If this thing can claim the 230MPG solely on a initial charged battery then I suppose Nissan can claim their Leaf has unlimited MPG. EPA, Fair is fair.
Then with the mpg average of Nissan Ghosn can build V8 GTRs with race exhausts.
Hey Wes, being a little harsh on the wife there aren't we?
Yes, many women know nothing of and have no interest in cars, but that doesn't make them the only ones capable of screwing up minor details. I'm sure every Jalop here has some story to share of their own gross stupidity. I know I do.
I taught my girlfriend how to drive stickshift, rotate her tires, change her oil, and am slowly teaching her everything else. She's an English major. Women who are willing to learn things about their cars are just as capable as men.
I know it's easy to poke fun at women on such a guy-centric site, but that was just unnecessary.
They say it's idiot-proof, but some idiot will prove that wrong. This coming from a guy who once tried to run a microwave with the door open by sticking a knife in to hold down the safety latch. Luckily I only killed the microwave (big VWAP/flash and the kitchen went dark).
I'm confused if the gas motor is only used to charge the battery and not propel the car, what happens when you're on the highway and completely drain the battery? do you have to pull over and wait until the motor charges the battery so you can drive some more, or is the motor actually connected to the tranny?
@elchimpo: if the gas motor is only used to charge the battery and not propel the car, ...
Yes. , what happens when you're on the highway and completely drain the battery?
The combustion engine generates electricity to keep the battery at 30% State of Charge. So you drive around battery-only, then as the charge gets below 30% the ICE spins up to keep the battery somewhat juiced; but just like a hybrid the ICE can shut off when regenerative braking charges the battery. Eventually you'll run out of gasoline like other cars, even though the ICE is not connected to the wheels.
To my knowledge GM has never let anyone drive the car when it's in this state, so no one knows how the ICE pulses on and off, whether there's a limp home mode that discharges the battery more than 30% SOC, etc. The killer conditions will be driving up a long steep incline with a heavy load.
Yay GM!
I was wondering why we don't have a car that is diesel electric...using a small diesel engine that works at optimum efficiency to power an electric motor that powers the car. The same way diesel electric trains work. Would that work on a small scale like a car? Just asking.
@gaiking: Well, this works like a gas version of what you're describing: the gas motor is only a generator.
While a single-speed turbodiesel would be way more efficient, there's still serious adoption problems with diesel in The States.
Electric and hybrid tech have positive buzz these days, and I don't think GM wanted to risk being to "weird" with the Volt by going with diesel.
Long-term, there's nothing to suggest that you couldn't run an oil-burner in place of the gas motor.
@Mad_Science: Ah...I thought the gas engine on the volt took over to power the CAR not the electric motor....if thats the case then my question is made void because apparently GM has implemented it (though using gas as opposed to diesel).
@gaiking: Yeah, the cool thing about this tech platform (from an engineering standpoint) is that you could easily swap the gas motor for diesel (or any other fuel) or just more batteries.
If GM can stick with it, this tech platform could be a killer long-term solution.
@gaiking: I was wondering why we don't have a car that is diesel electric
We coulda shoulda woulda, read Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, the Clinton-era program in which all three domestics developed 80mpg diesel hybrid prototypes around 2000.
"On track to achieving its objectives, the program was cancelled by the Bush Administration in 2001 at the request of the automakers, with some of its aspects shifted to the much more distant FreedomCAR program."
Electric cars are all well and good, but not everyone has a garage to park their car and plug into. I doubt apartment building are going to put in charging stations. And what about when you drive to work? Parking lots don't have charging stations. And I'm sure to retrofit them would cost a huge amount of money, and parking lots will then charge you out the ying yang to charge your car. In the end it doesn't make much sense to own a vehicle if it is going to cost you more in electricity charges than if you were driving on gas. In the end its only going to make sense for people who drive a short distance.
@TancredoHelmer: Not everyone blah blah...
... means it works for a lot of people. Choice is good. t doesn't make much sense to own a vehicle if it is going to cost you more in electricity charges than if you were driving on gas
But it's cheaper to power a car by electricity than by gasoline. It'll take ~13 kWh to fill your Volt to go 40 miles... go look at your electricity bill to see the price you pay per kWh (and it might be cheaper at night).
