As cited here,

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090811/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gm_volt_mileage;_ylt=...

GM seems to be using a figure of $.05/kW-hr for their "mileage" calculation that yielded the 230-mpg figure. That's less than half the price that I'm paying for electricity at home, and I think it would be safe to say that it errs on the optimistic side for the vast majority of would-be car buyers. This seems to be a case of letting the marketing people run wild without proper adult supervision.

It's not obvious to me that"almost nobody" will get the high mileage figure,although I do agree that it is more public relations "spin" than reality.

I have a number of acquaintances who would stay within the fory mile battery range nearly every day,and simply drive thier other car (s) or truck(s) on the other days,as for vacations,as the other vehicles are bigger and will haul more people and stuff.

The only thing is,none of them are apt to by a Volt,they are pretty well done with GM due to watching thier GM trucks fall apart from rust and paying a couple of thousand bucks for transmission rebuilds.Hillbillies have long memories.

And when I lived in Richmond ,Va ,I seldom put forty miles on my car in a day,other than when I left town for the weekend once every couple of months on the average.

My wag is that half of the owners will "get" over a hundred miles per gallon.

And electricians will find work both installing and either removing or theft proofing outlets all over the place!

There is no way this will be resolved as it stands. PHEV is a paradigm shift, it needs to be played out to see where there shift leads.

In simplistic terms I currently think you need two things:
1) how much electricity to fully charge the battery (kwh) and the resulting range, using the standard cycle tests.
2) the subsequent mpg once the initial charge has been drained, again using standard cycle tests.

This will give a number of results, allowing the user to make up their own mind on what they do, and what it will cost them to do it.

A new test will evolve.

I can't see an online calculator doing much good. traffic.com has an online calculator for determining travel time between places, and its time estimates are wildly inaccurate unless nearly all of your travel is on freeways. In correspondence with them I have found the problem is finding an algorithm to deal with traffic signals and stop signs.

The online calculator proposed for the Volt would run into the same problems.

The only realistic solution is to use a standard kWh to gallon gasoline conversion factor, based on price (such as the annual electricity cost sticker on appliances uses), and calculate an equivalent miles per gallon. Everyone knows mileage will vary depending on conditions, and with most electricity generated from fossil fuels it doesn't matter a whole lot if you're using electricity rather than gasoline.

I run a small video production business. All the gear runs on electricty. Much of it is coming up for replacement. Wonder how much energy that'll consume?

What's the life span of a Volt? How many bits will need replacing over that span? How much energy to replace it?

Business as usual is a wonderful thing.

So what does happen as the heater kicks in when driving the Volt in 20 degree below temperature?

Although this is about the UK, it is useful detailed and up to date analysis of short distance car use.

http://www.racfoundation.org/files/The%20Car%20in%20British%20Society%20-%20National%20Travel%20Survey%20(WP1).pdf

I would be interested in a plug in hybrid vehicle if and when once becomes available in the UK, but it would need to match my family's particular requirements.

We are a young family of four. I commute to work by bicycle 8 mile round trip. The kids either cycle or are driven the 2 mile round trip to school. My wife does not work at present. We live in a village near a small city and most of our immediate social and domestic journeys are 1 - 40 miles. My wife tries to car share with other families in the village so we invested in a 5/7 seat vehicle. We are of a practical bent and often have moderate sized loads to carry so we need a reasonable load space in the vehicle. We currently run one vehicle because the overheads of running a second vehicle are quite high (and we do not have room to park a second vehicle off-road). We make a modest number of longer distance journeys (maybe 2 -3 dozen a year) and our total milage is 8 - 10,000 a year.

I estimate that about half those miles are short distance (<40 mile ) journeys. Our current vehicle gets 30 mpg (imperial, urban). A hybrid with a 40 mile electric only range would save 5 - 6000 miles of 30mpg fuel consumption or 200 imperial gallons at $8 = $1,600 a year before electricity costs (also much higher in the UK).

We try to be peak oil aware and eco friendly in our deliberately modest ( by our demographic) lifestyle, but there is no such thing as a 7 seater medium sized plug in hybrid on the market or even in the pipeline. Over a 10 year lifetime we could afford a premium price of about $10,000 to pay for one if it existed. For reference, we bought our current car one year old for about $10,000.

