Chevy Volt Grabs 230 MPG Rating, With Catches
Only if you drive exactly 50 miles and no more per charge.
Yesterday morning, General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson told the media that, under a draft of a new EPA methodology for fuel economy for electric vehicles, the Chevy Volt would get 230 miles per gallon.
Bob Lutz, GM Vice Chairman, also revealed the news on the Chevy Volt blog.
Lutz wrote, "If you haven’t heard, 230 is the estimated city fuel economy number for the Chevrolet Volt, as in 230 miles per gallon, according to new federal fuel economy procedures under development by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for plug-in electric vehicles. And we anticipate a composite fuel economy rating of more than 100 mpg. The Volt’s estimated electricity usage is about 25 kilowatts per 100 miles, about half of what a typical household uses daily."
Of course, that number of 230 MPG is only true if one drives exactly 50 miles on a full charge, as the first 40 miles require no fuel thanks to the battery pack. The further one drives (and thus requiring the power from the gasoline engine), the more the MPG rating drops.
Read more at Autoblog Green.
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Is this a joke? The gasoline takes them 10 miles and they say it's 50.
... You mean 60~ MPG Average. I'm tired of misleading unappropriate headlines... "230 MPG... for the first 40 miles and exponentially declining afterwards"
it seems to me like people are trading gasoline money for electric bills.
It's still a rather overpriced option. Expect to see $40k+ pricing.
This rating is extremely deceptive. Come on GM. This is a great vehicle, but be honest about fuel economy and give a figure that represents gasoline mode only. We know that the first 40 miles are electric only.
Talk about a screwed up way to measure electric cars. I have a feeling those new government fuel measurements will be highly modified soon.
I hate progress!
My car gets infinity miles per gallon*. Take that GM!
I can heat my home for pennies** a year
My desktop computer gets over 1.9Peta-FLOPS***
It's all in how you word it!
*when turned off and pushed under manual power
**roughly 50,000+ pennies during winter months.
***FLOPS = FLoating point Operations Per Seven-days
So if 40 miles without gas + 10 miles with gas = 230 MPG, then does that mean that if I go 41 miles, I am getting 2300 MPG? If I go 40 miles or less, I get Infinte MPG. Gee, sounds like an electic car that they just stopped driving once the mileage was where they wanted it.
This is screwy
This is screwy
Agreed... and I can't understand how charging batteries with a diesel engine would be more efficient than powering the darn car with the diesel engine itself... nonsens
I still have my doubts especially since it is GM. Plus I see very short reviews of the thing. Does this mean that it gets 230mpg out of the gas that is in the car, and not counting how much $ your utility bill is? I'm guessing that it does. Toyota said that they don't have plug in for the Prius because gasoline would have to be more expensive to warrant needing to plug it into the house. Also for plug in vehicles, the government is going to start applying taxes on top of charging your vehicle in order to maintain roads. So I don't know how they are going to meter that.
So it's a chevrolet does that mean it's not going to be made in the USA? lol.
They ought to take the energy use from electric power, convert into what it would take for a gas fired power plant, minus average transmission loss and add them together.
Electric cars acheive up to 90% effeciency and sometimes more, gasoline provides roughly 25-30%. They are incredibly reliable and efficient machines, but pretending that the electricity doesn't exsist is misleading.
well considering I can go to work and home on a single charge and then be recharged by the next day I would save roughly 200.00 a month in gas.
We need to get new MPG standards, saying a car has 240 MPG is meingless when you have to state that you have to drive exactly 50 miles to get the rating. With a further cavet that it has to be the first 50 miles after you have charged your car.
Saying the car gets 230 mpg is completely misleading. Say the MPG on fuel ONLY , and the watts/mile rating on electric ONLY.
GM has no choice: They are required by law to advertise ONLY the EPA ratings.
I'd take the Tesla model S over this anyday.
well considering I can go to work and home on a single charge and then be recharged by the next day I would save roughly 200.00 a month in gas.
Yeah but you can go another 150-200 miles in a Tesla model S for roughly the same price.
"Agreed... and I can't understand how charging batteries with a diesel engine would be more efficient than powering the darn car with the diesel engine itself... nonsens"
Its very simple.
