The ELR Is On It's Way...

Squeezing more out of less has never been a real priority. Bragging rights about engine displacement was a very big deal for over a half century. Smaller was considered a sales hindrance to the business and a sacrifice to the consumer.

Sadly, some of that mindset persists. It's the root of some advancement problems. That's why even just entertaining the idea of a smaller battery-pack stirs so much emotion. Supporters fiercely resist the idea.

The fact that Toyota worked so hard to get so much irritates. Achieving 50 MPG from a 98 horsepower engine propelling a midsize car really hurts pride. Gaining another roughly 25 MPG by switching to lithium and adding just 3.15 kWh with a plug adds insult to injury.

To make matters worse, a common attitude shift in our society is to now say: "it is what it is". Rather than striving overcome barriers, people are just settling for status quo. That's very disappointing. What happened to our pride? We use to deliver amazing feats of engineering. So many inventions. So many benefits to ordinary citizens. There are excuses. Ugh.

A fundamental change is required. Either it is proactively embraced or it will come in a painful way. Emerging from the bankruptcy recovery with a heavy dependency on profits from large vehicles and nothing competitive for high-efficiency is a red flag, a warning of trouble to come.

 

lol. GM has a lot of dead wood in the culture and dealers. That doesn't mean they are the decission makers.
InsideEVs Exclusive Interview with General Motors EV1 Marketing Director John Dabels – Part 1

Why not inexpensively put out a luxury volt to be a greener tech halo for cadilac? It seems to be the oposite of thnking that killed the ev1. But ofcourse if you simply have an anti gm reaction, any decission will look wrong.

Yep, I don't think the price will hurt it. Nor will it sell much. It's there to get cadillac dealers and engineers to start getting used to the tech. When they improve it, and it is likely to improve, the tech will move to more desirable higher volume cars.

 

Very good points raised.

DBCassidy

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Squeezing more out of less has never been a real priority. Bragging rights about engine displacement was a very big deal for over a half century. Smaller was considered a sales hindrance to the business and a sacrifice to the consumer.​

​

Sadly, some of that mindset persists. It's the root of some advancement problems. That's why even just entertaining the idea of a smaller battery-pack stirs so much emotion. Supporters fiercely resist the idea.​

​

The fact that Toyota worked so hard to get so much irritates. Achieving 50 MPG from a 98 horsepower engine propelling a midsize car really hurts pride. Gaining another roughly 25 MPG by switching to lithium and adding just 3.15 kWh with a plug adds insult to injury.​

​

To make matters worse, a common attitude shift in our society is to now say: "it is what it is". Rather than striving overcome barriers, people are just settling for status quo. That's very disappointing. What happened to our pride? We use to deliver amazing feats of engineering. So many inventions. So many benefits to ordinary citizens. There are excuses. Ugh.​

​

A fundamental change is required. Either it is proactively embraced or it will come in a painful way. Emerging from the bankruptcy recovery with a heavy dependency on profits from large vehicles and nothing competitive for high-efficiency is a red flag, a warning of trouble to come.​

​

​

​

GM is clueless.​

DBCassidy​

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If Toyota made a more EV range PPI, i'm absolutely sure it would keep the same Atkinson ICE.

I presently drive a 21yr old Toyota Carina 1.6 when my wife drives the Prius, and I got 34MPG for the last 16k miles.
So 37 MPG CS mode Volt is somehow disappointing. If not charged (which in longer trips Volt can't, and I do many per year!), I truly feel that Volt is a 4 seater petrol guzzling hybrid.

 

Of course they would. It has about a decade of R&D and real world behind it in a HEV application.
At the time of the Volt development, the only Atkinson engine GM had that I am aware of was the 6.2L V8 from the two-mode trucks. They wanted a more dedicated ICE than the off the self 1.4L, but time and costs dictated otherwise. Then NVH meant a compromise in fuel efficiency. The 2nd generation will get a better ICE. Even if they have to keep to off the shelf engines, there is a wider selection of more fuel efficient ones within GM now.

The ELR is just a repurposing of the Volt's drive train. Giving it a new ICE would be like Toyota putting the latest and greatest HSD into the Camry before the Prius.

Comparing a user results to a testing agency's rating isn't apples to apples. Many a owner of the CRX and Civic VX were unimpressed by the Prius' ratings. Same with with the extreme hypermilers. Wayne Gerdes himself thought hybrids were a gimmick at first.

How does what you got with the Carina compare to its official rating? Will the testing for that rating be comparable to the Volt/Ampera's NEDC rating (I had no luck finding that without the EV combined)?

