Comments on: How 'green' is the electric Chevy Volt?

GM is expected to show off the plug-in electric on Tuesday, and the initial focus is likely to be its looks. But what about the car's potential fuel and cost savings?

[Valhakar]

Is there a wagon model?

[open-mind]

Not yet. Although they claim this drive-train will eventually expand to much of their product line.

[Ormond Otvos]

EROEI. Remember that. It's the Energy return on energy investment. How much CO2 per mile driven, over the life of the car, including the CO2 costs of producing the battery packs.

If they don't mention this, delete and find another article. This article doesn't, so it is worthless if you are interested in global warming reduction.

[b_baggins]

The more CO2, the better. Plants around the world will thank you.

[albizzia]

Are you also going to demand to know the CO2 produced making a standard internal combustion engine? Or are you just looking for some silly excuse to put down plug-in cars? Iron and steel for those engines is smelted with coal and that produces a LOT more CO2 than the processes used for making batteries!

It is difficult to determine exactly how much CO2 is produced making LiIon batteries, since most of that process energy is electric - is that electricity from renewables and nuclear (no CO2) or natural gas (low CO2) or coal (very high CO2). Even with coal fired electricity, the CO2 emissions from production and use of LiIon batteries is much less than for IC engines.

[uhpl508]

Its too bad that living in downtown Chicago there is basically nowhere I would ever be able to plug a car in, parking garages don't have power outlets and if they did I can't see how they would bill you for using them. GM must have some idea how many households have a power outlet accessible to the car though.

[open-mind]

As electric cars take off, you will probably start to see parking lots equipped with charging stations. These existed in California before they abandoned their electric vehicle mandate. It's a gradual transition that will take some time.

[albizzia]

Plugging in is optional, not required, as the Volt can operate as a regular gasoline fueled hybrid whenever recharging isn't available. But since driving electric costs about 1/5 as much as driving on gas, and plugging in is a lat easier and more convenient than going to a gas station, you'll definitely want to plug-in whenever it is convenient.

Project Better Place and several utilities are planning to install thousands, eventually millions, of public recharge spots in parking lots all over the place.

[MacHeads]

This is a "greenwashed" car nothing else. It is all compromises and no fun ...

1)Typical of corporate thinking and board meeting groupthink. If any detroit car manufacturer would be serious about the electric car we would be looking at the EV2 based on Li-Ion battery , not at some "hybrid" underpowered concepts. 40 miles autonomy ...

2)Leasing models are the stapples of the doom of such "Concepts" .... At least Tesla starts delivering cars and they don't have that "shoebox" look. Ethanol may be a way to reduce oil dependency but one HUGE factor few consider when looking at ethanol is that arable land IS a limited and diminishing resource.

I would rather been looking for the upcoming white star from Tesla or a Tesla roadster if you can live around a two seater vehicle. Battery reasearch does exist and most of these technologies have been bought off by well ... i'll let you discover by whom this is all the more shocking. Anyone interested into EVs and fuel issues should google "who killed the electric car?".

[open-mind]

You've been misinformed on a few points.

A pure electric Sedan is not viable yet, since the batteries still cost way too much and charge too slow. The Tesla Roadster is viable because it completes with expensive high performance cars where range is less important. That's why Tesla's planned sedan will work just like the Volt. It's also why the creator of "Who Killed The Electric Car" (Chris Paine) is a big advocate of the Volt.

The Tesla Roadster is very cool, but it's relatively easy for a company like Tesla to hand-build a few Roadsters each day. The task of creating a new plant to mass produce such cars by the thousands is much harder and takes much longer to setup.

Lastly, I think people will be surprised at how "fun" the Volt is. It's 160HP electric motor should have some very nice acceleration off the line. Not crazy acceleration like the Tesla, but still very nice.

[albizzia]

Open Minded: You've got some outdated information, Tesla has changed plans a bit. The "whitestar" codename sedan has been officially named Model S, and it will be electric only with an advanced battery, over 200 miles per charge, and cost about $50,000 - a bit more than the Volt.