I like the concept of a plug in hybrid because we would retain day to day mobility in the event of oil shortages. It is in practice a duel fuel vehicle.

We could make similar overall petrol savings by buying a small 5 seat pure EV as a second car for short journeys , or better a small 5 seat hybrid, but the fuel cost savings would be almost entirely lost through the ownership overheads (tax, insurance, maintenance) even before the cost of purchase is considered.

The bottom line is, it is very hard to justify the cost of this sort of car when living an ELP lifestyle.

There is a good article on Drumbeat about the Volt.

Volt vs. Prius: What's the better deal?

It'll take higher gas prices, or a big subsidy from GM, for the new plug-in Volt to be cheaper to drive than the Toyota. But that doesn't mean it won't find buyers.

. . . At current gas prices, the $421 a year savings over a period of six years that a new car is typically owned, would mean that a Volt would only be cost competitive with a Prius if was about $34,500 before the tax credit.

That means GM would have to take about a $5,500 loss on each Volt if it is to be strictly competitive.

If you assume modest sales of 20,000 Volts the first year, that would mean about $110 million in additional losses for the cash-strapped automaker.

Even if you assume a worst case scenario of $5 average price for a gallon of gas over those eight years, it's only worth it to pay a $4,300 premium for a Volt after the tax credit. But that would reduce the loss that GM would need to take on each vehicle by $2,600 to be competitive.

My only thought on the Volt is this:

The focus on the MPG is a whopping Red Herring.

Here's where the focus needs to be: MSRP of about 40,000. That's what they're saying now.

For anybody living in a cave (and there are a few!), please note that 40,000 is entry level luxury territory.

Who has 40k to spend on a car in this economy? Not many.

The Volt is DOA.

There is nothing else to discuss, except, perhaps, whether the government will make the miserable decision to place an even greater burden on future taxpayers by borrowing money from the Chinese and the future to pay people to buy this misguided concept of a fuel efficient vehicle.

Make it for 15k, and then call me.

Nick42 (up above) gets the prize. It's a paradigm shift so it makes a nonsense of the old measurements. But it's worse than that...

Tim Haab cuts to the chase here (and yes, he's an economist. Deal with it):

[...] Warning: Adventures in dorkitude ahead...

Calculating the gas mileage of the Volt is tricky. You get 40 miles of driving gas-free on the electric charge. Beyond that the Volt gets 50 mpg. So the actual mpg is:

mpg=Miles Driven/((Miles Driven-40)/50mpg)

Simplifying, the equation for calculating the mpg for the Volt is:

mpg=(50 * miles driven)/(miles driven-40).

This holds for trips greater than 40 miles. At 40 miles driven or less, the mpg is infinite since no gas is being used. [...]

Now here's a kicker - we can rest assured that "the mpg is infinite" will suggest to some lay people that the car can run on nothing. Indeed, a few will surely scream bloody murder to who whoever will listen, about the unjust increase in their electric bill imposed by the perfidious so-and-so's at the "big" evil utility company. If you doubt this in the slightest, simply reflect on the eternal life of scams about running cars on water, magnets, etc.

Moving on to other reasons affluent people who can afford it might buy a Volt, in particular flaunting faux greenery, the real money quote in Haab's piece is (emphasis added):

Left unanswered: what is the EPA mppc (miles per pound of coal) for the Volt when running off [on] the electric engine?
 

In short, because hybrid cars are a paradigm shift, the traditional measures don't really fit. Whether the shift is for the better at this time depends on what your concerns are, on the timeframe in which you think they might really bite, and on how you think they are coupled together. For example, within the lifetime of a car sold today, the supply of electricity might become as erratic (or more so) as the supply of gasoline or diesel, due to governments shutting down and/or impeding construction of coal plants without allowing useful alternative supply. In that event, a major possible advantage of an expensive electric car will be lost or at least largely vitiated.

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Miles per gallon (mpg) is an inappropriate metric for expressing the energy efficiency of a car that consumes both gasoline and electricity.

