Never saw a chevy volt on the road.
See a lot of Prius, though.
They look like a tuna fish can with shopping cart wheels. What a piece of junk. Despise them.
With apologies to whoever wrote Star Trekking Across the Universe:
Ye....can nae break the laws of physics,
laws of physics,
laws of physics.
Ye can nae break the laws of physics, Captain.
My 1993 Taurus gets a solid 31 on the highway, going 55.
... and the EPA also lies.
Cars that have diesel engines always seem to be the best in terms of gas mileage, I don't understand why there wasn't a big push to go this route instead of loading up with an extra system to make it inherently more inefficient than a single-system car.
If I’m reading this correctly, the electric coal plant is 33% efficient and it will take the Volt in full electric mode the equivalent of 3 gallons of gas to go 93 miles. That’s equivalent to 31 mpg which is slightly less than my 96 Saturn gets.
“Lumpy”, our 1996 VW Passat TDI (turbodiesel) Wagon, just turned 309,000 miles this morning.
We get 39-41 MPG for mixed suburban-city driving, and 46-51 MPG for pure highway driving (cruising at 70-85 MPH).
Electric cars? We don’t need no stinkin’ electric cars.
As much as I would love to see these weenie mobiles relegated to obscurity, especially when Government Motors is involved, this is a pretty silly argument to make.
To calculate the “true” MPG of our gas guzzlers, should we now start factoring in how much energy was expended to locate the oil, to then drill the oil, to then ship the oil to refineries, to then refine the oil into gasoline, to then truck the gasoline to our gas station....
The associated costs are going to be spread out over a huge volume of gasoline users, but the same can probably be said for users of electricity.
In the end, while I like diesels, the bottom line in the electric vs. diesel argument is this:
Coal is bought from places in America that vote for conservatives. Oil comes from places in the middle east that want to kill us.
SHAZAAM !!!
And don’t forget about 6600 Watts/hour to charge it; installation of the charger; etc, etc, &c, &c...
“Did you remember to carry da bum? Good!”
....
But 33kw of coal is a lot cheaper than 33kw of gasoline. So this only matters if you really cared how much gasoline you were burning, rather than how much money it was going to cost you to drive your car.
My July electric bill was $114.87 for 1059 KWH. That’s 10.84 cents per KWH. But that includes fixed costs; my variable cost for another KWH is actually 9 cents.
So the 100 miles in the leaf, which uses 34kwh, will cost me 34*9= $3.06. Gas is currently $2.85/gallon here in my home town, so my “gasoline PRICE equivalent is 1.07 gallons, which gives me a MPG PRICE equivalent of 93 mpg.
That takes into account ALL the costs of delivering my electricity to me, since those costs are built into the price I pay for the electricity.
That’s a pretty good deal. My Prius is about 45 mpg, so I’d cut my costs in half by switching to a Leaf. If you currently get 30mpg in a standard car, you’d cut your costs by 2/3rds.
Note that the amount you saved is proportional to what you currently spend. So the 1/2 I save isn’t 33% better than the 2/3rds you’d save — since my current costs are 33% lower than the person getting 30mpg.
TO determine savings, you need to invert everything, and count miles driven.
If you drive 10,000 miles a year, assuming gas at $2.85 and electricity at the 9cents/kwh, you get these savings based on your current MPG (the leaf would cost 10,000/100*34*0.09 = $306.
10mpg (2850) = $2540 (89%)
20mpg (1425) = $1118 (78%)
30mpg (950) = $643 (68%)
45mpg (633) = $326 (52%)
60mpg (475) = $168 (35%)
Note how the “percent” savings looks great, but since your original costs go down as you increase your mileage, the absolute savings is much less. Replacing a 10mpg car with a leaf, assuming they were equivalent for you, would be a great investment, because you’d pay off the difference in a few years of savings.
But you’d NEVER save enough to make it worthwhile to trade in a 45mpg car.
Note this interesting point:
10mpg -> 20mpg = $1425 savings.
45mpg -> 90mpg = $326 savings.
Even though the two upgrades both double your gas mileage, it’s worth a LOT more to double the gas mileage of a low-mpg car than a high mpg car.
This is why comparing MPG numbers is really the WRONG way to figure out costs, and also why the car companies love it. You think you are getting a great deal going from 30mpg to 35mpg, and it’s meaningless.
Instead, we should rate cars in gallons per 100 miles:
10mpg = 10
20mpg = 5
45mpg = 2.2
50mpg = 2
90mpg = 1.1
See, now it is clear that the 10->20mpg upgrade is worth a lot more savings (5) than the 45->90mpg upgrade (1.1).
I’ve got a V12 and I get around 22-25 on the freeway as I pass piuses.
how do you subtract out the “inefficiencies” of standard gas powered cars? why not just use cost per mile and ROI?
but I bet drilling a hole in he ground is cheaper than running a natural gas powered power station(?)
The Volt is a coal burner.
Should list fuel consumption of Volt as lbs of coal per mile.