No official word yet on whether their 3rd model will have a hybrid option.

[d.gallea]

You have to look at the energy production chain from the raw material to the wheels. In the Northeast, where much electricity is from fossil fuels, an electric vehicle may not save much of those fuels over using a high-efficiency gasoline engine such as the Atkinson-cycle engine in the Toyota Prius.

As far as Ethanol goes, any energy-savings from that fuel in its current state of production in the U.S. has been throughly debunked. The consideration of the chemical and mechanical energy used in growing the corn, harvesting it, transporting it to the Ethanol plant, removing and disposing the waste, and then transporting the Ethanol through the distribution channels just eats up any savings of petroleum fuels overall.

[open-mind]

The difference between the current Prius and the Volt is that the Volt can run without any gasoline if your trips are less than 40 miles. That's why Toyota is developing a plugin-Prius, but they haven't said exactly when.

I agree that when comparing energy sources, the full chain of production needs to be considered. So with the Atkinson-cycle Prius, that should include the cost of finding and drilling for oil, shipping it to the refineries, refining the oil into fuel, and shipping the fuel to thousands of gas stations. And lets not ignore the US military needed to protect the crude oil supply channels. I think you will find that electricity (created using domestic coal, nuclear, wind, solar, etc) distributed on the existing grid compares quite favorably.

[rapier1]

While it is true that a good deal of electrical generation comes from power plants what you are overlooking is that its easier to control emissions from a single source than from thousands of sources. So if you have 1,000 vehicles charging from a single plant you can reduce emissions with upgrades to the plant instead of waiting for the vehicles to move through their life cycle. The question is if the single sources produces less emissions per plugin/electric vehicle than a single car generates on their own.

[albizzia]

First off, the Volt will be using an Atkinson Miller cycle engine. Second, the combined efficiency of a big fossil fueled power plant, distribution grid, charger, battery and motor (30%) is actually higher than the efficiency of an IC engine (15%)! So, yes, driving electric does use less fossil fuel, and none of that fossil fuel is imported.

[Renegade Knight]

Yes and no.
As a consumer I only need to look at what the car does for me. Safety, Capacity, MPG.
It's only on the broader scale that the entire cycle matters.

[Renegade Knight]

The thing needs to bet 40+ MPG on it's own. A native 35 MPG is nothing to write home about. My old corolla does that good around town.

[brianbot5000]

The key to the Volt isn't the 35mpg in long distance mixed driving. It's the 40 miles per charge on electric-only driving. Myself, along with a lot of other people, can get to work and back within 40 miles. So with this, I could commute every day and never use gas, but still have the option of going on a long distance trip if needed. I think this is a brilliant idea because it addresses how many of us drive - short distance, scheduled driving - aka, commuting to work each day. Plug in each night and you're good to go. But if you can't, or forget, you're still good to go.

[open-mind]

GM has always claimed 50MPG when running off the generator. Not sure where the article's 35 MPG number came from.

[b_baggins]

Right. Because you never drive your car in the day for anything but your work commute. You never go to lunch. You never pick the kids up at school. You never go to soccer practice. You never go out to dinner. Nope, you drive your car to work and drive it home and never touch it the rest of the time. And you'll always remember to plug it in every night.

Right.

Practical range for any kind of city car is 100 miles between charges, minimum.

[Renegade Knight]

You all miss the point. If all you ever do is use the car to commute the plug in iis all you need (which likely gets the eletric equivilent of 35mpg). However since the point of the car is efficiency, it should be just that. Efficient when running on batteries and efficient when not.

In other words if Toyota comes out with a plug in Prius they will again kick GM's butt. I both commute and take my car on trips. It has to be efficient all the way around. I have an SUV for my inefficient needs.