GM hasn't given the Volt's "highway mpg after battery has depleted to 30% charge". It may well be worse than the Prius' 48mpg highway, but the crossover point at which the Volt costs more to run than other cars will probably be after you drive for hundreds of miles each day.
The most appealing aspect of this for me is saving time, fewer visits to the gas station. I figure about 4 hours a year. 5 min fill ups x 4 times a month x 12 months.
@camerony: Indeed. Do people love going to a gas station that much? If the gasoline car was invented now, people would be aghast: "So some mornings when I hop in my gasomobile it will be nearly empty of this 'fossil fuel' that I can only get by standing around next to my vehicle for 10 minutes at specialized emporiums miles from my house? Egads, 'tis verily teh suck!"
@skierpage: Aye, but people these days are also aghast at the idea of driving forty miles and running out of electricity. A purely electric car won't be able to make any sort of road trip for at least a decade, I'd say.
Now, cars like the Volt (that generate more electricity as needed) could work, as could a standardised system of battery replacement/charging as we have now for small propane tanks.
It's probably been mentioned here, but I really don't understand why they don't just build the 120 volt charger right in to the car. Then all you'd have to do is plug in an extension cord. They could leave a 240 hookup, since it's obviously best to have the two-phase stuff hardwired into the wall..
It takes 10 kilowats of energy to fully charge the car so it can go 40 miles. Even if its 20 cents per kilowat hour that only costs $2 for a car to go 40 miles. If a car were to go 40 miles only on gasoline it would take at least $4 given $2 a gallon for gas with a 20mpg car.
@BoyceKapla: And the car costs forty grand. At least $10-20,000 of that cost is directly related to it's being a plug in hybrid. $15,000 buys 7,500 gallons of $2/gal. gasoline. At 20 mpg that gas could take you 150,000 miles, without needing any $2 overnight recharges. essentially fuel for the life of the vehicle.
If you use the car to drive to work each day, and own it for ten years, that is 2,000 working days. a $2 charge every night, then means that you will have increased your electric bill by $4,000, or $400 each year, Or around $35 additional per month - assuming that the price of electricity does not fluctuate.
Don't forget that the additional purchase price of a Volt is money spent up front, and likely financed. So that $15,000 winds up costing you more like $30,000. Plus you can't invest that money, which might also have doubled in value over ten years, so you're more like $60,000 down in your opportunity cost over the life of the car.
@Van Sarockin, rogue trebuchet:
Lots of folks playing fast and loose with numbers here... so I might as well too :D [gm-volt.com]
states that the first 40 miles should cost ~ $0.80 with average electrical rates.
Assume a new car gets 35mpg and an average gasoline cost of $2.80 ([www.fuelgaugereport.com]) then it would cost $3.20.
So energy costs for the Volt after 150,000 miles (assuming never using the ICE) is $3000, vs $12,000 for a car getting 35mpg or a difference of $9000.
The points about the time-value of money are correct... but no way would it amount to $60,000 under a reasonable interest rates.
Today, when gas is relatively cheap, this car doesn't really make sense. In a couple of years when the car costs $30,000 and gas is $4/gal then it does.
@up2l8: You might notice I'm doing some pretty simple back of the envelope math, using someone else's assumptions for the most part. The fact is that the Volt will be more expensive than a Cobalt or a Malibu. That difference can be financed - or you can take that differential and invest it. A delta will result that can be substantial.
@Van Sarockin, rogue trebuchet:
Only New England and Hawaii pay $0.20 a kWh. DOE says "The average retail price of electricity for April 2009 was 9.69 cents per kilowatthour (kWh)"
Regardless of the math, all car features cost money; "less gas/less-polluting" is about the only one that's partly offset by reduced operating costs. It would be nice if this one feature magically paid for itself, but economics suggests that will never happen.
The bigger point is anyone who buys any car other than a used Geo Metro XFi is a moran, economically speaking. Every car fan should be wearing a dunce cap with a $ sign on it.
Another issue..right now Gas station A down the street is 10 cents cheaper than Gas station B down the road. But my electric company in Watertown Ma is the only game in town.
ooooooohhhhhhhh... that's how you figured out your 250MPG
drive 30 miles to work - plug in with portable unit
drive 30 miles home - plug in at home = unlimited city MPG
drive it on the highway and drain the battery in 40 miles, switch to gas and you got your +/- 43MPG
with a combined of 250 MPG!!! give or take a MPG
clever, very clever
@aec007: You don't want it to fully charge its batteries, the electricity from the wall is much cheaper. Otherwise we'd all run gasoline generators instead of hooking up to the power utility.
