Chevy Volt costs $40,000 to build.

[takao]

Now I'm curious; what's the best selling brand? Funnily enough, my family used to have a Voyager years ago. It was actually a very solid van, if a bit crude. We don't get the diesel option in the US though, so we had to make do with a gasoline 2.4L with 20mpg.

well the mother of a friend also had a 10 years+ Voyager turbo diesel: great turbo whine but the clutch was horribly unreliable. and the interiour was designed by somebody who, obviously, was blind.

the list of those local sales: January and February:
VW 370
Skoda 130
Mercedes 115
Opel 107
Kia 103
Mazda 94
Fiat 85
Toyota 79
Audi 77
Citroen 76
Peugeot 72
Ford 66
Renault 64
Seat 62
BMW 58
Hyundai 57
Suzuki 56
Mitsubishi 45
Dacia 44
Nissan 43
Alfa 41
Volvo 26
Porsche 24
Honda 20
Subaru 17
Mini 12
Landrover 11
Smart 10
Chevrolet 10
Daihatsu 7
Lancia 3
Jeep 3
Lada 3
Saab 2
Lexus 2
Chrysler 1
Jaguar 0
Dodge 0
SsangYong 0

Others 2

 

[ChrisA]

Currently, 45% of the electrical power generated in the U.S. is produced by burning coal. Even if cars like the Volt are successful, increased demand for more electric power would likely result in more greenhouse gases being emitted.

The coal plants are so efficient at burning coal and that there is a net reduction in carbon for electric cars. Gas cars, even the best of them turn most of the energy in gas into heat. The heat comes ou t through the radiator and the tail pipe. But coal plants turn most of the coal into power and not so much waste heat.

There is now way around it either. gas cars work by burning fuel inside a cylinder in order to raise the temperature of the gas and therefore the pressure which then pushes the piston. So by design there must be waste heat. The heated gas is then pumped out of the engine and the energy in the hot gas is lost.

So it is already a net gain and the US will over the life of the electric car produce cleaner and cleaner electric plants

 

[ChrisA]

..
Also, keep in mind that it's very difficult for the power supply from power plants to ramp up and down to meet demand, and as such, a lot of energy has to be burned off and wasted at night when demand is low. That's why some places charge a lot less for electricity at night. If most people use their car to get to work and simply charge up for 8 hours while they sleep, the overall emissions per kWh are reduced, and the numbers swing more in the favour of plug-in vehicles.

Yes, and one more thing. Once you have many cars plugged into a company suplies charger at work the company knows the cars will not leave until (say) 5:30pm so they can use there charger farm to remove power from the batteries durring peak times and then put it back before 5:30pm. If demand on the grid is "peaky" cars can can actually help with supply.

Also, there are many people (like me) waiting for these batteries to need to be replaced. I'll buy the old ones and place them in a big warehouse and buy power at night and sell it back durring the day. Used batteries should be cheap in 10 to 15 years.

Electric power is a comodity who price goes up and down predictably. Should be way-easy to make money. Just think if you knew the price of gold would dip in 6 hours then go back up in 12. Batteries should allow the average price paid for power to go down.

 

[dime21]

Increased biofuel production causes food prices to skyrocket.

Not true. Soybean based biodiesel is made by pressing the beans to retrieve the oil. The soy bean pulp is a "byproduct" of soy biodiesel production. Conversely, the bean oil is a "byproduct" of soybean based foods. Hence, the two are quite complementary, and not at all exclusive.

If you're thinking of Corn Ethanol on the other hand, that entire thing is a disaster. Yes, corn ethanol takes away from the food supply. It also takes a lot more energy to create than what it contains. Corn is also one of the most demanding crops, in terms of water, fertilizer, and pesticides. Bad stuff all around. Ethanol fuel is a scam forced upon us by the powerful Corn lobby.

Do you want to know what the "way forward" really is? Drive less. There isn't enough energy in the world for everyone to tool around in their cars as much as they do now. But nobody wants to believe it.

Now this I agree with you on! Both my wife and I walk to work. We live in an urban area and both our offices are less than 1 mile from our home. Sadly though, many US cities are full of urban sprawl, and people who willingly live long distances from work and sit in long traffic lines twice each day.

 

[dime21]

The coal plants are so efficient at burning coal and that there is a net reduction in carbon for electric cars. Gas cars, even the best of them turn most of the energy in gas into heat. The heat comes ou t through the radiator and the tail pipe. But coal plants turn most of the coal into power and not so much waste heat.

A net reduction?? Time to invest in a calculator there Chris. Driving your electric car does not cause a reduction carbon levels.

Although your mention of waste heat is an interesting one. Modern gasoline engines are about 33% efficient. Meaning 33% of the energy produced by the engine is in the form of kinetic energy - motion to propel the car. The remaining 67% is lost as exhaust emissions, and waste heat.

