for trading prius for the volt, and these are gen II prii. How about multiplying out the numbers state by state and getting back to me. Be sure to include those that use wind or solar in your calculations.

Like most open ended questions, it depends.

A volt owner using some coal electricity likely will be spending less money than for gasoline, and will be contributing less to our trade deficit for imported oil. That seems like a win if the money stays in the economy. If it is in one of the cap and trade states it also will contribute no SO2 and NOx and reduce local unhealthy polution. If your sole criteria is ghg and you ignore these other factors, and you really are creating a much higher coal usasage on the grid, then it would be better to buy gasoline.

If you use a public charger in my town you don't get a choice, you can't put coal in the plug, only renewable electricity, and John lives in Austin.

 

Chances are not that good, actually I would say chance currently are poor. According to this data using the 2010 grid:http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/clean_vehicles/electric-car-global-warming-emissions-report.pdf, 45% of the population lived in an area where driving electric emitted the GHGs of a car that got 51mpg or better. At the time of this study, the US electric grid averaged 45% coal, 3% wind, solar and geothermal and a total of 29% renewables and nuclear.
Latest estimates are coal this year will be around 35%! That is a great advance. And while renewables are only soon subtle for a little bit of that, the much lower GHG emitting natural gas is growing quite a bit.

Also given that the worst region is also the worst region for GHG in oil (most of the middle of the country gets a lot of oil from tar sands), I suspect we are north of 51% population in areas where the EV/PHEV wins hands down.

 

That would depend on what motivates that particular volt driver. If its GHG, yes. If its using US supplied fuel, then no as EV is always local.

I care about both but I do discriminate -- I'll only pay to charge someplace that does not provide renewable-based charging.
I pay for renewable at home, which gets me all of my normal driving, so only charge on trips.

If I find a charger that might be viable, I ask if they are using renewable and when they say no, then I say " oh well then thanks anyway, I only pay to charge with renewable energy. Maybe I'll check next time I'm in the area". Hopefully they will get the message and switch to buying renewable, it is not that much more). Every place I considered a charge station, it is already costing me more than running on gas, so I might as well make a statement. The only place I have paid, Canopy at DIA, does use renewable, and told them I was only parking there because they did have renewable charging.

 

You are welcome to your personal definition of "better designed".

I disagree with it. I think better designed is the one that allows a user to reduce their footprint more while balancing cost and overall operational value.

If someone trades a Prius they are very likely in a area with very green energy. Here is the 2008 hybrid salse map (dominated of course by prius).


And here is the map of EV GHG equlivent MPG



So the odds are very much that a Prius Tradein would be in a state where the Volt has lower GHG emissions!

 

Excellent point, I had not considered where Prii are most common and therefore more likely to be traded in.