Why Can't Other Plug-In Hybrids Copy Chevy Volt's All-Electric Running?

Considering the price used hybrids around here, I'd say the previous Prius owner is getting paid the hybrid premium back by the new owner. Diesels also tend to hold their value. The added value of a hybrid and diesel traits still apply to used cars. Unlike many other features that pump up the new car price. It's the difference between spending remodeling funds on a new kitchen vs. a man cave. While still above beater status, these cars will depreciate slower, and still sell for more than a comparable petrol model.

In the beginning it was that way. Wayne Gerdes was actually skeptical of hybrids at first. Then he bought one, and has gotten triple figure MPG results with them. Hypermiling saves fuel in any vehicle. The percent increase over the EPA rating will be smaller with hybrid because it does some techniques automatically, but they, at least the gen2 Prius, make hypermiling easy.

Most people only take up advanced, or even basic, hypermiling when fuel prices are high. Traffic increased on the Gassavers forum as gas prices climbed. Gas prices being low is likely why there is less discussion going here. Since electricity is much cheaper than gasoline in much of the country, that is likely why PHV owners don't give it much attention. A BEV owner may practice it in order to increase the total range.

 

Nope. It's a clean renewable energy source. And it's not "energy intensive". It's only few kWh. The least expensive way to roll down the road.

I'll meet you at the next stop light and we can settle this the old fashion way !!
And you won't smell or hear a thing when I am in front of you within the first 20 feet!
Live a little. You might enjoy yourself for a change !!

 

that's fine for store-bought ev's ... . but you have to give kudos to the homebrew ev versions ... there are surprisingly more of them on the road then one would presume. Not only do they make a great reuse of an expired gasser, they don't get incentives, except the joy of building it their self.
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Well heck - you need to pass that pearl of wisdom to the dummies below who haven't grasped that epiphany

Plug In Day 2012: Tallying Up Millions of Oil-Free Miles with Electric Cars : Compass

.... and since plugin driver numbers continue to grow - we really need to get their numbers to realize how impractical they really are, before it's too late!
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Not only to took the $7,500 plugin tax credit, you probably took another $7,500 for your solar system. $15k incentive for you to come here and brag? Not sustainable, pun intended.

Kansas grid is pretty dirty. It is as clean as 36 MPG gas car.

If you have a grid-tied solar system and charge from the grid, 36 MPG equivalent emission will be the result.

I do not disagree but there is smarter way to cut oil consumption. Costing more than the price of gasoline is ridiculous.

We only import 1/3 of oil from OPEC. The rest are from domestic, South America or Canada.

Regarding tax incentive comparison, I think EV has more due to not only $7,500 but also upstream incentives for battery and bailout cost along with solar incentives to fuel the EVs.

 

+1

All of the plug-in incentives put together cost taxpayers less than a single aircraft carrier.

One of the excuses is the prius is good enough @50 mpg. That is a sad excuse. The prius replaces 30 mpg cars, so it can at most reduce 40% on the cars it works on, and we stay at only 1.1% of (prius c and liftback), and we stay well under 4% of all hybrids. China the biggest car market in the world wants plug-ins not hybrids. Say we can get it up to 6% of cars to be hybrids, much higher sales than we have now, 6%x40% is only a reduction of 2.4% of the fleets oil use, and that is an optimistic figure for hybrids. A combination of plug-ins blended range phevs, phevs that can travel most miles all electric before turning on the ice for longer trips, and bevs, we should have a 80% reduction in oil use compared to similar cars. Say 5% of cars being plug-ins would reduce oil use 4%. Unlike non plug hybrids I think we can grow plug-ins to a higher percentage of the fleet. There are projections that china will be 4.2% plug-in in the next 5 years. That is a good thing, since the US and China are two of the biggest importers of oil.

 

We should not stop at 50 MPG and Prius shouldn't be the only technology to reduce oil consumption.

I thin where we disagree on is how to spend it and at what point it becomes ridiculous.

Do we increase emission for the sake of reducing oil consumption? Why not do both, like the Prius?

If EVs are cleaner than 50 MPG Prius for 60% of the population, why offer the same incentives to the other 40%?

Where do we draw the line and say, enough is enough as the battery gets cheaper?

 

If by "smarter" you mean "slower" then I agree.

You seem to just be throwing any mud you can to see what sticks.
If you are going to include bailouts (exactly what bailouts by the way?) how about the bailouts for gas cars?
Such as Chysler and GM?
Besides the soldiers lives, how much money do we spend "stabilizing" oil producing regions of the globe with aircraft carriers, jets, armored vehicles, support, weapons, and just how much oil is needed for those?

Seeing a Prius owner argue for additional fuel use is just very odd.

 

>Yes, this is the dirty little secret of driving EV's. But it is a regional thing. You can see the recipe of your local Electricity here: How clean is the electricity I use? - Power Profiler | Clean Energy | US EPA

>> This is a silly argument, repeated too often....
ANY SOLAR PANEL reduces emissions. Period. Off-Grid or Grid-tied.
With an Off-Grid system you have the inefficiencies of the push and pull from a home bank of batteries/inverter.
If you live in an off-grid cabin fine.
Grid-tied makes perfect sense for most.