My question is how much is this going to add to my electric bill every month?....will this end up simply adding the same amount as filling a gas tank once or twice a week?... What about charging it up in some stupid garage?...will that cost as much as paying them to fill your gas tank?.......I mean nothing is free.
@gaiking: This is indirectly answered in the 230 mpg rating, which is calculated based on the cost of the energy. The Tesla Roadster, for instance, is rated at 135 mpg even though it uses zero gallons of gasoline.
@Alphamazing: Incorrect!
Generating power in a power plant still requires coal or oil. 80% of all power in the US is generated by Oil burning.
Clean diesels can regularly achieve 70+ MPG in Europe having far more range than the Prius and Volt together.
I bet when all is said and done, the energy used to *create* a Volt (manufacturing every component) and the energy used by the car (and the cost and pollution of generating it) when added to a given service life of the vehicle is FAR GREATER than that of a comparable vehicle with a clean diesel.
If you were to make pure electric vehicles and all your power to make them and feed them was from a green source (hydro dams, solar, wind, wave, etc...) then you would have a point.
Anyone suckered into buying one of these will never, ever recoup the investment for a comparable milage/pollution cost of ownership stand point.
One more tiddbit... As an example, if the State of Florida had 30% or less of electric plug in vehicles, their power grid would completely collapse due to power demand. Do you think other states are in better shape...? Think again.
@aec007: Power plants are more thermally efficient than gasoline engines. Period. This is because of the economics of SCALE. Power plants can implement MANY heat recovery cycles in the power production process, thus increasing the thermal efficiency. Power plants maintain a thermal efficiency greater than 96%. Piston engines have a thermal efficiency of less than 20%.
@Alphamazing: not to mention it's centralized.... meaning they can swap a "coal burning power plant" for a wind energy or solar hybrid power plant, and the power is still delivered over an infrastructure we already have implemented. Transportation footprint to "refill/charge" your vehicle is NILL (or a heck of a lot less), as apposed to gas.
Also I think a Triple-Hybrid is also something that should be interesting in the future.
Electricity, petrol (diesel or gas), and hydrogen, since hydrogen can be centrally created as well, using (from what I understand), electricity and water (again infrastructure/delivery we already have implemented)
One thing all of this doesn't bring into account, is the significantly higher drain on our electric grid to residential, in comparison to now.
Kind of like how the mobile infrastructure for cellphones sucks balls but is usable. Significantly underestimating, and not planning ahead, utilities companies need to plan ahead, and invest, they will be critical to all of this.
Also investments and planning ahead by individual consumers in generating power at the source, via solar panels and as alpha mentions heat recovery.
My next house WILL have solar at the least, if not put in by me, it will already be there by the builder. And if I don't move from my house for some time I will invest in solar, and increase the value of my home.
@aec007: Even if 100% of the energy comes from coal, it is still dramatically more efficient to drive an electric vehicle. The estimates on the miles per gallon are not pie in the sky stuff - there is no argument that an electric-based vehicle is impressively better for carbon emissions and lifetime vehicle cost than gasoline. The real issue is whether anyone can afford the cost of entry, and that is what is keeping GM up at night. The Volt will not be cheap, and whether people will be willing to pay the up-front cost for a vehicle that runs twice as much (or more) as a gasoline equivalent remains to be seen. I would love to have one, and while I can recognize that long term it would be great, I simply cannot afford it. I am afraid that will be the conclusion most people will arrive at.
@Alphamazing: Actually you're wrong, but not terribly wrong. A really, really top-notch plant might be pushing 50%-60%. That's with high temperature primary boilers and lots of secondary heat recovery. Still, twice as efficient as you'll get in a car (and it's 50-60% ALL THE TIME).
@Alphamazing: Sigh, why can't this issue die already. So, WWF is a source that is argueably hippie skewed, yet if you read their report "Plugged In: The End of An Oil Age," you will find the figures in there to be fairly unbiased (as much as can be). The PTW efficiency of ICE vs. BEV is 15-19% for the former vs. 21-25% for the latter. Now diesel is the most efficient, so a TDi is probably on the 19% side (possibly even 20 or 21). The BEV's range in efficiency primarily stems from its power source, 21% for all coal and 25% for all natural gas.
