“Now the 40 miles has to be recharged, and 230MPG is stupid, but this is how it’s going to be with govt run companies advertising themselves.”
Honestly, I don’t understand all the negativity about the 230mpg rating. EVERY vehicle gets an MPG rating that makes assumptions about the driving habits of the owners. That seems very reasonable to me. MPG should not be measured over the span of any single trip, but over the span of all the driving you do over a year period. The FACT is that the majority of drivers drive LESS than 40 miles per day, but have occasional longer trips. Therefor, if we simply divide the number of miles driven during a year by the number of gallons consumed, the result is a VALID MPG number. In the case of a Prius, that number might be 50mpg, for a Suburban 14mpg ... and for the Volt 230mpg. Heck, there will be Volt owners that get 1,000mpg because they ALWAYS drive less than 40 miles per day, except for one 500 mile vacation per year, and therefor needed to buy only 10 gallons of gas when they drove 10,000 miles during the year !
There is nothing bogus about the MPG number here. It is no more “stupid” than using the 50MPG Hwy number for a Honda Fit when the average driver REALLY spends 90% of their time in stop-n-go driving and will actually get HALF that MPG.
All the other issues of the government ruining the credit markets, which in turn ruined the auto industry, and the Feds jumping in to save the UAW rather than allowing GM to BK and reorganize, are SEPARATE issues.
True...but only if GALLONS of gas are the only fuel used!
With Volt, the first 40 miles they use in this equation are "cheated" from charging plugged in overnight.
Ok, sure. If we want to play this way, then the EV-1 electric-only vehicle got INFINITE MPGs!
I think some kind of new metric beyond MPG is going to have to be created for these serial hybrids, and of course, all-electrics as they begin to show up.
If for nothing else, for efficiency comparison. If they up the battery capacity to 45 miles, then by this current definition, you only burn
MPG = M / G = 230 = 50 / G ... G = 50/230
So this 50 miles test uses 0 gallons for 40 miles, then 0.217 gallons in the last 10 miles. That means, really, the gas engine is getting 46 MPG when it's running.
So suppose that they just increase the battery capacity to squeeze 45 miles out of it. Then you only use 0.1085 gallons in 50 miles, uh... 460 MPG!
See the problem? Eventually MPG has no relative meaning anymore. I would like to know how much the electricity charge costs really factor in overnight.
Let's guess it's a 15A/115V plug.
Let's use Chevy's number below that "8kWh will get you 40 miles."
Let's allow for the low electric prices and use $1 (btw, utilities add surcharges for fuel, so when gas goes up so will electricity.)
At $3 gal, let's just say 1/3 equivalent gallon. So let's say that's 120 Equivalent MPG. The average of those more real numbers is STILL 105.2MPG, which is very impressive and informative about the relative efficiency.