Gasoline electric hybrid cars are slightly better, around 36% efficient. Modern turbo-diesel cars are better still, around 41% efficient. And the most efficient internal combustion technology of all is of course the turbo-diesel electric hybrid. The newest generation of locomotive trains are turbo-diesel electric hybrids and achieve an enormous 51% efficiency! I have my fingers crossed that we'll soon see turbo-diesel electric hybrid cars.... all the normal sized concept cars I've seen using this technology have achieved in the realm of 100 miles per gallon. Volkswagen even created a small light weight 2-seater turbo-diesel concept that got in excess of 200 miles per gallon. This is technology that is available right now today- we just need the automakers to put it into a passenger car and sell it to the public.

 

[Lord Blackadder]

Not true. Soybean based biodiesel is made by pressing the beans to retrieve the oil. The soy bean pulp is a "byproduct" of soy biodiesel production. Conversely, the bean oil is a "byproduct" of soybean based foods. Hence, the two are quite complementary, and not at all exclusive.

I still wonder how much land would have to be devoted to soybeans to begin to produce enough biodiesel from it. Still, I don't doubt that biodiesel is going to be an important source of fuel going forward. But availability is always going to be much more limited than petro-fuels.

And yes, corn ethanol was a bad idea. George W. Bush liked it, that should be a warning sign right there.

Now this I agree with you on! Both my wife and I walk to work. We live in an urban area and both our offices are less than 1 mile from our home. Sadly though, many US cities are full of urban sprawl, and people who willingly live long distances from work and sit in long traffic lines twice each day.

I walk to work myself, I am about 1.3 miles from the office. I made sacrifices to relocate close to work, but I'd rather walk half an hour each way than drive. I still use my car often, but a walking commute, even for such a short distance, saves a surprising amount of fuel.

 

[SactoGuy18]

I think besides the too-short range, another issue that killed the EV-1 was the gigantic size of the battery pack, which really limited the interior space of the car.

However, with the arrival of modern lithium-ion batteries, they've drastically reduced the size of the battery pack so you can get vehicles like the Nissan Leaf, where you can actually seat four people and the vehicle size is quite reasonable.

Another big problem that plagues electric cars to this day is the very long charging times needed; I've read that a number of companies are working in improved Li-On battery designs and ultracapacitor batteries where the charge time at a commercial DC charger is--brace yourselves!--only five minutes. With that little charge time, even if the vehicle is limited to 100-120 mile range it becomes a viable option as a replacement for the internal combustion engine for urban driving.

 

[ChrisA]

A net reduction?? Time to invest in a calculator there Chris. Driving your electric car does not cause a reduction carbon levels.

Although your mention of waste heat is an interesting one. Modern gasoline engines are about 33% efficient. Meaning 33% of the energy produced by the engine is in the form of kinetic energy - motion to propel the car. The remaining 67% is lost as exhaust emissions, and waste heat.

I did work it out. But you only did half of it. So 67% of the carbon in gasoline is wasted as heat. Most of it going out the tail pipe

Now assume you burn coal, convert that to electric power and use that to charge the car. I'll claim that waste heat in that process is less than 67%

But it's actually better because we are not 100% on coal. We use natural gas, hydro and even wind and solar. So all considered the electric car is much better. In the North East they use a lot of hydro power so a car there really is clean.

Next you have to look at the 20 year life of the car. The electric car will get cleaner every year as they slowly clean up older power plants. The gas car will always be a gas car. If you think about how much carbon is used over 20 ears the electric car look even better (depending on how fast they clean of power plants)

 

[dime21]

I did work it out. But you only did half of it. So 67% of the carbon in gasoline is wasted as heat. Most of it going out the tail pipe

No. 67% is wasted. But not as heat. Of that waste, about half is heat, and the other half is exhaust gasses. And that waste heat is not going out the tail pipe. It is going out through the radiator.

Now assume you burn coal, convert that to electric power and use that to charge the car. I'll claim that waste heat in that process is less than 67%

But who gives a crap about the thermodynamic efficiency of a power plant? Waste heat is not the issue. The issue with a coal burning plant is not waste heat. It's pollutants and particulates. It's the emissions of the plant, not the waste heat.

Next you have to look at the 20 year life of the car. The electric car will get cleaner every year as they slowly clean up older power plants. The gas car will always be a gas car.

Wrong again. Reducing power plant emissions is a very costly and technical difficult proposition. They don't slowly get cleaner over time. They pollute a constant amount over time. Possibly, maybe, decades later, they get a retrofit that reduces pollution somewhat.

Cars on the other hand get cleaner and more efficient with each generation. With advances like the catalytic converter, computer controlled fuel injection, electronic ignition, diesel particulate filters, cleaner fuels (unleaded gasoline, ultra-low sulfur diesel), renewable clean bio-fuels (biodiesel), the cars of today are orders of magnitude cleaner than those of 20 or 30 years ago.