Sure, one can easily convert kilowatt-hours per mile into equivalent mpg using simple conversion factors (i.e, a gallon of gasoline has a heat content of about 119,000 BTU/gallon and there are 3,413 BTUs per kilowatt-hour). However, the fundamental flaw imbedded in this simple conversion is that it only considers the electrical energy at the outlet, and not the fossil fuel that had to be burned to produce that electrical energy.

A large fossil-fuel power plant (w/o cogeneration) typically has an efficiency in the range of 35 -40%. So, to accurately measure the energy consumed by the plug-in hybrid, one has to multiply the electrical component of the total energy input by the inverse of that efficiency or 2.86 to 2.5. Only when one adds that number to the energy input of the gasoline consumed, can one arrive at an accurate measure of the total amount of energy actually consumed by the car per mile driven.

To avoid comparing apples and oranges, the mileage of a plug-in hybrid should really be expressed in miles per BTU (or miles per kilowatt-hour) but not in miles per gallon. The problem is that the consumer is only accustomed to relating to miles per gallon, so all sorts of games will most likely still be played in making conversions in a manner that makes the car appear more energy-efficient than it really is.

There needs to be a new paradigm for measuring the efficiency of hybrids and electric vehicles. Using the conventional measure of mpg is inadequate because it is only a measure of fuel USED over distance. Mpg is fine for measuring conventional ICE efficiency because these engine's only manage fuel use over distance. Hybrids and electrics manage fuel use over distance like conventional technology but unlike conventional ICEs they also mange fuel use over elapsed trip TIME. As a hybrid owner, this is something I have tried and tried to explain to people, but few seem to "get it".

Trip distance is a constant between any two points using the same route, but elapsed time may vary depending upon traffic and weather conditions. This is why a simple measure of mpg cannot be used to measure the efficiency of hybrid and electric engines which are configured to manage fuel use over time as well as distance. It is impossible to measure fuel SAVED over time by employing a yardstick which only measures fuel USED over distance.

Also whether or not the Volt is a good value for the dollar depends entirely upon the car it replaces in the consumer's garage. If its combined features place it in close proximity to the luxury car category, then it's $40,000 price is no problem. If people view it as a $40,000 "economy" car, then there will be a big problem with sales. But I take it for granted that regardless of where these new technology cars fit on the price point, they are not solutions for poor people. The Prius isn't either. It's a middle class person's car, too. I own one, fortunately, I'm not poor.

What happens when we have millions of PHEVs that are making the rounds every day sans the need for fuel, and the fuel that they do have on board was bought six months ago, thus isn't the correct blend for that time of year?

Probably pretty minor as snags go, but still. Don't hybrid drivers rely more on gasoline during winter, owing to degraded performance in the electrical system due to the cold?

What would be a good number to have is
1) Cents per mile
2) CO2 per 100 miles

For 1) The cost you will have to pay to drive
2) The environment cost of supply that electricity/gas for you to drive.

Until people understand there is an "environment cost" with this "230MPG" car, it's hopeless to fight the hype.

To give the car that kind of stupid rating is just beyond ridiculous. You wonder if our government really cares what the sheesh is going on.

Let see - my 1991 Chevy Sprint managed 50 mpg all summer.
People hypermiling the 1993 engine (about 10% better milage as they changed the cam for better milage) got >100 mpg using the burn and coast technique of the fuelathon cars (engine full throttle upto speed, engine off and coast, then engine on ..).
So - a 1991 car can get 100 mpg. If one were to hybrid that car and put in a 10 to 15 hp IC engine just charging the batteries then >100 mpg is easily achieved as the part throttle efficiency of an IC engine is lower than full throttle (more so for the turbine engine and that's what killed the Chrysler turbine - 20 mpg, 150 hp and 500 ft-lb torque was about the best they did).
I still want to see a hybrid done properly:

1) IC engine with a max of 15 hp providing cabin heat and stead state power draw for highway cruising. The bit about cabin heat is important as we have cold for 4 months of the year.

2) Electric engine at a peak of perhaps 40 hp (hell a VW Bettle was fine with 35 hp and my Sprint was nice with 52 hp and VW Jetta's were just fine with 48 hp).

