GM says new Volt to get 230 mpg in city driving

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By KIMBERLY S. JOHNSON and TOM KRISHER, AP Auto Writers
1 hr 52 mins ago

WARREN, Mich. – General Motors Corp. said Tuesday its Chevrolet Volt rechargeable electric car should get 230 miles per gallon of gasoline in city driving, more than four times the mileage of the current champion, the Toyota Prius.

The Volt is powered by an electric motor and a battery pack with a 40-mile range. After that, a small internal combustion engine kicks in to generate electricity for a total range of 300 miles. The battery pack can be recharged from a standard home outlet.

GM came up with the 230-mile figure in early tests using draft guidelines from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for calculating the mileage of extended range electric vehicles, said Tony Posawatz, GM's vehicle line director for the Volt.

If the figure is confirmed by the EPA, which does the tests for the mileage posted on new car door stickers, the Volt would be the first car to exceed triple-digit gas mileage, Posawatz said.

GM has produced about 30 Volts so far and is making 10 a week, CEO Fritz Henderson said during a presentation of the vehicle at the company's technical center in the Detroit suburb of Warren.

Henderson said charging the volt will cost about 40 cents a day.

"The EPA labels can and will be a game changer for us," he said.

Most automakers are working similar plug-in designs, but GM could be the leader with the Volt, which is due in showrooms late in 2010.

Toyota's Prius, the most efficient car now sold in the U.S., gets 48 miles per gallon of gas. It is a gas-electric hybrid that runs on a small internal combustion engine assisted by a battery-powered electric motor to save gasoline.

The first-generation Volt is expected to cost near $40,000, making it cost-prohibitive to many people even if gasoline returns to $4 per gallon. The price is expected to drop with future generations of the Volt, but GM has said government tax credits and the savings on fuel could make it cost-effective, especially at 230 miles per gallon.

"We get a little cautious about trying to forecast what fuel prices will do," Posawatz said. "We achieved this number and if fuel prices go up, it certainly does get more attractive even in the near-term generation," he said.

Figures for the Volt's highway and combined city/highway mileage have not yet been calculated, Posawatz said. The combined mileage will be in the triple digits as well, he said, but both combined and highway will be worse than city because the engine runs more on longer highway trips.

The EPA guidelines, developed with input from automakers, figure that cars like the Volt will travel more on straight electricity in the city than on the highway. If a person drives the Volt less than 40 miles, in theory they could go without using gasoline.

The mileage figure could vary as the guidelines are refined and the Volt gets further along in the manufacturing process, Posawatz said.

GM is nearly halfway through building about 80 Volts that will look and behave like the production model, and testing is running on schedule, Posawatz said.

Two critical areas, battery life and the electronic switching between battery and engine power, are still being refined, but the car is on schedule to reach showrooms late in 2010, he said.

GM is simulating tests to make sure the new lithium-ion batteries last 10 years, Posawatz said.

"We're further along, but we're still quite a ways from home," he said. "We're developing quite a knowledge base on all this stuff. Our confidence is growing."

The other area of new technology, switching between battery and engine power, is proceeding well, he said, with engineers just fine-tuning the operations.

"We're very pleased with the transition from when it's driving EV (electric vehicle) to when the engine and generator kick in," he said,

GM also is finishing work on the power cord, which will be durable enough that it can survive being run over by the car. The Volt, he said, will have software on board so it can be programmed to begin and end charging during off-peak electrical use hours.

Chrysler LLC, Ford Motor Co. and Daimler AG are all developing plug-ins and electric cars, and Toyota Motor Corp. is working on a plug-in version of its gas-electric hybrid system. Nissan Motor Co. announced last month that it would begin selling an electric vehicle in Japan and the U.S. next year.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090811/ap_o...tbj9oDW7oF

[Tyson]

is this for sure i dont trust domestics

[Richard]

The MPG is tricky because it depends on how you drive it. Here's a article about it.


"Shocking" Conclusions About the Chevy Volt's Reported 230 MPG

GM's promising plug-in hybrid electric car wows observers with great economy, but what do the numbers really mean? Get more clean cars stuff.

August 13, 2009 at 11:33AM by Jim Motavalli

The Volt: 230 mpg? Maybe we need a new rating system.

The media went on a feeding frenzy about the Chevrolet Volt this week, after the company announced that its forthcoming "range extender" car would get 230 mpg. GM didn't invent the numbers -- it applied the EPA's existing plug-in hybrid methodology for city driving. That's fair enough, but we need another way of evaluating cars like the Volt, which is unlike anything before on U.S. roads. In fact, let's scrap the whole "MPG" thing.

Battery-only cars like the Tesla Roadster never see a gas station. They are "emission free" in that sense, but, of course, smokestack pollution is generated to create the electricity powering them. The Volt is more complicated. It uses gas, but not to directly power the wheels. Instead, it acts as a generator (think of that Honda thingy that Uncle Morty powers up when the lights go out) to supply power for the electric motor. The first 40 miles are on batteries only, but then the gas motor turns on to keep the motor turning for 300 more miles.

Because of all this, there's no easy "mpg" equation with the gas guzzler in your driveway that just burns fuel to head down the road. The Volt's performance will depend totally on how you drive it. Say your commute is 48 miles round trip. That means that each day you travel 40 miles on batteries, and eight on the gas engine. So if the Volt gets 50 mpg burning gas, it would take something like six days to burn just one gallon of gas, and I could claim something more than 280 mpg. A 10-mile roundtrip commute would never use gas at all, and therefore the mileage is what, a kazillion mpg?

I was on Neil Cavuto's Fox Business show this week (see the video above) talking about the Chevrolet Volt. It was, as usual, a rapid-fire exchange. Cavuto owns two hybrids, he said, and likes the Volt, at least more than he does nationalized health care. But like most Americans he's on a learning curve about how it works. Here's how the conversation went down:

After I was on the show, GM figured I needed a remedial course too, and so sent me a "Fast Facts" sheet. Here are the cool bullet points:

* Charging the Volt about once daily will consume less electric energy annually than the average home's refrigerator and freezer units. A charge will be less expensive than a daily cup "of your favorite branded coffee."
* Volt drivers who travel 60 miles a day will save 550 gallons of gasoline annually compared to one of today's 30-mpg cars.
* The Volt will cost two cents a mile to drive electrically, versus 12 cents using $3.60 a gallon gas.

I have no problem with any of this. The Volt is a neat car, a big technological advance. It won't be a "game changer" for GM unless they reduce the cost from near $40,000 and figure out a way to sell hundreds of thousands a year.

The EPA said last week that it hasn't tested a Volt, so it can't verify GM's 230-mpg figure, but it also said, "EPA does applaud GM's commitment to designing and building the car of the future -- an American-made car that will save families money, significantly reduce our dependence on foreign oil and create good-paying American jobs. We're proud to see American companies and American workers leading the world in the clean energy innovations that will shape the 21st century economy."

Read more: http://www.thedailygreen.com/living-gree...z0O8WsRZKu

[William]

you have to get out and push this car if going up hill LOL