Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The real numbers on the Obamination's Volt

I agree on the size\weight issue. But if there was technology to achieve this that far back it seems there would have been more improvement over the 20 years. it seems to me that the technology just stagnated.

The majority of people who drive volts are fine with 25 mikes to a charge,

They drive around the city.

for a long trip they will use one of their other cars.

Snake

You can thank California and all of the emission revisions from EPA for that. Brother had a mid '90s Escort wagon that got low 40's mpg, older Civics and Corollas known for that as well. MPG's are what was sacrificed to get to near-water vapor out of the tail pipe (and yes, they are much heavier, but safer in a crash).
Emissions are now so low you can suck on the tailpipe without killing yourself, something many try after a few minutes with the Volt salesman....

I saw the piece and it was quite obvious Eric Bolling is highly biased against the Volt because he believes the government had a hand in developing it. What he doesn't know is that the Volt was in development long before the government bailout.

Bolling never said he paid $1.16 Per kwh, but that a full charge cost him around $1.50. However, the actual New York city area rate is 0.191 per kwh as of October 2011, so a full charge costs about $3.06. Given Bolling's bias I wouldn't be surprised if he drove around with his foot on the brake to decrease the electric range so that he could embellish his on-air rant.



This is nonsense. The Volt runs on gas once the battery is discharged. Once it runs low on gas you pull into a gas station and fill it just as you would any other car. There's no need to charge the battery if you want to just burn gas. Thus, it takes no more time to drive somewhere in the Volt than it does in any other car, assuming you're obeying the speed limit.

If you want to read an honest review check out this one by Edmonds.

You'll see that the average commuter can do each day's driving using only electricity (assuming they don't drive with their foot on the brake). With an extended range electric car like the Volt you can drive without using gas most of the time, but if you want to go on a tip you can use gas just like an ordinary car.

I've been screaming exactly that for years now... but the liberal idiots like obama and such simply don't want to listen to common sense at all.

Nobody is mentioning the OZONE that a D.C. Brush Motor produces,....

....another "Inconvenient Truth".

GTC

You didn't think an electric car from Government Motors was honestly going to solve any problem for Americans. All the Technoly for electric cars either isn't in place or isn't being put into those cars. My guess would be the latter. The Auto industry is still owned by big gas.

Motor Trend is running a long term test on the volt. So far they have over 25k on it with no warranty issues.
They say in their article they are keeping meticulous records on it so far and this is the result.
The epa says the car gets 93 "empg" in electric.
MT is getting 103.4
The epa for gasoline driving is 37mpg.
MT is getting 38.7.
Looks like its living up to the specs so far. And no battery fires.

Yep, I had a 1983 Datsun 310 that got almost 40mpg, and it had a carb!

The difference is that gas and diesel come from oil, but electricity can come from coal and NG, stuff the U.S. has in abundance. For those worried about carbon, then electricity can come from nuclear, wind and solar.

I see in the April 2012 issue of Motor Trend on page 32 that SunPower is working with Nissan and Ford while SunLogic is working with GM to produce affordable home solar charging units that can provide enough power for 12,000 miles of driving a year in most locations. Honda is developing their own home solar charging units using a thin-film copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) technology that Honda says has real world performance close to that of the more expensive silicon technology. Amortizing the cost of a $10,000 solar charging unit over 5 years at 12,000 miles a year comes out to 17 cents per mile, but over the 25 year warranty the cost could be as low as 3 cents per mile.

With affordable home solar charging units, we could soon be at a tipping point where the total cost (purchase price + maintenance + fuel) of electric passenger vehicles will be less than similar gas vehicles.

Long gas lines due to an oil shortage from a war with Iran would really boost the sale of electric vehicles, and even without such a war, the long term price of oil is on an upward trajectory as the demand from China and India grows.

Even if Republicans take both houses of Congress and the Presidency in November, environmentalists will use liberal state governments and the courts to obstruct and delay expanded drilling and development. Even if that were not the case, then unless there's an export tax on oil and refined products, more U.S. supply will be swallowed up by China and India with minimal impact on domestic prices at the pump.

Thanks to the magic of high-power sold-state electronics both the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf use AC motors. Same is true for diesel electric locomotives built in the last 20 years.

I agree. A diesel engine is fundamentally simple (though they get complexity all around them these days). A hybrid or electric car is not.

CARB and the dirty diesel supply killed it. VW was the only maker willing to bring a car into the US market that couldn't be sold new in Cali, NY, or the other CARB followers.

It's truly a bummer the way it worked out IMHO.