News: GM Lied: Chevy Volt is Not a True EV

katwalk said:
It is of little interest to me personally because despite getting 100 more mpg than what I drive now it would take me a long damn time to make up that $41,000 when in 5 years I have only put 21,000 miles on my car. :|
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Having a car at all with only 4k a year is the bigger financial disaster :lol:
 
narf said:
Not quite, actually. When your battery is dead and you want to do high speed driving.
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Now you're just making stuff up.

Edit: @BlaRo except it doesn't get that kind of mileage. The mileage it gets when being powered by its engine is 33-35mpg. A Prius again does much better for a lot less money. So again, your rebuttal fails to address the marketing failure of this car. It's overpriced and it won't be able to compete with the plug-in Prius, if that car ends up having a 26 mile range (the current prototype has a 12 mile range). The other half of the marketing failure was that everything leading up to the launch of this car was distorted half-truths, because it is a hybrid (possessing a planetary gear that directly connects to the drive wheels) after all.

Edit: @katwalk disregarding this vehicles insane asking price ($33,500 after tax rebate, plus local tax, title, tags), and taking into consideration that most of the miles you drive would be in the city over short distances, this car would be perfect for someone like you as it would offer the opportunity to use little to no gasoline.
 
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Mr. Nice said:
Now you're just making stuff up.
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http://www.motortrend.com/features/editorial/1010_unbolting_the_chevy_volt_to_see_how_it_ticks/index.html said:
The Volt?s 149-horse electric motor spins the sun gear. When starting off, the ring is locked to the case and power flows to the wheels through the planet carrier, providing more mechanical advantage than the Prius? 80-horse electric motor gets driving the wheels directly. At about 70 mph, the Chevy?s motor is starting to spin too fast to be efficient, so the ring gear unlocks from the case and locks to the smaller motor/generator. Now both e-motors spin, propelling the Volt to 101 mph turning at reasonable rpm in electric mode. The Prius? gas engine must start turning when vehicle speed exceeds 62 mph.

Once the Volt?s battery is depleted, the engine fires up and clutches to the generator to produce the power required to drive the car. Above 70 mph, when the generator couples to the ring gear, the engine gets a more efficient direct mechanical connection to the wheels.
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In other words, the only scenario where the ICE is directly linked to the wheels is when your battery is dead and you want to do high speed driving.
 
argatoga said:
I'd never buy one, but if it works and sells the technology will become cheaper and more widely used.
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True. I don't think we'll actually know how well it works until actual people buy and use them every day so worrying about it now is boring.
narf said:
Having a car at all with only 4k a year is the bigger financial disaster :lol:
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Let me summarize public transport here for you. First there is none in my town so I have to have a car to get to it, then I must pay to park, then I must then I must take a train that costs 8 or so dollars according to my friend who has a discount card so it would be more for me.
This is the BEST public transport situation I have had my entire life. If I had no car for the previous college I attended there would be no train to there and there are no buses from here meaning I would require a taxi every day for a 25 mile commute.
 
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Mr. Nice said:
Now you're just making stuff up.

Edit: @BlaRo except it doesn't get that kind of mileage. The mileage it gets when being powered by its engine is 33-35mpg. A Prius again does much better for a lot less money. So again, your rebuttal fails to address the marketing failure of this car. It's overpriced and it won't be able to compete with the plug-in Prius, if that car ends up having a 26 mile range (the current prototype has a 12 mile range). The other half of the marketing failure was that everything leading up to the launch of this car was distorted half-truths, because it is a hybrid (possessing a planetary gear that directly connects to the drive wheels) after all.
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If you're saying that the Prius will get "much better" mileage than 33-35 while going 70, I think you're wrong.
 
smib said:
If you're saying that the Prius will get "much better" mileage than 33-35 while going 70, I think you're wrong.
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My non-hybrid petrol estate can beat 33-35mpg at 70mph. Neither the Volt nor the Prius are built for highway mileeating.
 
argatoga said:
http://blogs.motortrend.com/6719595/green/127-mpg-this-volt-story-must-be-told/index.html

Before everyone starts bitching about it not getting 240mpg I'd like to state one thing:

It gets 127 fucking mpg in real life driving. That in itself is an achievement.
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You can't measure it that way. If you drove longer, it would drop exponentially. If you drove less, it would increase to infinity, or use no gas at all. But the power still came from somewhere, it had to be charged ahead of time. So the cost per mile figures are what's important here, and I believe they are quite good if not as radical.
 
Who cares how it works, it gets better mpg's, is faster, and is arguably better looking than the Prius. Never having to fill it if you have a short commute is just a bonus. I'm sure that will mean more than enough to the few people who do buy it.
 
So what would happen to the guy who buys a Volt with some gas in the tank, but has a commute so short only the battery ever get's used, and the fuel just sits there for months until one day the engine kicks in on a long drive. Wouldn't this be a problem? An extremely hypothetical situation I know, but possible.
 