Now a certain previous poster commented on oil being the source of 80%, which is ridiculously wrong, unless he happens to run primarily on a gas generator out back of his house (neither coal or natural gas are oil based, but so he probably meant fossil fuel burning). A slightly more reliable poster up a ways posted a DoE figure of around 50% coal nationwide (for me its 60), 15% NG (me 20%) and the rest Nuc/Renewables (I don't remember their efficiency, but it is not enough to move the national average outside of the 21-25% range just yet).
So, optimal efficiency in the now should be roughly in the 23-24% range for BEV, and ones TDi gets 20% say.
...Yep, Alpha, you're still right, and will continue to be more so as power plants shift away from fossil fuels.
@dragon951: Looking over some reports (it's been a while since I studied our power plant) the OVERALL thermal efficiency is approximately 73% per the 2008 report, but that is actually higher as they got a new gas turbine in recently. This is the efficiency of utilities production, including the chillers. The power plant on its own, without the combined-heat-and-power cycle with the chillers operates at 50% efficiency, but again will be increasing due to the new turbine.
Power plants are more efficient than ICEs. There's no way around that fact.
@Alphamazing: I still think you are missing the point.
Yes, Power plants are more efficient. But not all achieve 96% efficiency.
Many do have excelent scrubbers but not many have all the heat recovery they could, so they are not 96%.
Clean Diesels on the other hand, usually reach 45% or better efficiency from the theoretical 75%.
My point is that the energy used to create a car (such as the Volt) and operating it during it's lifetime and disposal after, might be equal if not greater than a much cheaper comparable car with clean diesel technology.
It's the same as Solar cells. Zero pollution in power generation, but the pollution to create them, maintain them clean (water usage, soaps, cleaning aids and the pollution they create to make them) and disposal of cells after their average 10 yr life span DOES NOT clearly justify the cost of implementation for the average home owner. They are good for some applications, but not the average user.
Same thing as Hydrogen for cars. Hydrogen is not a fuel, it is a currency. You need to make hydrogen to burn it. It's not a fuel source by itself.
@aec007: I agree that clean diesel is a good technology, but I also think you may be overstepping the efficiency a bit. The most efficient diesel in the world only peaks at ~52% efficiency. While I'm not saying common diesels don't necessarily hit 45% efficiency, the calculations I've done for the ChallengeX vehicle at UT (turbo diesel in a Chevrolet SUV) pegs most good diesels around 35%.
And as noted above, I was off on my numbers. The UT power plant operates at ~73+% efficiency. I need to check my report on it to see where I got the 96% from. I was sure I'd seen it somewhere. That may include the heat extracted to heat water for the campus as well.
You're right though, solar cells and and hydrogen are typically not efficient for many applications.
@aec007: The myth that the energy it takes to make a car is comparable to the lifetime energy it takes to operate it is nearly as dead as the myth that solar cells somehow pollute more than the energy they displace.
All studies of lifecycle energy use but the laughable CNW Marketing report "conclude the vast majority of energy is consumed during "vehicle operations," with lesser quantities used during materials acquisition, fabrication, and vehicle disposal." Besides the WWF report, there's a list of independent reports in the footnotes on p.3 of this report.
Re: solar PV pollution it hasn't been true for over 10 years. From 1999 "the energy pay-back time was found to be 2ยท5-3 years for present-day roof-top installations"
So you add in cleaning aids and the pollution to make them
Are you serious? A bucket of soapy water and a reusable cloth vs digging up and burning tons of fossil fuels?
Re: average 10 yr life span
You're living in the past. Here's the warranty from BP Solar for my 170W PV modules
"This warranty assures 80% of minimum warranted power output after 25 years of service, and 90% of the minimum warranted power output at 12 years."
@skierpage: Goddamn Jalopnik comment system loses hyperlinks when you edit to add the linebreaks it eats.
The car energy lifecycle footnotes are in [www.pacinst.org]
;
the solar PV lifecycle analysis is [www3.interscience.wiley.com]
has ANYONE been able to find out how many kWh's it takes to fill one of these things?
can i figure that out by 120V x 6-to-8 hours, or something like that?