[SpinozaQ]

The article is _WRONG_ the Volt will have a fuel efficiency of about 50 miles per gallon _after_ the battery is depleted to it's minimum level. Once the battery is depleted it functions 'more' like hybrid. It has regenerative breaking, and will likely shut the engine off at stop lights. 40 miles is a lot. if you only live 10 miles away from work, that still leaves 20 miles of driving for the grocery store, and soccer practice... before you even touch the gas.

[celticbrewer]

@baggins: "Because you never drive your car in the day for anything but your work commute. You never go to lunch. You never pick the kids up at school. You never go to soccer practice. You never go out to dinner. Nope, you drive your car to work and drive it home and never touch it the rest of the time."

you're right- I never do any of those things. My round trip to work is 30 miles and I rarely go anywhere else. If I do (grocery store), it's usually on the way. Sure I go out every so often, but that's an exception to the rule, and 50 mpg would be just fine. This is a perfect commuter car.

[AppleSuxLeo]

No electric car is "green" The majority of our electricty is from coal...and last time I checked , coal is BLACK ! And the disposal of all those batteries is an environmental nightmare just waiting to happen.

[brianbot5000]

Not when we take all these spent batteries and blast them off into space, with a course set for the sun. :)

[open-mind]

I've read that even dirty coal is cleaner than cars. And it's far easier to clean a few hundred coal plants than millions of cars. Also, electricity can be made from clean nuclear energy like in France. And of course there's, solar, wind, tidal, and geothermal sources of energy just waiting to be exploited. Electricity and bio-fuels are the way to go.

[open-mind]

Forgot to mention ... the lithium batteries can be recycled. Their high value will be a strong incentive for doing that.

[shera89]

Umm, the sun is yellow. Solar? It's been around for like, 50 years...

[cma0651]

If you change your electric provider to a provider that gets their power from wind farms or solar farms then it would be considered ?Green?

[albizzia]

If you wanted to be strict about it, no car is "green", but most of us are practical and are not going to commute miles on foot or tote things home from the store in a wheelbarrow. So most of us are looking for a greener less polluting solution, and this may be it.

Powerplants can take advantage of large heavy efficiency boosting devices not possible in car engines, so the combination of powerplant, distribution grid, charger, battery, and motor is actually more efficient than an internal combustion engine and produces less CO2.

LiIon batteries have no toxic heavy metals and are considered non-toxic and safe to dispose, but are worth recycling to recover and reuse the materials inside.

[open-mind]

I've been following the Volt a long time, and I think the mileage numbers in this article are wrong.

GM has always claimed that the Volt will get 50MPG (not 35) when running off the generator, so it's 8 gallon tank will take you about 400 miles. And running on grid electricity costs about 1/5 of what it costs a normal car (say at 30 MPG) to run on gasoline. So in cost, that equates to about 150MPG, not 100.

[Renegade Knight]

Let's hope so.

[cma0651]

I have been following the Volt for a long time, but I think the numbers are right in this article. Unfortunately Chevy has been slowing downgrading the spec while increasing the price.

My hopes is that the current hybrid, like Toyota will offer plug-in versions soon and make the battery work more in the first 40 miles, so it can boost fuel economy.

[joehilario]

The inefficiencies of individualized power generation will be transferred to the centralized power generation, unless serious consideration is placed on SOLAR POWER GENERATION.

[CobaltTugger]

CO2 output? We'll see who really cares about CO2 output when gasoline is $5+/gal. You already saw what happened @ $4/gal.

AGW is some bureaucrat?s wet dream. They get to bilk consumers out of billions of dollars by making them feel bad for supposedly destroying the planet. As we move into our next solar cycle and the temperature starts dropping, I'm gonna be curious to see what the AGW crowd claims is the reason.

We need to alleviate our dependence on imported fossil fuels through conservation and efficiency, but AGW isn't the reason. Let's leave CO2 out of it and have the marketplace dictate the success of the Volt based on the bottom line cost to operate.

[b_baggins]

The Global Warming crowd will cite the same thing they did in the 1970s: PM10. For those old enough to remember, PM10 was going to accelerate global cooling and bring on the next ice age by blocking sunlight.