Now bring on Nationwide Net-Metering and we'll start a "clean revolution" ! (Guess who is against net-metering?)

 

Hybrids save more gas than plugins, simply because they are sold in more quantity without any tax incentives.

Just reflecting it back. That soldier life is also a load of mud with politics mixed in.

Yes, it makes sense for your "cost per mile". However, those miles are not clean. You charge from the grid when the sun is not shinning.

 

Again, you are indeed advocating that we use no oil reduction technology that might produce higher ghg than the prius. I find that extremely unhelpful thinking. I expect that plug-ins will far exceed prius sales in 3 years. Outside of Japan people just do not buy that many of them. These sales are not even a majority of prius conquest sales. So why handicap the program with an arbitrary goal that is impossible to reach. We saw that kind of thinking in PNGV and Freedom Car which were complete failures.

Plug-ins reduce oil consumption and ghg emissions from the cars they replace. It is as simple as that. Why give it the false argument that someone should buy a 335i or camry (both in those early conquest sales) instead of a volt or i3, because the grid won't be clean enough in Minnesota to reduce ghg emissions lower than the prius unless they purchase green energy.

To me that is an excuse that slows progress. That the grid must everywhere be squeeky clean, before we can address a large national security problem, imported oil. That the program costs much less than a single aircraft carrier, much less a carrier group should be incentive enough to reduce oil. Certainly if we are to reduce ghg the grid will get much cleaner, and again these incentives are higher than plug-in incentives. While we are paying for new carrier groups to defend "our oil", why not try to reduce oil use so that we don't need it.

Well these are the goals of the program.
EV Everywhere Grand Challenge: DOE's 10-Year Vision for Plug-in Electric Vehicles | Department of Energy
Alternative Fuels Data Center: Benefits and Considerations of Electricity as a Vehicle Fuel

I would have done a different program, as would you. I support your right as an american to criticize the program as being too expensive or ineffective, or having the wrong goals. Certainly I don't want to repeat the political discussion here, but you can see the governments goals are quite different than yours.

I think the doe drew the line at 200,000 vehicles per manufacturer. I expect once tesla or nissan or gm hits it it will start to get phased out. I am much more interested in cutting agricultural subsidies and military budget than this initiative, because that is where the waste fraud and abuse is. Why should I have to buy mexican coke, instead of the american stuff, because of some protectionist sugar scheme. Do we really need to produce more tanks than the army asks for and pay to store them, because a fat cat on the appropriation committee wants make work jobs in his district.
Government Spending Waste: 25 Wasteful Items - Business Insider
Certainly I support your right to speak out against what you think is a wasteful program. To me it should have been able to be done for half the cost, but that is government for you. I don't think it would serve the goal of energy security, to focus mainly on ghg reduction though. I hope that even though you may disagree with the goal, you support my right to be focused more on it that ghg.

 

True, but sometimes you're on a road trip and need to stop at a Sonic drive-in for lunch. I believe I can watch DVD movies on my center display using the "CD" player in my 2011 Volt as long as I'm in Park.

But there aren't any Sonics in my area and I never think to bring along DVDs on road trips so I've never tried it.

 

If the same incentives were to give to regular hybrids, they would reduce even more oil and ghg emisison.

$2,500 for every Prius. 3x Prius would save more gas than one Volt ever can. That is the point. More bang for the buck without gimmick expensive tech.

 

If anybody buys them.
Hybrids got their incentives early on.
Plugins are getting some now.

As for the size of the incentives, you are free to disagree with them.
If the only reason for the incentives were to decrease GHG emissions I'd be yelling about them.
But it isn't, it is a long term play to speed the adoption rate of plugins as well as public infrastructure, which hybrids didn't need.

If you want to ignore the cost of our military in oil producing areas of the world, that is fine.
If you want do dig into remote upstream costs of plugins, you can't ignore the same for oil.
Apples to Apples comparisons are helpful, slanted ones are not.

 

Well at least you have gotten to the point that you agree that plug-ins likely reduce ghg and oil use even in the states where the prius may produce less ghg, because not everyone buying in those states would have bought a prius instead.

As I have said at least twice on this thread, I support your right to be against the tax credits as being wasteful government spending. Hey I think I could do a much better and even less expensive program. It would start with taxing oil and low fuel economy cars (especially old ones, and those that produce unhealthy pollution). I would use some of the money to reduce payroll taxes, other parts of the money to help low income and low wealth (double test) replace their guzzlers. I would have capped the plug-in program at 500,000 cars and given the money straight to the manufacturers to reduce cost. OK my easy plan, that couldn't pass in the this government.