3) That way the battery pack is only sized for acceleration - only a few minutes of energy. Then the batteries are small and cheap and light.

As it is I'll settle for an EV that goes 30 miles on a charge and peaks at 40 mph for in-town cruising.

I called the insurance company (most of the cost of my cars has been purchase price, next is maintaince and insurance, last is fuel. But my agent doesn't know anyone who will touch a home-brew EV!

It's a real shame that the governments are throwing cash out the window to buy the current guzzlers in production - and the high powered EV/hybrids that are coming - but the cars that really make sense are not even thought of yet.

The Nissan Leaf looks great - if only they'd put it into production this year with NiMH or lead-acid batteries! I sure as hell don't want exotic LiIon batteries in my car. Make the battery pack small and cheap!

They need to rate these cars in steady state mpg (hybrids) and in kW per km or something similar for electric mode.

As I understand it, the Volt is a series driven hybrid(like a diesel electric train); i.e. the IC engine drives a generator that recharges the battery that turns the electric motor of the EV.

GM doesn't count electricity at all in the mpg.

230 mpg = 207 miles on electricity plus 1 gallon for 23 miles on IC charging the battery at 23 miles per gallon. So the engine is probably good for 23/.75 (battery charging/discharging efficiency) = 30.7 mpg.

But I don't think EPA will let them get away with this.

In terms of GGE (NIST),
we get 207 miles x something .25 kwh/mi?/33.4kwh per GGE +
1 gallon = 2.54.

230/2.54 GGE = 90 mpg.
Still, I think the Volt is an excellent way to reduce oil consumption.

I agree with prior comments about comparing like entities. 49% of US electricity is generated by coal. That will not change in the short term. So let's assume coal generated electricity. The Volt requires 25 kwh per 100 miles. Coal (averaged over types actually used) contains 6.67 kwh (24 MJ) per kg. Electricity generation is 30% efficient, so figure 2.0 kwh / kg of electricity
is actually generated from coal. So the Volt needs 12.5 kg coal to go 100 miles. Now we convert to oil equivalent units. Oil is more energy dense than coal by a factor of 1.48. So we need 8.43 kg of oil to go 100 miles. Be generous and assume 100% of the crude oil is refined into fuel oil. There are 3.26 kg per gallon of oil. So we need 2.58 gallons of oil to go 100 miles. That is 38.6 miles per gallon. It's not a dramatic improvement.

We cannot assume that electricity just magically appears in our wall socket. It has to be produced and you have to consider the energy inputs to that production.

The "230" is one of the most hideous advertising campaigns ever. It's amazing how GM can screw up the selling of something that is so easy to sell. Consumers have been screaming for a production electric car for a decade, and GM wants to somehow make us feel more attracted to the idea by putting it in the frame of miles per gallon, which is clearly not even applicable. huh?

This advertising c%#* reinforces every bad thing I have heard about GM. I've read before that GMs real root problem was bad taste. And it's true, their products are fugly. But the worst of it all was the car commercials. Throughout the decade of 2000 I have been subjected to painful, I mean really painful car commercials. Watching a modern commercial is like being put in the black maiden torture machine.

Now they've even moved their bad taste commercials to my youtube watching and internet videos. The message: you can't run from our bad taste as we sell the product we resisted with all our might and only produced after your president bailed us out with your money and forced us to make this. But here, allow us to spin the product with our bad taste to make you not want to buy it.

The worse part of it is the assumed stupidity of GM's customer. It's like they're assuming that we can't think in any terms different from what we're used to. We've always used mpg, so GM feels like they need to use that to convince us of the merit of electric cars. Even though it's GM itself who was slow to see the merit of electric cars. This company should be dead. I've grown to despise anything with a GM logo behind it. The biggest mistake in the restructuring the company was to keep it in one piece.

Just die already GM. I hate your products, but I hate your advertising even more. I hate that fact that you failed once and now use my taxpayer dollars to force your fuglyness upon me still.

"230" won't sell this car. The word "electric" will sell this car.