And, of course, the top contributors of PM10 were automobiles and coal-fired power plants. It's always automobiles and coal-fired power plants.

[Cobralord]

The new Jetta TDI gets 40MPG on diesel and will be availble later this year. TDI enthusiasts are claiming 50 MPG highway.
Ford had a diesel Escort that got 50 MPG in the 80's. Of course that wasn't a clean diesel like the TDI, but there's proven tech out there that can out perform this car. It's a nice first step, but there's a long way to go. I just ordered a TDI and there's already a 4 month waiting list.

Can we please stop with this solar power nonsense. The efficencies aren't even close to what they need to be. Let's put it another way, if solar worked it wouldn't need government subsidies. Same with "biodiesel" and other food for fuel scams. The only viable alternatives are nuclear and tidal. Wind is not consistent enough, no matter what T Loone Pickens wants you to invest in. Notice he made all his cash in oil. Nuclear is proven, and tidal is just another form of hydro, also proven. The trick there is getting materials durable enough to survive in the ocean. Salt water is really corosive.

[The_Decider]

If oil worked they wouldn't need subsidies.

See how stupid you sound?

Wind is consistent enough in many places. Areas in ND, Arizona, NM, Washington, Oregon, etc. Distribution is the problem.

Same with solar. There are towns in northern Japan that are 100% solar and each home makes money selling excess power to the local utility company.They don't get nearly as many clear days and you are probably thinking.

Nuclear is poison. Many areas in states like Colorado and Washington are contaminated to the point that it will take hundreds, if not thousands of years before these areas are livable and farm-able.

I get all my energy from water and it is dirt cheap: 0.7 cents per kWh. At that rate how much to charge the Chevy Volt each night?

[Jspook]

The problem with your assumption is that you are thinking in MPG. The EPA tests for this vehicle have placed it well above 100MPG. There is no "proven" tech that out performs this car accept foe maybe a Tesla.

[albizzia]

The problem with solar electric is a high cost per watt, not efficiency (although improving efficiency could help lower cost per watt). Wind is strong enough and consistent enough at certain locations to make it economically feasible. but it isn't economical everywhere.

Decider: If your electricity rates are 7 cents per Kwh, then a full recharge would be about 63 cents. The Volt battery pack holds 16 Kwh, bu only 8 Kwh is used to achieve the 40 miles of EV range. (the rest is held in reserve to maximize battery life). Since charging isn't 100% efficient, figure about 9 Kwh for a full charge, or less if you've driven less than 40 miles that day!

[jcrobso]

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4259/
The is a lot FUD about nuclear power, most from Green Peace.

[celticbrewer]

solar efficiency improves 15% per year. Yes, it's expensive and inefficient right now for most people, but it's getting better at a faster rate than anything else.

I agree biodiesel is a scam as it is right now.

[Vegaman_Dan]

I am still a supporter of the Volt, but my desire to buy one has diminished greatly. Looks are important and the concept vehicle was very sharp and sporty to set it apart from the market. What was delivered is still far better looking than any other hybrid, but... it's also not much different looking than any Prius. It's turned into a yawn instead a breath of fresh air in my opinion. <p>
I know concept vehicles rarely make it to market without being emasculated, but I had held out hope for this one.

[jemiller0]

GM should bring back the EV1 and put Li-Ion batteries in it. The EV1 was already getting 150 miles per charge with NIMH batteries. If Volt only gets 35 MPG on a long trip, that is pretty weak. I find it hard to believe it would be that bad though. Prius can easily get 45 MPG today.

[open-mind]

Again, the Volt will get 50MPG when running on gasoline, not 35. The article is wrong.

[theantibush]

The EV1 could not self-charge.
Most people cannot even manage a financial budget, let alone an energy budget in an automobile.
Without self-charge there would be thousands of stranded electric car motorists.
Accordingly, the EV1 was rightfully killed as it asked too much from the common driver and also subjected even experienced drivers to periodic unavailable transportation. Such is incompatible with the randomness of day-to-day life, with its occasional emergencies.
The fix for the EV1 would be an on-board generator, not newer technology batteries.