I could find the Celica's EPA rating. The 4 door shared the platform with the Carina. The 5spd manual were rated around 25mpg combined. You are getting 136% of the rating in the Carina. In a Volt that would yield 50.32mpg. Granted, a manual transmission and PHV will have some differing techniques that will widen the expected mpg range out of the Volt. Using your numbers from the Prius would give a better estimate. Never the less, you will return better than the 37mpg of the Volt's EPA rating.

That will be on your trips with no charging what so ever. Assuming you can charge at home, how long are your typical daily trips? Would the Volt's range cover them? Based on the Carina, you would approach 51 miles on EV. Chances are that the only gasoline you will burn will be on those long trips. Even if the Volt returned the same mpg as the Carina, you will be burning less gas overall, and unless electric rates are extremely high, spending less on fuel.

 

Yes, its the right choice. I expect the next generation one to have more range, and an even more efficient atkinson ice, maybe with di added, and more compression (expansion ratio may stay around the same).

You are confusing epa mileage and your personal mileage. I'm sure if you drove the volt the same way as your carina you would get better mpg out of the volt, unless you have very hard acceleration and travel at high speeds. Volt should get a more efficient ice in the next generation though. There are lots of rumors, and the most likely seem to be a miller cycle turbo ice not an atkinson.

 

Overview: Toyota - Carina - Spritmonitor.de

(Carina 1.6 - average of 17 users - 33.4MPG)

Overview: Opel - Ampera - Spritmonitor.de

(gasoline consumption CS mode Ampera - average of 3 users - 37.2MPG)

I think GM could spend even less, using Toyota 4A-FE engine in the Volt...

 

your 21 year old car doesn't suffer the huge weight penalty of modern cars with their additional airbags - additional frame / chassis safety features etc - much less the giant volt battery pack. I suspect the Prius plug-in would take quite a mileage hit if its traction pack were three times as large as it is.
.

 

Telmo, it would not fit in the engine compartment ;-) You do see even from your own sample that the volt does indeed get better mileage than your carina.

UCS picked a subgroup in the US that drove less than 60 miles on weekdays and had a place to plug-in as a likely customer for a plug-in. In the US this is 42% of car owners. If you get 38 miles on electricity, then are at the bleeding edge 60 miles a day, you will end up using gas for 22 miles a day, at 37 mpg that is 217 gallons of gasoline on 22,000 miles per year. Ofcourse some people drive more, but they likely would not buy a plug-in. Compared to a prius burning 440 gallons@50 mpg, it represents a substitution of electricity for 223 gallons of gasoline a year. Say you drive closer to 30 miles a day with a few long trip, the ice would use much less gasoline.

If it had three times the aer it would take a hit in the number of charge sustain mpg, but it would burn much less gasoline for most owners.

 

EV1?

 

I can answer that. I used to think the exact same way as you, until about 3 weeks ago. I could have written the exact same thing (and in fact I think I compared the ELR with disfavor against the Tesla in another post).

IMHO: You are seeing it completely the wrong way. You are seeing things the way I did before Nov. 27th.

On that day, I had to leave Lincoln, Nebraska and be in Pecatonica, Illinois (a 480 mile drive). I had to arrive some time between 3-5pm.
I debated on taking my Prius (my daily commuter) or my ML350. The Prius would have only used 20-25 gallons on the ~1000 mile round trip, while the ML 350 would use more than twice as much (and premium). But, I was worried about a major storm coming....and I turned out to be right. It was cold, but no snow or ice at all for the drive up or the entire 10 days. But, on the last day, I drove home right through the storm that hit the upper midwest around Dec. 7-8. It was definitely worth the ~$100 in gas savings to have taken the ML!

I was a little delayed leaving NE, because I had to make a detour to my other house to reset my router (it had gone offline, and without it, I wouldn't be able to access my hard drive).
I finally left the Lincoln area some time between 8-9am. I drove the speed limit with only one stop -for 15 minutes to get gas- and basically drove the entire time, eating food I had brought with me, en route. I arrived shortly after 4pm.
On the way back, I drove right into the storm. Freezing rain, wipers going full blast (and using all my windshield fluid), heater and defroster on HIGH. I definitely didn't want to stop. Being able to fill up in 5 minutes and drive 500 miles, non-stop, was priceless. (The 4matic's performance in snow, allowing me to do 70mph with confidence, was also priceless, but another story:

). Anyhow I wanted to get home asap, and the ML 350 did just that.