Miles per gallon as presented by GM is pure fiction, as pointed out so far. However, the real cost to the consumer is not so much a function of MPG but the cost per mile over the life of the vehicle. For a new vehicle, the depreciation is a major fraction of the cost per mile. Our local cost of gasoline today is about $2.59 a gallon, so for a car which achieves 30 mpg, just the fuel fraction works out to be less than $0.09 per mile. If the GM Volt costs $40,000 up front and lasts 150,000 miles, this works out to $0.27 a mile.

Next, one must add in the cost of insurance, tires and maintenance. The cost of tires might be around $0.01 a mile and a similar amount might be required for oil changes in the small engine and for brake work, etc. But, I suspect that insurance may turn out to be a large number. That's because of the fact that the battery pack is very expensive and may need to be replaced after minor crashes. Like air bags, which are expensive to replace after deployment, we may find that batteries also must be replaced whenever the air bags pop, since that is a sure fire indication of large accelerations, thus potential internal battery damage, which would not be visible from the outside.

My WAG is that if this scenario turns out to be true, then the cost of insuring these cars might be much larger than the collision insurance for a similar vehicle without the batteries. Or, these cars may be totaled as unrepairable at much lower levels of damage than comparable vehicles fueled by gasoline or diesel. Either way, I would not be surprised to learn that the insurance companies won't be friendly to the purchasers of these cars...

E. Swanson

Leave it to the EPA to come up with this nonsense.

EPA is charging ethanol for emissions from changes in land use (Indirect Land Use Change) in foreign countries for which it has no scientific justification. Why does it not consider Indirect Fossil Fuel Usage when calculating the miles per gallon? We know that a lot of electricity in the U.S. comes from coal and natural gas. We also know that producing electricity from fossil fuels has an efficiency much less than one since some energy is lost to heat in the process.

The EPA if it is to be consistent should take into account the pollution and lost energy in the electricity production from fossil fuels.

It any case what is going on here is very typical of energy analysis. Things are being compared which are different. The EPA and GM are engaged in fallacious logic similar to EROEI nonsense. What is the point? The car gets about 50 miles per gallon in the gas mode and it costs about 3 cents more or less per mile in the electric mode if we are to believe GM and the EPA. Leave it at that.

This comparing things that are different leads nowhere. It can not be done. If it is done anyway it is silly nonsense whether it be EROEI across different forms of energy or MPG of a vehicle which operates in two different energy modes. Gasoline and electricity are different and can not be compared, added, subtracted, multiplied or divided.

This controversy is more evidence that the EPA does not have its head screwed on straight. And neither does GM.

Questions for the crowd.

1 - If a vehicle weighs x-thousand pounds, does it not take the same amount of energy to move it x miles, regardless of the fuel?

2 - If so, doesn't that mean that we're simply trading gasoline for coal, NG, wind, solar, etc? (I'm in a 95% coal powered community and I'd be trading gas for coal. If I lived in Portland OR (or France) I could benefit from Hydro and Nuclear.) Are these legitimate buyer's considerations or not?

3 - What is the real prize for PHEV's? Reducing gasoline demand, prolonging the production "plateau," or something else?

Ok, sure 230 mpg is completely outlandish. Just another case of the govt. working with big business to perpetrate a lie for the mighty dollar.

Beyond those considerations, my biggest concern in purchasing a Volt would be the life of the battery. If they're willing to lie about the mileage per gallon, then why wouldn't they lie about the estimated life of the battery? How much charging capacity will be lost over time? There are so many unanswered questions regarding the batteries, that my recommendation is to take a wait and see approach. Wait 3-5 years and get testimonials from owners.

There's nothing like in the field testing by regular people willing to tell the truth about their experience with a product.

I never drive my own vehicles more than 40 miles at a time, so I don't need to own an EREV. The Nissan Leaf would work better for me than the Volt. It will be interesting to see the Focus EV. Ford should hurry up with that.

http://www.nissanusa.com/leaf-electric-car/

A strange aspect of a long hilly commute in a PHEV is likely to be be the difference between the morning and afternoon drives. With the battery fully charged the journey into work is going to seem like a magic carpet ride. Assuming the car is parked all day without being recharged the return home will need the small ICE motor to work hard. It seems to me a 1.5L engine pushing a 2500kg (?) car is going to scream its head off on hill climbs when the battery is flat.