Your plan, I guess 600,000 per manufactururer for ghg as low as a prius, couldn't fly. Let's set it at 38 mpg instead, 600,000 is less than 3 years toyota hybrid sales in the US. They could say increase sales 50% for a little less than 2 years, then its done. I think they would just pocket the money ;-) It might sell some more ford, and honda, and gm hybrids, but I doubt enough to get hybrid sales up a percent 3 years from now. Not a bad idea, but unlikely to do as much good as lowering battery costs ;-) It is a fred's house of pancakes discussion though. With the cost of an aircraft carrier $15B/year a different hybrid incentive might be good to reduce oil use, but not in place of.

 

>This is totally inaccurate. Once again it depends on how the local electricity is made (might be made on the owner's roof) and how the owner drives the Volt. Remember, some Volt owners try not to burn any "GAS".
A Volt owner in the Northwestern states that has a 90% EV driving pattern is cleaner than other car, except for a BEV.
But BEV's have range restrictions and can't be used as an all purpose car.

>> Gimmick? What exactly do you think the next gen PiP will be like? If you want a car that can do it all, this is the tech required.
Face it. It's the future. Luddites eventually see the light...

 

I am FAR MORE concerned about driving safely and avoiding collisions than saving cups of gasoline by hypermiling.

 

Same here, but going off your Fuelly signature it appears you are doing some hypermiling. Accelerating sensibly, paying attention to what is happening further down the road, coasting or gliding to stops, etc. are all basic hypermiling techniques. It isn't just the advance and extreme stuff. If you are driving with the intention of not wasting fuel and wanting to get the EPA figures, you are hypermiling.

 

Actually not. We have to assume how much one of these cars saves in oil versus the other choice. I think for either car the other choice being a epa 30 mpg gas car is not a bad assumption meaning 40% gas savings for the prius. @15,000 miles a year and @ epa a prius will save 200 gallons a year (300 gallons versus 500 gallons), so three prii would save 600 gallons. A single volt or other small plug-in could not possibly save that much as all electric it would still only save 500 gallons.

Now a tesla likely would be competing against a sport sedan, which gets maybe 24 mpg or less (lexus gs, bmw 5 series, etc) which @24 would save 625 gallons of premium gas on a 15,000 mile year. Since tesla likely is production constrained, I don't think the tax credit is building a single extra model S today though, but it does give tesla more money to build the gigafactory and the future model 3.

So the question is how much gas could you save giving the same money to hybrids as to plug-ins. The question then becomes if the money has a lasting effect. Do you get technology that produces better cars that will sell more in the future. If you incentive 3 million hybrids versus 1 million plug ins, how many additional hybrids do you sell? How many additional plug-ins. I think that is more of a fred's house of pancakes question though. I mean the plug-in incentive warts and all passed and is dropping the price of batteries, motors, controllers. A bill supporting hybrids needs to be written in a way that it would pass congress, and then I have doubts we would get many more hybrids than we have today. Certainly I believe good people could craft an effective bill, I just don't think it would pass, and $2500 for each hybrid above a certain mpg is unlikely to be effective since the big hybrid maker has so much market share and would be capped out quickly.

 

The most hybrids got was $3,150 for 60,000 vehicles. That's $189 millions.

The most plugins get $7,500 for 200,000 vehicles. That's $1.5 billions.

How much more gas are plugins saving now? How about emission? What about solar incentives that fuel these plugins?

I think the cost does not justify social benefit. You guy do and that's where we don't agree on.

If FCVs have similar disproportional incentives, you guys will be up in arm about it.

Gotten to the point? I have always been there.

I was against Diesel, why? It reduces oil consumption but increases emission. Ditto with the plugins in dirty grid states. The situation with plugins are worse there because they are getting $7,500 incentives to pollute. The trick was to sell it as "electric drive" where the black smoke is not visible on the road. It is not acceptable and greenwash at best.

Huh?

I am advocating technology that reduces oil consumption and reduces emission over non-hybrid.

Not as clean as a Prius. Volt driven with 66% EV emits 320 gram of CO2 per mile in Kansas. Prius emits 222 g/mi. That's with solar electricity in the grid mix.

How can you justify taking $7,500 tax incentive and claim you are "clean". If you are getting 90% EV, you sure are reducing oil consumption by displacing it with another (dirtier mostly fossil) fuel. How much gas are you really saving over a Prius? 2/3 of what Prius would use? Save about 2,000 gallons? That justifies $7,500? It'll buy more gallons than you would save.

Nope. The discussion is bang for the buck. For $7,500, how much gas can you save?

Even better, provide incentives only to the regular hybrids and none for plugins. See how many of those plugins would sell and how much gas would they save? That's the lopsided playing field just reverse of the current situation. Think about it. Hybrids would save more gas by easily expanding the market, like in Japan. I believe hybrids have reached 40% of all new cars sold there.

Plugins are being pushed out prematurely. A lot of money are being spent with little results.

 

Several months ago I really tried watching flowof traffic on freeway, trying to use the brakes less to increase MPGs. On two occasions I had to brake hard to avoid rear ending car ahead. I gave up the intention of minimal use of brakes right then and there.
Keep in mind SF bay area freeways have slows and stops often.