 

[ender land]

There is so much engineering and math fail here. I'm not even sure where to start

Regarding C02 emissions, there are a variety of sources for C02 for each car driven. You two are missing one of the main comparison sources for hybrid vs non-hybrid vehicles, that being C02 produced during the production process for the vehicle itself. This is a non-insignificant percentage and one of the primary reasons hybrid vehicles do not blow away their conventional counterparts in terms of carbon footprint. This article here has some interesting numbers. Google and you can find more on this topic.

Second, looking at energy efficiency, you guys are looking at such a small portion of what you'd need to do to fully actually compare things. For an electric car, there are a lot of losses downstream - the powerplant (coal is about 30-40% efficiency btw, quick Google shows this), transmission, storage in batteries (if you've used rechargeable batteries before you know they heat up), and overall engine/system efficiency. A gasoline car has similar losses in the refinement process, not to mention the transportation losses in trucks/etc. You can't pick and choose which elements of efficiency you look at and ignore the bigger picture.

dime21, with all due respect, you do not understand how thermodynamic efficiency works. Emissions do not waste energy and lower efficiency unless they carry away energy to be lost. In an engine, the overwhelming majority of losses comes as heat. A car has losses overall from both heat and friction. Probably other sources too such as sound and deformation but I doubt these are on the order of friction/heat. Oh, and go grab a tailpipe on a car after it's been running sometime if you don't think heat leaves through it.

Fourthly, power plants, conventional cars, AND solar cars continue to improve in terms of emissions, efficiency, and c02 footprint. Not only due to government restrictions and regulations but the simple fact that you make more money by increasing efficiency (especially in a power plant). A 1% increase in efficiency in a power plant can make you a TON more money with nearly the same emissions and c02 output, barring some change that increases these obviously.

Lastly, regarding pricing, at least in the USA, people only are going to buy electric or hybrid cars if they are affordable. Companies are not going to make them if the only price they can sell them at is far below their cost. This is simply how business works - you cannot sell products for less than you make them at and remain a viable company. Why do you think the government is subsidizing the Volt nearly 20%?



Overall though, the easiest way to be efficient here is to drive your current vehicle into the ground before replacing it. Getting a new car every 3 years - even if it is more efficient than your last one - is not more environment friendly overall.

 

[SuperCachetes]

But it's actually better because we are not 100% on coal. We use natural gas, hydro and even wind and solar. So all considered the electric car is much better. In the North East they use a lot of hydro power so a car there really is clean.

To build upon this argument, I'd also suspect that the kind of people who would shell out $40K for this car are the kind of people that will seek out alternative energy providers anyway. Heck, I don't have a hybrid of any kind (yet) but I have Green Mountain power, and I don't even think it's the cheapest around here anymore.

But my point is the buyers are not necessarily going with an EV strictly to spend less money on gasoline - they are buying this car on principle. At $40,000, it may be tough to find more efficient cars, but you could certainly find a better driving experience, an arguably better-looking car, and a better value.

 

[Truffy]

That's a goddam uglee car

For not much more you could have a Mercedes SLK. So it's not a hybrid, but what's one man's gas against the might of industry?

 

[takao]

while the volt doesn't look that special or great (the volt based Opel Ampera looks much much better) it isn't a ugly car

have you take a look at the Nissan Juke recently ? i saw one in on the road today and .. it's just as hideous as on pictures

 

[quagmire]

while the volt doesn't look that special or great (the volt based Opel Ampera looks much much better) it isn't a ugly car

have you take a look at the Nissan Juke recently ? i saw one in on the road today and .. it's just as hideous as on pictures

Yep, people buy far uglier vehicles. Honda Accord Crosstour, Nissan Leaf and Juke, any current generation Acura, etc.

And I do find the Volt a good looking vehicle. Although, wasn't a fan of the concept....... Thank goodness it was as aerodynamic as a brick so it couldn't enter production with that front end.

 

[Truffy]

Like Chevy, Nissan is a byword for ugly. But the Juke's ugliness doesn't make the Volt less ugly than it is, it just makes it less ugly than the Juke. But then I'm less ugly than the Juke, so what of it?

 

[quagmire]

Like Chevy, Nissan is a byword for ugly. But the Juke's ugliness doesn't make the Volt less ugly than it is, it just makes it less ugly than the Juke. But then I'm less ugly than the Juke, so what of it?

One does have to remember though, styling is subjective. You may find the Volt to be ugly, but I like it's design. Sure it isn't the best design out there, but considering the Prius, Insight, and other dedicated hybrid/electric models that I can think of( where manufactures design it to be aerodynamic and not stylish per se), I think it is one the best looking of the bunch( easily beats Prius, Insight, etc, but Tesla and Fisker make decent looking vehicles as well).

