And where does the electricity come from that charges those batteries?
Last time I checked, the electric grid is ALREADY pushed to the limits in most areas...
To be fair, the Volt was designed and built before the Communists took over.
The Volt is a serial hybrid, essentially just a tiny little gas generator recharging an all-electric car.
It's much better than a Prius parallel hybrid---a combination of the worst of both worlds----which has to have a heavy transmission which can transfer electric power or gas power to the road: but the electric car half can't produce enough power for acceleration, and the gas half has to drag the unused batteries around when it's running.
Parallel hybrids are a ridiculous compromise.
The generator in the serial hybrid can even be more efficient than an ultra-lean turbo diesel, because it only has to run at a single, tuned RPM for maximum efficiency and minimum emissions. The ultra-lean diesels run very hot and create very high NOx emissions (don't ever believe someone who tells you there's a free lunch out there from the Germans, if only big oil would let them in....it ain't big oil, it's BIG EPA who won't let the ultra-lean diesels in!!!)
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.
All that said, I can't buy a Volt without money going into Obama's criminal UAW machine....so GM is dead to me too.
What a sad, sad confluence. Imagine being an engineer there who brought this thing to fruition.
Batteries are for starting engines, flashlights and portable radios. There is no reasonable transport battery out there.
The complexity of the equipment for battery powered cars to work, makes it a ridiculous exercise in ‘just because you can, doesn’t mean you should’ engineering.
If the government financed stupidity, we would have lots of it. Come to think of it, isn’t that the problem?
You get it.
What a sad, sad confluence. Imagine being an engineer there who brought this thing to fruition
At least one Freeper I taked with off line was on the program.
I know someone on the program, but naturally talks in generalities to my technical questions. When I see them, we often talk about the industry from a macro large fly over view. A very sharp, sharp engineer.....
Spot on on Diesels.
Go over to GreenCarCongess and look at Yesterday's Post on Ricardo's and Ford's Ethanol Direct Injection efforts because odf the technical hurdles that Diesels still posess from an emissions standpoint.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/08/sidi-20090810.html#more
IMHO opinion Diesels are dead, It is just that the diesel heads just don't know it yet......
Wonderful post, thank you.
At the customer depletion point the combustion engine fires up and operates at one of several optimized fixed RPMs. The engine turns the generator, producing electricity.
and the first 40 miles may be less then 40 miles, it include power from regenerative braking.
For the first 40 miles, the fully charged battery (80% state of charge) powers the electric motor. Regenerative braking can help recharge the battery to a certain extent.
The generator in the serial hybrid is more efficient because it only has to run at a single, tuned RPM for maximum efficiency and minimum emissions.
And where does the electricity come from that charges those batteries?
Last time I checked, the electric grid is ALREADY pushed to the limits in most areas...
“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.