1) fuel powered engines have a specific rpm range where they are the most efficient. At low and high rpms their fuel efficiency goes down MASSIVLY, as does their torque etc. If you use a generator, you run the engine in its optiom range all the time. Means you get a lot more energy generation out of the same ammount of fuel.
2) You arent wasting power at idle when stopping in traffic. When you are idling in afuel powered car you are pissing awayfuel for no work. When you are idling in a electric car with a fuel generator, you are storing most of that energy.
3) When you press the brake of a regular vehicle, all your stored momentum is disappated into heat. IE wasted. When you press the brake of a electric vehicle with regenerative breaking, you store a portion of that energy back into your batteries.
Whats nonesense is their MPG rating.
Using an electric drive train however is anything but nonesense. Even if they only had a battery that could do 1 mile, it would still be more efficient to use an electric drive train with the generator on all the time.
However, the hybrid drive train option is nonesense. When you use both a fuel engine and a electric engine to power the drive train directly you combine the worst of both worlds at twice the price.
volt = hybrid done mostly right. Tho i would have given it a bigger battery. And they should have kept the prototype body look, the production body looks like crap.
They need to be more honest about the MPG rating tho.
Ok, given that driving 50 miles, using gas for 10 miles, equates to 230 MPG... I see the mileage being:
40 miles = Infinite MPG
41 miles = 1886 MPG
42 miles = 966 MPG
45 miles = 414 MPG
50 miles = 230 MPG
55 miles = 168 MPG
60 miles = 138 MPG
75 miles = 98 MPG
100 miles = 76 MPG
150 miles = 62 MPG
Infinite miles = 46 MPG
I prefer a cost of energy approach... you're not getting infinite mileage under 40 miles because you have to pay for the cost of the electricity. The chart would look like this given their assessment that it costs 40 cents in electric to get 40 miles and a gallon of gas costs $2.70:
Driving Distance - Effective MPG
< 40 miles - 270mpg
60 miles - 197mpg
80 miles - 160mpg
120 miles - 123mpg
200 miles - 94 mpg
300 miles - 79 mpg
(note that I converted the electic into equivelant gallons of gas... 40 miles for 40 cents = 270 miles for $2.70... or one gallon of gas)
(and I was assuming 50mpg gas engine mileage).
shouldn't the average be based on a full tank of gas and running until empty? unless my math skills failed me...
They ought to take the energy use from electric power, convert into what it would take for a gas fired power plant, minus average transmission loss and add them together.Electric cars acheive up to 90% effeciency and sometimes more, gasoline provides roughly 25-30%. They are incredibly reliable and efficient machines, but pretending that the electricity doesn't exsist is misleading.
Gas fired? Thought they all used coal and nuclear. Anyway all fossil fueled power plants can be replaced. The gov will probably just tax us until it is out of style and never replace them.
shouldn't the average be based on a full tank of gas and running until empty? unless my math skills failed me...
I don't see anything surprizing here. It doesn't matter what company or industry it is, there's always marketing hype. It's rare that a product lives up to the hype. Take it all with a grain of salt until the product is released.
Looking at the future when gas prices soar and your car has a battery pack, you won't be wondering about your mpg. You'll be trying to remember if you plugged the car in.
The future is almost here folks.
There one car out there that is made by group of people. Sorry, I don't know the name of the company but anyways, every 100 miles, you charge it for 10 minutes then go for another 100 miles, repeat.
BTW, screw chevy and other companies that got money from gov. I'm supporting ford all the way, the true American cars and didn't accept the money from the govs. SMART MOVE, FORD!!
I'm so glad be bailed these guys out. Those few dollars we lent them was totally worth GMs honest customer approach. Helping them through bankruptcy was a good idea too! I mean, did we really think we'd want them to pay us back after making such great products like this! They totally learned there lesson about misleading customers! I mean 250 MPG! That's awesome!
/sarcasm
Wish I could edit... math was wrong on mileage (knew it looked too good to be true):
Miles Effective MPG
40 270
60 109.4594595
80 84.375
120 68.6440678
200 59.73451327
300 56.09418283
The oil companies probably made donations to congress people and auto executives to limit electric cars to battery packs that can only go 40 miles. Otherwise, that rating system wouldn't even be feasible if just one manufacturer offers an "extended" 60 mile battery pack. Think about it, and think about it more when literally none of the so-called "big 3" release a mainstream vehicle that can go further than 40 miles on a single charge.