Canuck said:
So what would happen to the guy who buys a Volt with some gas in the tank, but has a commute so short only the battery ever get's used, and the fuel just sits there for months until one day the engine kicks in on a long drive. Wouldn't this be a problem? An extremely hypothetical situation I know, but possible.
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It is designed to run the engine every once in a while to prevent that.
 
AND-NOT-A-SINGLE-FUCK-WAS-GIVEN-THAT-DAY.jpg


This image deserves reposting. Credit to gaasc or Canuck; whoever posted it first.

I mean, so what. Yeah, it's technically not a purely series hybrid. But it's not "just like a Prius" either. It can go like 30 times as far as the Prius before the ICE kicks in. In the Prius, that's getting to your first major intersection; in the Volt, most of the time, that's getting you to work and back and then plugging back in. Apples and oranges.
 
thevictor390 said:
You can't measure it that way. If you drove longer, it would drop exponentially. If you drove less, it would increase to infinity, or use no gas at all. But the power still came from somewhere, it had to be charged ahead of time. So the cost per mile figures are what's important here, and I believe they are quite good if not as radical.
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That argument's stupid. You should work for the government in utilities. By your point you should be charged for all the electricity you've used so far in your life, all the energy your parents have used, their parents, etc. etc.
Are you going to take into account the energy used to produce the car and factor that into the MPG figure? What about the energy used after the car's retired?
What about the fuel used by the guys who make and design the car? Seriously - It's gotta stop somewhere.



I don't see what the point of this thread is anyway - GM made the car as efficient as possible by letting the engine drive the wheels when it's inefficient for the batteries to. WHAT THE FUCK IS THE BIG DEAL?
Who the fuck gives a shit if it doesn't do what GM originally said if it's better that it doesn't?

As argatoga said - 127mpg real world figures not from the company itself - not some PR crap. Real data by people not affiliated with GM.
 
AiR said:
It practically does here. 89,7% of it at least. Split between nuclear and hydro. If we exclude nuclear (not being renewable, only CO2-neutral) we land at 44,4%. The Volt makes less sense in the UK, with a renewable rating of 2,1%. Only Malta is worse, but they don't count. But remember, power plants still have far higher efficiency than an ordinary ICE.

(USA 10,1%, Germany 16,1%)
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we should be getting some more nukes, hopefully.... thats if the current minister in charge of all this doesnt sell us down the wind farm river. im all for renewable energy but seriously ploughing billions into windfarms makes absolutely no sense. they just are not consistent enough to match the way we live now...24/7 power.

i know this is an enthusiast car board, and were supposed to baulk at anything thats fail wheel drive and minus a turbo or huge displacement. i know GM have spun this thing up to make it kinda look better than it does, it has a silly asking price and potentially may not best the prius. but come on, this is progress, this is good. we need cars like this. we shouldnt be bashing it.
 
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camsinny said:
That argument's stupid. You should work for the government in utilities. By your point you should be charged for all the electricity you've used so far in your life, all the energy your parents have used, their parents, etc. etc.
Are you going to take into account the energy used to produce the car and factor that into the MPG figure? What about the energy used after the car's retired?
What about the fuel used by the guys who make and design the car? Seriously - It's gotta stop somewhere.



I don't see what the point of this thread is anyway - GM made the car as efficient as possible by letting the engine drive the wheels when it's inefficient for the batteries to. WHAT THE FUCK IS THE BIG DEAL?
Who the fuck gives a shit if it doesn't do what GM originally said if it's better that it doesn't?

As argatoga said - 127mpg real world figures not from the company itself - not some PR crap. Real data by people not affiliated with GM.
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I think you've misunderstood him Cam. MPG figures in a hybrid car are somewhat misleading; you could put a gallon of petrol in, drive short enough trips everyday that you rely solely on the battery's charge, and recharge nightly. By doing this you could effectively drive an infinite number of miles on that gallon of petrol, provided it didn't have to run every once in a while to keep everything in working order. Sounds good from a marketing perspective doesn't it?

What victor is saying is that the running costs of these vehicles should be measured by cost per mile ie. you take both the cost of the petrol you put in the tank as well as the cost of the electricity you use when charging, and then calculate how much it costs you to drive every mile.
 
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That is technically true, but mostly only matters to people who say hybrid/EV is completely stupid and will never be good for anything just because they regularly travel long distances. Even still, if someone in the market for a new car in the $35-40k range drives 200 miles to work and back every day, the Volt will effectively cut that to 160 in terms of mpg, 120 if they can plug in at work. Then they could compare the 33-35 mpg over 160/120 miles to the fuel mileage of the other cars they're looking at over the 200 mile distance. Yes, the longer the distance, the smaller advantage the Volt, or a similar system will have, but that doesn't change the fact that a large number of people could see huge gains in fuel economy.
 
:nod: an MPG figure without taking electricity into account would vary not based on the way the car was driven, but on the percentage of electric-only use.
 
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