That factor and price is why I think many will prefer NGVs. Trouble is that cap-and-trade will also see more natgas used for electrical generation.

I think that it is impossible to truly compare the Volt to a Prius, unless we adopt an energy currency unit, and use it as actual money. It would be interesting if a nation adopted an energy standard, but I don't see its replacing fiat money for some time yet, simply because it would make the Saudis too rich. :)

I agree with the above comments that the Volt is overpriced. Look at it from a $/mile perspective, amortizing fuel and capital costs, and a cheap small Honda that runs forever is more cost-effective, convenient, and total-fuel-efficient. Its marketing strategy is about appealing to those who want to make a 'green' statement. I don't expect it to be a success.

However, the really promising thing about plug-in electric vehicles is that combined with smart, 2-way electric metering, a hundred million cars plugged in at work on a hot day with a half a charge remaining provides opportunity for load-leveling at a large scale. Share a ride with your friend/take a bus and pocket your tidy sum of peak-priced power profits. Storage capacity to load level is one of the major impediments to intermittent solar/wind, and utilities can't afford to purchase that quantity of conventional batteries.

What about the macro perspective? Is anyone planning to estimate the reductions in energy use in the United States under certain scenarios, e.g. 1 million Volts sold in the first year compared with one million cars averaging, say, 25 mpg? A Herculean task, to be sure. I am skeptical, though, that the introduction of the Volt will do very much to lower oil consumption or reduce CO2 emissions more than a couple of percent. Of course, some people don't care about such changes and it'll be a nice, shiny new toy, which I hear is quite important for many social climbers.

I don't understand why nobody considers externalities. Nobody asks the question, why?

Why even bother with this electric car building nonsense? Why even have such a toy? The problems of the world - all these pesky climate/resource problems - are caused by consumption. Why add even more consumption? Won't more consumption make things worse?

Aren't the different measurements of 'electricity- watts' v. 'gasoline- btus' simply convenient ways of fooling yourself?

In an energy constrained future, does it make sense to waste energy of any kind on a toy? Wouldn't a battery powered tractor make more sense? Not sexy but much more useful. There are battery powered forklifts, why not a battery powered tractor?

How is this electric car going to support the massive 'regular car' infrastructure? How will that enormous and crumbling edifice be paid for with a relative handful of electric cars? A modest decline in gas consumption has emptied the Transportation fund of gasoline tax dollars requiring yet another bailout from the Treasury. How are the numbers going to work? Believe me, no good roads makes cars of any kind unworkable. Will the general non- electric car using public agree with tripling electric rates or more - including the massive increases in taxes - to support road repair? Wouldn't this increase exclude other infrastructure investment needs, such as rail? The characteristic of the current economic crisis is the lack of available money; taking from one need to invest in another requires making a form of 'investment triage'. The pressing need is for making the food production/distribution system more robust. A second priority is providing transit accessible housing for all, a third would be insuring public order and security all within the context of keeping some rational means of merchantile exchange (valuable money). How will taking investment away from these areas and giving it to personal transport be accomplished? Isn't the '230 mpg' simply a lie to facilitate this 'cutting ahead' in the investment cue?

Why is it the 'car people' never look outside the engine compartment?

A large factor in any vehicle efficiency (aerodybanics being the other) is tire design. The assumption here is a large and vibrant (oil dependent) tire industry will always be available to provide various types of tires at all times for the hundreds of millions of vehicles both petrol and electric at a very reasonable cost. What supports this assumption? The tire industry is facing the same resource constraints as all other industries.

Will tires be made out of electricity, too? Or will the investment necessary to make 'exotic' tires from coal or natgas or vegetable oil be taken from the need to use coal, natgas or vegetable oils for more useful purposes than making recreational tires?

Has anyone taken the time to oonsider that the Volt is a GM scheme to gain billions of subsidies from the Obama Adminstration energy initiative? GM is still basically bankrupt, it has a few models that sell - SUV's and pickup trucks. It needs constant infusions of billions of dollars. With sales running @ 50% of 2006, how will GM pay its bills? By all appearances GM is on a treadmill that is faster than it can run.