[jemiller0]

So, you think users are smart enough to know when to fill their car with gas, but, not smart enough to know when to plug it into an electrical outlet? That's a pretty weak argument.

[theBike45]

Must be a typo in Goldstein's claim of 35MPG on longer trips. The Volt running on gasoline alone will get 50MPG, so obviously it would be quite impossible to obtain 35MPG. In fact, the ignorance about the Volt's gas mileage is inconceivable. A 7 year old child could easily figure out what the EPA is obviously having a hard time with - What's the MPG of a Volt? Well, you don't find that out by running tests on the EPA loop or making wild ass gueses. You simply use the EPA's own stats on commuting trip distances and easily determine that a fleet of Volts, without any recharging during the day, would average 275 MPG and avoid 93% of current commuting gas usage. Assume 1/3rd can recharge and the mileage jumps to over 450 MPG and avoids over 96% of gasoline currently used today. That's for commuting, which consumes about half the gasoline we produce. Gather stats of non-commuting trip distances between recharge points and you'll have the whole picutre, but it's perfectly clear that the Volt
will almost certainly average over 200 MPG, even if there are no recharge points outside the home garage. This really isn't rocket science, EPA guys. JEEEZ!!!!

[sting7k]

Electric cars are great and all but there are still issues. Most notably that it isn't really very green when 70% of the electricity that will power them comes from burning fossil fuels (about 80% of that is coal, the worst polluter on the planet). Doesn't look very green to me and will just shift the burden to already taxed electric grids which are in dire need of upgrades to support things like this.

[albizzia]

Fossil fueled power plants can take advantage of several efficiency boosting techniques not available in cars, and both the grid and EVs are highly efficient. Overall energy efficiency of powerplant, grid, charger, batteries and motor is higher (30%) than the efficiency of IC engines (15%).

It is easier to control pollution at a single location than from thousands of scattered tailpipes. Also, an increasing amount of electricity is produced by renewable source with little or no pollution.

Most of the recharging will be done at night when electrical demand and prices are at their lowest. The transition to electric vehicles will take years, we'll have plenty of time to build new power plants.

[justpbob]

"A car that uses E85 fuel, a mix of ethanol and gas, could get 400 miles per gallon of gasoline, he said. There are a handful of pilot cellulosic ethanol plants in the U.S., but none are producing at large scale."

There is no need to wait for cellulosic ethanol plants to produce E85. There are more than 2,000 E85 stations in the US right now, mostly in the Upper Midwest. In Minnesota alone, drivers bought 21.5 million gallons of E85 last year, and are on track to buy even more in 2008.

See this American Lung Association of the Upper Midwest website for details:

http://www.CleanAirChoice.org

[b_baggins]

I'd like to know where they keep getting this less than 40 miles a day figure. The average commute in the U.S. is 32 miles. Commute to work and then take the kids to soccer practice and your car's battery is dead.

The real reason electric car advocates keep pulling 40 miles a day out of their hats is because that's the best you can get with batteries right now. A few years ago when the best you could get was 20, these same people were saying that 20 miles was sufficient for most people.

Chemical batteries aren't ever going to be economical. They just don't pack enough energy. You don't get to legislate physics.

[albizzia]

First, 32 miles is the average daily travel, that includes the commute and all the little side trips, and yes, that is less than 40. Second, some electric cars can go much farther than 40 miles per charge - the RAV4 EV could get 120, the NiMH EV1 140, and of course the Tesla Roadster gets 220 miles, recently upgraded to get 240 miles per charge. That is 6 times more than "40 miles".

Third, The Volt was designed to go only 40 miles per charge using half the battery capacity before the gasoline fueled range extender starts up, as that is enough for most daily driving thus not needing gas, and the smaller battery costs less. But the range extender can add an additional 300 miles per tank for those rare times it is needed, no risk of being stranded as long as gasoline is available.

