The Heated Rivalry in Low-Carbon Cars

"will charge up in six hours and run for 40 miles before a small gasoline engine fires up and recharges the battery, extending the range to 600 miles ... GM says it will get 100 miles per gallon."

The generator, converting gasoline to electricity will provide 100mpg?
Doesn't seem to make sense to me. Anytime you convert one form of energy to another, the process is inefficient and you end up with less energy than you started with. Generators are very inefficient, and thus, are only used as "backup generators."

Chevy Volt $35,000 to $40,000.

When will Ford make a Focus hybrid? When will GM make a Cobalt hybrid? How much more market share will they lose to Toyota before they realize that a Focus hybrid and Cobalt hybrid would be gold mines for the automakers?

 

They're setting it up for failure so that they can cancel the program before they have to actually sell any of them.

"We tried. We really did. But it turns out to be impossible to get 100 mpg and we know that nobody will buy it if it only gets 75 mph, so we've reluctantly had to cancel the program. But the good news is that our new improved Hummer is even bigger than before and is now available in colors that will appeal to women and we're offering 0% financing and no payments for two months."

 

Ford is rumored to be working on a Fusion Hybrid which would likely have a similar design to the Ford Escape Hybrid.

Spied: Ford Fusion Hybrid


I hope they come out with this car, for their own sake if nothing else.

 

Yeah, that surprised me too. I didn't realize GM was that close to releasing a PHEV, and I see a lot of conflicting information about that. A lot of sites say late 2008 (eg 2009 model year) for a PHEV Vue release. But the GM website itself says " .... may begin production in 2010".

GM - Fuel Economy - News - Hybrids - Saturn Vue Green Line Plug-in Hybrid SUV May Begin Production in 2010

It seems unlike GM to put out a conservative claim (2010) when they could make the more aggressive claim (cited as late 2008 in some places).

Wonder what the right story is? I don't much want a Vue, but it'll be interesting to say the least if GM actually gets a PHEV out the door in 2008.

 

Umm...H1 is gone, H2 is set to be gone and the Volt != the EV1. I know there is still a lot of knee-jerk hatred out there because GM "killed" the electric car, but the more time goes by the more I'm convinced that the Volt is the real thing. I was skeptical at first, but there is a fine line between skepticism and cynicism and I am sorry that so many people are so quick to cross it.

Honestly I've never owned a GM car - not a fanboy or anything - but I am pulling for GM with the Volt for a lot of reasons. Regardless of what you think of the EV1 (I happen to think it wasn't ready for prime time and the cheap gas of the day made it a fool's errand from an economic standpoint anyway) you can't deny that if GM can deliver on the Volt it will be a giant leap in the right direction, whether your cause de celebre be environmentalism, geopolitics, technology or all of the above in regards to your interest in these sorts of vehicles. The Volt will blow anything currently on the market completely out of the water.

The other thing about the e-flex system is that (supposedly) it will be highly adaptable. Why bother with a 40-50 mpg Cobalt hybrid when two or three years from now they'll have the tech to put out a 40-50 mile (or better) PHEV Cobalt/Malibu/Vue/whatever?

 

We all hope they build it. We all hope it succeeds. But I just don't believe the managers at GM give a fig about anything but their own personal compensation. Call me cynical if you like.

 

Don't forget about the FREE gas for the summer incentive.

 

When it is on the road and I can actually drive one, then I will believe all their hype. Remember "GM sweats the recalls"

 

Hybridizing SUVs is almost like a bandaid. You don't get enough mileage gain. Too boxy and heavy. GM and Ford have started out in the wrong direction. They should be hybridizing small cars first. The hybridized SUVs aren't doing that well because they don't have enough mileage gain to warrant the extra cost.

 

If you're daily commute is less than 40 mi in temperate weather, you'd get infinite mpg or some other large number based on equivalent energy or some such hand waving. During that 41st mi, the generator comes on and you're mileage drops. In some scenario you're getting 100 mpg.

All you're electricity started out as some other kind of energy, most probably made by a generator. Although the large generators at the plant achieve economies of scale, they also suffer from transmission losses and peak load overcapacity, neither of which the Volt's generator will have. I'm too busy and lazy to do the numbers, but it needn't be that bad.

When I was looking into hybrid's back when I bought mine, I dimly remember that the argument against a series hybrid was that the motors capable of handling the torque-speed ranges in personal transport were just too big and expensive for the auto application. Things have apparently changed.

 

Hybridizing an SUV produces a very great savings in actual fuel consumed. The big problem is that driving an SUV to the grocery store is criminally insane, like using a wrecking crane to ring a doorbell.

Not to worry, though, Within a few years we'll have burned all the petroleum it's economically feasible to extract and cars that run on petroleum products will fill the last remaining space in our landfills and we'll either drive electric cars, or ride bicycles. There'll be no more room for garbage in our landfills, but there'll be no petroleum left to make plastic packaging from, so that'll be okay too.

And without petroleum for fertilizer and farm fuel, we'll return to natural agriculture, and the mass famines that result will return the human population to a sustainable level. Of course, the transition will be hell on Earth.