Even with an energy efficiency grant, GM will likely fail anyway; this is my opinion but it is reasonable. GM still emphasises SUV's and giant pickup trucks because that is what its customers prefer. Blame the idiot customers, but no business can succeed by ignoring them and if the customers are wrong, well too bad for GM!

There are hundreds of millions of cars in the USSA. There is no need for more of them. Keeping a percentage of the current fleet running will be challenging enough; if the fleet shrinks by 4/5, the remainder will use 4/5 of current fuel consumption (or less as there would be fewer large vehicles, less conjestion and the reasons for driving reduced). The remaining 1/5 of vehicles would be used where the question 'why' can be answered; to take the injured to hospitals, to deliver food to stores, to carry policemen to crime scenes, to take firefighters and their tools to fight fires as well as tradesmen and their tools to jobs. There would be no toys except for those who could bear the entire (unsubsidized) costs by themselves, completely.

The dire consequences of peak oil would be pressed forward into the future.

4/5 of domestic fuel consumption for transport would be eliminated; 4/5 of power consumption for auto- related manufacturing plus 4/5 of money mis- investment in auto infrastructure would be redirected toward pressing needs; recovery of watersheds, reclamation of arable land and natural services attended thereto, development of infinitely- re- recoverable energy supplies, removal of unneeded auto- friendly infrastructure and development of human- friendly replacements which would generate energy saving externalities downstream.

Eventually we might get away from the idea that machines are some kind of 'solution' since they have not existed long enough to solve anything but create more problems instead. More and more and more and more problems. Like the 1 million auto traffic deaths worldwide each and every year. Consider how long the airline industry would last if there were a million worldwide deaths from airline crashes each year.

In the post- modern world, the unthinkable becomes ignorable. 1 million here; why not 200 million in a nuclear attack?

Just the cost of doing nuclear business, no?

I think one fair way to compute mpg for the Volt is to require that the battery be full both before and after the test that is used to compute mpg. The vehicle must charge the battery back up before the test is over. In addition to mpg, people would want that other set of numbers: how far the vehicle can go on electricity alone (city/highway).

Even GM has its doubts about the Volt, it seems. After reading this article http://www.autocar.co.uk/News/NewsArticle.ASpx?AR=242395, I wonder why anyone would consider it seriously.

It seems that GM is saying that if it can be made ready, the Volt will be sold at a loss until it can be developed to a point where it is commercially viable. Even if GM lasts this long, they are worried that their technology may be overtaken. This is the car that is going to turn GM around? Am I missing something?

As I thought about it while I was writing my Future Tech storyline back in the 1980's, I designed a Car of the Future, that was based on Solar and Gas powered. The ideas have been around for decades of blending the two for use in a vehicle.

With the Volt I would test it the same way I wrote about back then. Fill up the batteries, and fill up the gas tank. Pack my bags and head out cross country using secondary highways traveling through the small towns and seeing the countryside.

Given that they say the Volt will do 40 Miles on a charge, and get 50 mpg after that, a 5 to 10 gallon tank would get me at least (40 + 5*25mpg = 165 miles to max of (40 + 10*50mpg = 540 miles))

Small roads have hills and curves that bigger highways have smoothed out, they also have more places to stop and go like you would in a city traffic-scape, due to the smaller towns you go through.

That would be a great test for the Volt. Take several of them out drive them different ways, lead foot to conservative, Then bunch all the numbers together and get an average MPG in the real world.

Pity my story was just fiction, I solved a lot of things with light batteries using things like "Poly-ion batteries, something like the nanotube-paper battery they recently developed, mine used polymers" Also "solar cells molded over all the car's surface" "fictional elements 122 thru 126, Which should be possible by the Island of Stability theory, just aren't possible yet" Science Fiction has a way of showing up in the real world every once in a while. My "Sol-3" Got 700 miles between fill-ups.

Okay we just need the cash for clunkers to last long enough for me to trade in one of my dad's vans for a Volt. Then I can test it and let you know the results.

Generally though if these cars can get better and better, maybe they will offset all the Hummers still running around out there.

Charles