Fourth, we are nowhere near the theoretical limits of battery chemistry. Lead acid only stores 20 wh per Kg, NiMH about 60 wh per Kg, and LiIon currently stores 80 to 160 wh per Kg depending on type. But LiS batteries could reach 320 wh per Kg, silicon nanowire batteries could reach 800 wh per Kg, and experimental Li-Air cells have already reached 1,000 wh per Kg and theoretically could exceed 3,000 wh per Kg. Moreover, since electric motors are 6x more efficient than gas engines, a battery pack only needs to store 1/6 the energy of a gas tank to get the same driving range - and that is well within theoretical limits!

The EV revolution has just started. In a few year, with improved batteries, exceeding the range of a gasser will be easy, and we could be seeing over a thousand miles per charge from a smaller, lighter, and best of all cheaper battery than what is available now.

[Auspex]

I have been seriously interested in the Chevy Volt since they came out with the first concept. But seeing where we are at now, it looks like Chevy over promised and under delivered. They were talking about 600 MPG when running on gas previously and now that has dropped to just 400. On top of that, everything that made the car look cool and futuristic has been completely stripped making it just another ugly car on the road. The best way to encourage people to adopt this new technology is to have some sense of style and a coolness factor that makes people want to have it beyond just what it can do with running on electricity. Especially since they are going to be charging $40k for it. I wouldn't pay $20k for this POS. Way to screw things up once again Chevy. Stop trying to sell the most boring average cars in the world and you might actually make a few bucks and become the number one car manufacturer again.

[SpinozaQ]

600 Miles per gallon ??? No one ever said that. That's insane. Originally the Volt's "total range" electric + gas was going to be 600 miles. Perhaps that's what you're thinking of. They shrank the size of the gas tank, and thus the total range, down to 300 miles, for a very interesting reason. Gas goes bad!! With a Volt you might not use gasoline for "weeks" on end. I imagine the computer is programmed to start the engine and warm it up at least once a week to keep it in good running condition. Other then that, you might not use any gas at all. If you had a big 10 gallon tank, it might take months to go through it, and the gas could go bad, hurting the engine. So they shrunk the tank a bit. Still, a 400 mile total range is very competitive for a small sedan. I "think" they may even pump air out of the tank help keep the gas from spoiling..... It's crazy the kind of new problems you have to solve when you start breaking the rules.

[shanedr]

Are you sure you don't have an error in that third from the last paragraph. E-85 is supposed to deliver less mpg, not more.

Plus, what is the horsepower. Getting rear ended entering traffic because you accelerate too slowly is a real negative.

A viable electric vehicle will have a useful trip duration, the ability to maneuver in traffic and be at least 20% more economically including battery cost. Unless of course an electric vehicle will cost less instead of more.

[willdryden]

I know how they are getting their mileage figure. It is convoluted thinking, but...
20 MPG on gas = 16 MPG on E-85, but the E=85 only has .15 gal of gas in it so you get 106.666 mile per gallon of gas on E-85. They forgot to tell you that you had to buy 6.6667 gal of E-85 to get that gal of gas.

[shera89]

It's at least a step that is not going totally in the wrong direction. Most of the comments I read here focus on everything that might be wrong with this car, or business model. However, I would encourage stepping back for just a moment and observing that there is finally a somewhat viable alternative - albeit, with much room for improvement. I think the concept of running a vehicle off of electricity, particularly renewable electricity from solar, wind, etc., is pretty exciting. Rebates for renewable energy investments are available in a lot of places right now, and future minded folks are taking advantage of those incentives now while they are still good in anticipation of plug-in hybrids, and even electric cars. Utilizing home solar production to power not only ones house, but also ones vehicle, would accelerate the ROI on both the solar system and the vehicle. That, to me, is very cool and exciting!

[theantibush]

It is exciting. Im plan on picking up a Volt and being a part of this transition away from conventional propulsion.
Its my little part for American industry, national security, and piece of mind.