http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204653604577251461989702208.html
--R
On 3/1/12 8:28 PM, OK Don wrote:
Seems someone is in the pocket of the oil companies and is spewing FUD:
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/120145-chevy-volt-battery-life-fail-or-fox-news-fail-somebody-has-the-math-wrong
Pity the poor Chevrolet Volt. It’s built by GM, the company that took a
multi-billion-dollar taxpayer bailout. It’s a car that comes with a $7,500
government rebate. Now it’s being dissed by Fox News and chain-mailers for
costing more to drive than a gasoline-powered car selling for a third as
much. GM got hosed, not so much by Fox News as by a parallel chain letter
(“Cost to Operate a Chevy Volt”) that overstated the cost of electricity by
a factor of 10. The Volt costs a lot to buy but it’s clearly cheaper to run
than a gasoline-only car. Snopes.com did a good job deconstructing the
chain mail. On battery power, the Volt costs around 5-7 cents a mile to
drive, less not more than a gas-engine car.
Here’s the backstory. Perhaps tired of being dinged by Fox for the bailout
thing and for a compact car that costs almost $40,000 after rebate ($46,500
list), GM put a press fleet Chevrolet Volt in the hands of Eric Bolling of
Fox’s The Five (video embedded below). Maybe they thought Bolling would
feel the same kind of love for the Volt that tree huggers experience upon
climbing into their first Toyota Prius. Not quite. Bolling criticized the
battery-power performance of the Volt, about 25 miles, when the Nissan Leaf
approaches 100 miles. Bolling noted that, two days in a row, “The car ran
out of electricity in the Lincoln Tunnel on my way to work,” which prompted
a co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle to pipe up and say, “I’d rather roller skate
backwards in the Lincoln Tunnel than drive that thing and break down.”
Bolling added, “Why would you put out an electric car that gets only 25
miles?”
The show mistook the Volt and Leaf as the same kind of car. The Leaf is an
electric-only vehicle, good for 75 miles, maybe 100, then you park it. GM
calls the Volt an extended range vehicle; “hybrid with a big battery” would
be a good description, too. Where a hybrid might get two miles from its
battery, the Volt with its bigger battery pack gets 25 to (on a very good
day) 50 miles. When the Volt runs out of battery power, it auto-switches to
the small gasoline engine and soldiers on for 300 miles. The reason for the
medium-size battery is because most daily driving is less than 25 miles,
which means the car can be charged overnight, and for longer trips it
switches to gasoline.
The “Cost to Operate a Chevy Volt” chain letter went beyond the Fair and
Balanced Network’s opinion that the Volt wasn’t a good deal financially for
taxpayer or Volt-owner. Using a figure of $1.16 per kilowatt hour for
electricity, the chain letter concluded, “So Obama wants us to pay 3 times
as much for a car that costs more than 6 times as much to run and takes 3
times as long to drive across the country.” Electricity actually costs
about $.127 per kilowatt hour now; a tenth of what the chain email states.
The battery pack stores 16 kWh of energy, but, says GM, not all 16 kWh are
used. A full charge adds 9.6 kWh that can be used to move the Volt and
another 3-4 kWh are used in charging on a 120-volt system, less with a more
efficient 220-volt charger. So a full charge on 120V power consumes 13.4
kWh of electricity, or $1.57. The Fox News 25-mile jaunt thus cost 6.3
cents per mile; if the Volt got 35 miles on a charge (not unusual), it
would be 4.5 cents per mile. A compact car getting 35 mpg would cost 10
cents per mile using $3.50-a-gallon gasoline.
The chain letter’s claim that it would take three times as long to cross
the US as a gasoline car assumes the Volt owner would stop to refill the
gas tank *and* recharge the battery each time, meaning you’d drive 4.5
hours then stop for 10 hours, drive 4.5, stop for 10, limping across
America. That’s absurd but that’s what you expect when you get letters
prefaced by “Urgent. You MUST read this and pass it along.” A response on a
GM blog was right on target when it started by quoting mathematician and
ex-Dartmouth College president John Kemeny: “The man ignorant of
mathematics will be increasingly limited in his grasp of the main forces of
civilization.”
The GM bailout may or may not have been a good idea. But GM is back now,
its new cars range from decent to
world-class<http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/100849-clueless-on-tech-how-gm-messed-up-the-chevrolet-sonic>,
and it’s on a pace that might see it earning $10 billion in profits this
year.
On Sat, Feb 25, 2012 at 5:24 AM, Hans Neureiter<diese...@gmail.com> wrote:
Eric Bolling (Fox Business Channel's Follow the Money) test drove the Chevy
Volt at the invitation of General Motors.
For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles
before the Volt switched to the reserve gasoline engine.
Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the
battery.
So, the range including the 9 gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is
approximately 270 miles.
It will take you 4 1/2 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph.
Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have a total trip time of
14.5 hours.
270 miles in 14.5 hours would be< 20 mph averge speed.
According to General Motors, the Volt battery holds 16 kwh of electricity.
It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery.The cost for the
electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned so I looked up what I pay
for electricity.I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the
seasons) $1.16 per kwh.16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the
battery.$18.56 per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to operate
the Volt using the battery.
Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine only that gets 32
mpg.$4.00 per gallon divided by 32 mpg = $0.125 per mile.
Gasoline prices would have to rise to $23.68/gal to break even
(assuming the cost for electricity -–to charge the Volt’s batteries –-
remained unchanged).
The gasoline powered car cost about $15,000 while the Volt costs $46,000.
So we are encouraged to pay 3 times as much for a car
that costs more that 7 times as much to run
and takes 3 times as long to drive across country.REALLY?
--
Hans Neureiter, Katy, TX
'82 300SD
'01 VW New Beetle 1.9L TDI
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