Build quality of Volt/Ampera

The EPA chart is a just one kind of testing cycle - City. NEDC is combined 2/3 city and 1/3 highway. I'm adding the EPA highway test cycle, just for the completness.

 

But the EV mode is actually "CD" mode, i.e. charge depletion and not pure EV. The 11miles EPA range is how far it went until the battery was depleted. The PiP only received 6 miles of pure EV mode, and that was because of the high-acceleration/load region not speed.

Because they did not seem to optimize to maximize full EV range, it why I was suggesting it was about MPGe because to get high MPGe they have to minimize engine use in CD mode. I did think of another possible reason.. it may be to qulify for "city" EV mode (reduced taxes and such for EU cities), maybe they have to have a minimum distance of pure EV mode and my limiting max speed they can increase pure EV range.


But I do agree they were clearly tweaking, by region, to maximize something they perceived as important. It could be a combination of things, we just don't know. For all the people here that love to complain about GM playing games, it seems the beloved Toyota mothership does it just as well.

 

Just to add more to the toyota games the "EPA" discussion I found some interesting plots on power-demand for the EPA city cycle



As you can see the power demand is actually highest at some intermediate speeds, which is likely where the ICE is needed, not for speed but for power. (The curve is for the rather interesting edison prototype EVLC car so its not a requirement of EPA, but a measurement from their car. (The negative kw is because of regen). But since the EPA driver is trying to match speed and acceleration its a pretty good estiamtion of the demands.

You'll notice the max speed in the test is 56MPH, (verified by looking at the actual data in the test). so if Toyota was just gaming to say in EV for the the test they probably would not have gone for 62.. its not just speed.