Chevy Volt to get 230 mpg rating

[Radio-Active]

I am still waiting for a car that will run on smoke. With all the smoke that congress has been blowing up our arses for years, we should have an infinite supply.

[altiain]

Meh...

22 miles to work... lots of stop and go on I-35E... The car won't make a round trip for me. What a joke, 40K and can't drive to the office and back on electric.

Too bad the Tesla is so expensive. It at least has a decent range for an electric.

The Tesla is a toy that seats two and won't even pass a 3-mph gov't bumper test. The Volt is a real car that seats four/five and won't leave you stranded when the batteries are depleted. The Volt is also projected to cost about a third of what a Tesla costs. How can you be impressed with one and not the other?

Personally, I have a lot of respect for GM for bringing the Volt to market. Yeah, I'm leery of the "230 MPG" figure, but I understand that calculating equivalent efficiency for dual-mode hybrid vehicles is going to be difficult. If it really can go 40 miles on an electric charge alone, my wife and I could both commute to work in one without ever using a drop of gas, which seems pretty significant to me.

What I'd most like to know is how heavily that projected range will be affected by things like ambient temperature, a/c usage, etc. 40 miles on a charge is great, but if that becomes 20 miles on a charge in 100-degree temps with the a/c on halfway, then not so much.

I'd also like to see what the projected city/highway mileage are when it isn't operating in pure electric mode.

[Dante]

I'd also like to see what the projected city/highway mileage are when it isn't operating in pure electric mode.

Same here. I know that even in the summertime, up in Michigan, you can get by without the AC most of the time. In the winter, however, you'll need to plug the thing in just to get it warm enough to keep the batteries from gelling! Cold batteries have a much higher resistance. Maybe they're counting on the overnight recharging to keep them warm in a cozy garage?

The 40 miles on electric range is obviously a "best case scenario". I see no way that power-intensive options like a/c and thumping subwoofers aren't going to put a serious dent in that. Then again, most eco-hippies in their Priuses don't have 10" subs in the hatch like I do.

Personally, I can't wait for them to make versions of the Volt that run on natural gas (a la Civic GX) or a bio-diesel capable diesel model. Diesels are ideally suited for the duty cycle in this car. Most electrical generators (larger than a carry-on bag that is) are diesel units that run at a pretty much fixed RPM and are tuned for maximum electrical output per minimum fuel input. A LOT of R&D has gone into that process already, reuse it already!

A small, lightly turbo'd diesel motor with 1.0L displacement or less could produce more power per gallon of fuel than any gas motor on the market today. I bet Volt 2.0 will have this as an option. If you can use biofuel, then you can literally go "off-grid" with the Volt by generating your own power at home and using waste oil (chickety china anyone?) as fuel, even if your daily drive is >40 miles round trip. Take THAT oil companies!

I'm just hoping that GM can pull off the Volt-as-next-Prius-game-changer. They sorely need the good publicity. They've done a LOT of R&D already on how to make sure the batteries don't get toasted in 2 years like the one in your laptop. They stay in the 80-20 range. Never more than 80% full or less than 20% full. Once the batteries get to around 20-something %, the ICE kicks on and keeps it in "charge sustain mode" until you plug the thing in to "refill" the batteries to 80% full off the grid.

The hard economics of the Volt vs Prius vs Insight aren't easy to calculate yet, as we don't have hard figures on the Volt yet, but from my (fairly thorough) previous reading on the subject, it looks like the Volt will be around $40k, and if you act now!, you too can get Free Gubbmint Money! in the form of a $7500 tax credit... so you walk out the door paying about $33K for a Volt. I figure that depending on your driving habits and your actual electricity costs and MOST importantly, the future price of gasoline, you can easily break even on the thing before your 5-year loan is paid off.

Personally, being able to drive a GM car that shows they're not stuck in the 90's (can you say Sunbird, Berretta, and last-gen Malibu? YUK!), but instead shows that they are technological leaders is worth a premium, but then again, I'm a GM fanboy (for the most part). That, and I want GM to succeed so that they can pay back the billions they "borrowed" from the Treasury!

[Radio-Active]

Then again, most eco-hippies in their Priuses don't have 10" subs in the hatch like I do.

You say you have a Prius.