 

[iJohnHenry]

But then I'm less ugly than the Juke, so what of it?

<citation please>

 

[takao]

One does have to remember though, styling is subjective. You may find the Volt to be ugly, but I like it's design. Sure it isn't the best design out there, but considering the Prius, Insight, and other dedicated hybrid/electric models that I can think of( where manufactures design it to be aerodynamic and not stylish per se), I think it is one the best looking of the bunch( easily beats Prius, Insight, etc, but Tesla and Fisker make decent looking vehicles as well).

ironically the most aerodynamic production vehicle currently is the european spec Mercedes E220 blue efficiency diesel.
Gonna be interesting later this year with mercedes (E class) and citroen (3008) launching their diesel hybrids in europe. Mercedes already anounnced that they will be putting them as fast as they can across their line up the next 2 years. It could very well be that when the Volt launches around here that a C class diesel hybrid is already around the corner and thus ruin their good press.

regarding the Volt design i think the front and back view look great but where they really dropped the ball is the side view including the doors/side windows.

edit: can actually anybody come up with a more ugly car than the juke without the Aztek or a SangYong ? honestly i'm hard pressed

 

[Counterfit]

For not much more you could have a Mercedes SLK.

Your solution to the "ugly" Volt is an SLK? I've seen maybe 3 of the 2004-2010 models on the road, whereas I used to see at least one pre-04 model a week. It sure wasn't the performance that caused the dropoff.

edit: can actually anybody come up with a more ugly car than the juke without the Aztek or a SangYong ? honestly i'm hard pressed

Buick Rendezvous, Nissan Cube, post-03 Maxima, 2011 Acura TL, 2001 Toyota Sienna, and so on.

Not that the Juke isn't ugly.

 

[quagmire]

Buick Rendezvous, Nissan Cube, post-03 Maxima, 2011 Acura TL, 2001 Toyota Sienna, and so on.

Not that the Juke isn't ugly.

You cheated. He said without mentioned the Aztek so you used its twin.

The Rendezvous was the good looking model of the twins( not that it was a hard thing to do.....). But, you think those models are uglier than the Juke?

Those cars are ugly as well, but the Juke is the new Aztek, IMHO.

 

[takao]

Buick Rendezvous, Nissan Cube, post-03 Maxima, 2011 Acura TL, 2001 Toyota Sienna, and so on.

Not that the Juke isn't ugly.

while i agree that the current Cube turned out way to ugly (it looked like it melted) especially those windows, the generation before it was actually really nice looking
but asymetrical stylings simply won't sell at all, and for the european market it simply was way too expensive for what it offered (in japan it's a _cheap_ car not a 20k euro car)

for the others i might have to look them up on the internet, i suspect they are US market only

for upcoming style disasters: Hyundai Veloster: their answer to the "going-so-great" market of small sporthatch-back coupes populated by the VW Scirocco, Honda CR-Z, and Renault Megane Coupé
one can call the CR-Z bold or controversial (i for example like it) but the Veloster ? hideous front , asymetrical door layout: 2 doors on the right, 1 long door on the left, and a hatch in the back with the size of a newspaper

 

[SactoGuy18]

Biggest problem with Veloster: it needs a more powerful engine. Maybe Hyundai will see it fit to install the 173 bhp 2.4-liter I-4 found on the current Kia Forte, which would give the Veloster a needed performance boost.

 

[takao]

Biggest problem with Veloster: it needs a more powerful engine. Maybe Hyundai will see it fit to install the 173 bhp 2.4-liter I-4 found on the current Kia Forte, which would give the Veloster a needed performance boost.

perhaps down the line for the US market, for the european market a NA I4 2.4 liter engine with 173hp is just going to gather dust in the showrooms

140hp will be fine for the launch looking at the competition: the cr-z is 136 hp hybrid only, the megane ranges from 110 to 180 and the scirocco from 120 to 210 (that is a 2.0 turbo petrol) including diesel options
and those hardly selling great at the moment: don't make it worse with an unsellable engine

 

[Truffy]

One does have to remember though, styling is subjective.

True enough. Just as well for us uglees!

 

[SactoGuy18]

perhaps down the line for the US market, for the european market a NA I4 2.4 liter engine with 173hp is just going to gather dust in the showrooms

Hyundai will never consider the 2.4-liter I-4 engine for the European market for one reason: many European countries impose an excise tax based on engine displacement, and 2.4 liters will get hit with a pretty steep excise tax for European sales. That's why the Honda Accords sold in Europe use a 2.0-liter petrol engine, not the K24 2.4-liter engine found on US-market Accords.

A more likely solution for European sales--especially with the availability of higher-octane petrol there--would be a turbocharged version of the 1.6-liter GDI engine, which would bump the horsepower to around 175-180 bhp.