It completely changed the way I think about EV's, EREV's, and Fuel Cell cars.
I realize my story is not going to resonate with everyone's experience, but now I think Fuel Cell cars might have a future, and I am absolutely convinced that EREV's like the ELR are the only real solution for the next 10-20 years, if not more. EV's will remain niche unless they can do battery swaps, IMHO.
Some facts:
- For the hell of it, I looked on Tesla's and several other EV websites to see if my journey could have been made in a Tesla Model X.....NO WAY. There wasn't even a single L3 charger -let alone Tesla supercharger- on the entire route!
- A distance of 480 miles would have required at least two 45-minute stops, assuming the Tesla superchargers were in place along the route every 100 miles or so. That means I definitely would have not made it by 5pm.....you could argue it's my fault for leaving late, but that's what happens in the real world (router def not my fault ). If I had to properly factor in a time margin, driving a Tesla would have meant nearly 2 fewer hours of sleep!
- I had a plug at my destination, and given that my vehicle stayed parked for 10 days, even a regular 110v could have re-charged a Model S from empty to full in that time. But driving through a cold storm at high speed on the way back....might have required 3 charges.......since range would drop, maybe to below 200 miles. OK, you can eat at one of the stops, but the other two are just downtime!
- Would a rental car work? Not in my case. If I had an EV for daily driving and thought I could rent an SUV for this road trip, it would have been a waste of time or money (or both). I would have had to either drop it off far from my destination (and then figure out how to get there), or just let it sit parked for 10 days, unused, but still costing me $$ daily.

Bottom line:

The Cadillac dealer's sales pitch for the ELR is this:
" Yes, you are paying more than a Tesla, but comparing the range of the ELR using gasoline to the EV range of a Tesla is not an appropriate point of comparison. The fact is, you can fill up the ELR in 5 minutes, and be back on the freeway with just 10 minutes of total downtime. When you really have to get somewhere on time (or just want to get home in a storm!), the ELR is the most practical electric car, given today's nascent EV infrastructure. You get all the benefits of a Tesla in daily commuting, combined with all the capabilities of a gasoline car on the occasional road trip."

 

Glad that worked out for you. 70 mph through freezing rain sounds harrowing, glad you made it ok!
If it had been me, I would have traded cars with my neighbor if I felt our EV couldn't do it.

 

You must have a nice neighbor!
Of course, who wouldn't jump at the chance to swap their car for a Tesla, if only for a few days?
Speaking of Model S's, I saw one with Nebraska plates recently. It was driving through my neighborhood, which has the usual assortment of Lexus/BMW/Cadillacs.....but this was the first Tesla I've seen since I've been here (I left the San Francisco area in 2011, but I hear they've become so common in Silicon Valley, they call them "Valley Camrys")

Also, on my drive to Illinois, I was passed by a Model S (rather quickly!) with Iowa plates. Amazing! (Since there is not a single Tesla supercharger within 500 miles of me.......not one in all of NE or IA!) Only thing close would be the Chademo units at Nissan dealerships. I think Tesla sells adapters for those, but they're half as fast.

 

Ummmm......you are aware this article is about the Cadillac ELR, right?
You know, a car that's based on the Chevrolet Volt?
Which happens to be built in Michigan?
Which happens to be perhaps the most 'amazing feat of engineering' ever by a Big 3 auto company?

 

Some questions re: "petrol-guzzling hybrid":
Do you have the ability to charge daily?
How often would a Volt be in CS mode based on your driving patterns?
And exactly how many gallons would you consume in 1 year with a Volt? Over how many miles?

Adding in electricity, is there any other car in the same price range as the Volt that has a lower cost per mile while offering the quick fill ups and long range of a gas car? Can you name even one?

Criticizing the Volt for being too pricey is totally legitimate....but calling it "petrol-guzzling" is a bit far, IMHO.

 

Yep. Oklahoma, Omaha and Kansas City service centers should be opening over the next few months. EVs work extremely well for two car families and Tesla is the only one with more than a 80–90 mile range.

As for the "gas guzzling" remark by another poster, it all depends on driving patterns. In our case, the Volt used about 70 gallons of gas to go 10,000 miles plus some electricity.
It is also relative. Our old Prius was a 'gas guzzler' next to the Volt and the Volt is a 'gas guzzler' when compared to our Tesla

Back on topic... Just saw one of our local Caddy dealers has 2 ELRs in stock! I'm looking forward to test driving it tomorrow

 

Tesla vs ELR? Tesla wins hands down.

DBCassidy

 

I am guessing it won't. Judging from the amount of advertising I see for the Volt.
However, it would be nice if they did.