@Unregular: (Jalopnik comment snafus continue, lets try it without links.)
If as Wikipedia claims, the ICE keeps the battery from depleting below 30% and the recharge takes it back up to 85% SOC, and if you assume a charging efficiency of 95%, recharging the Volt's 16 kWh battery pack takes 16 x (.85 - 30) / .95 = 9.2 kWh. (That would cost me $1.11 at PG&E's summer all-electric rate.)
I'm sure GM is still tinkering with the details as they learn about long-term battery characteristics.
It makes me wonder if you could hack a Volt into a UPS on wheels for your house. Handy for those stormy summers and icy winters! It might even be a worthwhile selling point to justify the insan-o-rageous cost.
@DieselDutchman: I read something a while back (I think on Lifehacker) about a guy who hacked his Prius to be an emergency power supply during some major power outage, so I'm sure someone will figure it out with the Volt pretty fast.
08/11/09
C'mon guys! Chill out for a sec will ya?? Enough of "ECO" already? Even Putin agrees!!
08/12/09
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08/11/09
Then with the mpg average of Nissan Ghosn can build V8 GTRs with race exhausts.
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Yes, many women know nothing of and have no interest in cars, but that doesn't make them the only ones capable of screwing up minor details. I'm sure every Jalop here has some story to share of their own gross stupidity. I know I do.
I taught my girlfriend how to drive stickshift, rotate her tires, change her oil, and am slowly teaching her everything else. She's an English major. Women who are willing to learn things about their cars are just as capable as men.
I know it's easy to poke fun at women on such a guy-centric site, but that was just unnecessary.
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[www.jezebel.com]
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Yes.
, what happens when you're on the highway and completely drain the battery?
The combustion engine generates electricity to keep the battery at 30% State of Charge. So you drive around battery-only, then as the charge gets below 30% the ICE spins up to keep the battery somewhat juiced; but just like a hybrid the ICE can shut off when regenerative braking charges the battery. Eventually you'll run out of gasoline like other cars, even though the ICE is not connected to the wheels.
To my knowledge GM has never let anyone drive the car when it's in this state, so no one knows how the ICE pulses on and off, whether there's a limp home mode that discharges the battery more than 30% SOC, etc. The killer conditions will be driving up a long steep incline with a heavy load.
Yay GM!
08/11/09
08/11/09
While a single-speed turbodiesel would be way more efficient, there's still serious adoption problems with diesel in The States.
Electric and hybrid tech have positive buzz these days, and I don't think GM wanted to risk being to "weird" with the Volt by going with diesel.
Long-term, there's nothing to suggest that you couldn't run an oil-burner in place of the gas motor.
08/11/09
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If GM can stick with it, this tech platform could be a killer long-term solution.
08/11/09
We coulda shoulda woulda, read Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, the Clinton-era program in which all three domestics developed 80mpg diesel hybrid prototypes around 2000.
"On track to achieving its objectives, the program was cancelled by the Bush Administration in 2001 at the request of the automakers, with some of its aspects shifted to the much more distant FreedomCAR program."
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... means it works for a lot of people. Choice is good.
t doesn't make much sense to own a vehicle if it is going to cost you more in electricity charges than if you were driving on gas
But it's cheaper to power a car by electricity than by gasoline. It'll take ~13 kWh to fill your Volt to go 40 miles... go look at your electricity bill to see the price you pay per kWh (and it might be cheaper at night).
GM hasn't given the Volt's "highway mpg after battery has depleted to 30% charge". It may well be worse than the Prius' 48mpg highway, but the crossover point at which the Volt costs more to run than other cars will probably be after you drive for hundreds of miles each day.
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Now, cars like the Volt (that generate more electricity as needed) could work, as could a standardised system of battery replacement/charging as we have now for small propane tanks.
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If you use the car to drive to work each day, and own it for ten years, that is 2,000 working days. a $2 charge every night, then means that you will have increased your electric bill by $4,000, or $400 each year, Or around $35 additional per month - assuming that the price of electricity does not fluctuate.
Don't forget that the additional purchase price of a Volt is money spent up front, and likely financed. So that $15,000 winds up costing you more like $30,000. Plus you can't invest that money, which might also have doubled in value over ten years, so you're more like $60,000 down in your opportunity cost over the life of the car.
08/11/09
Lots of folks playing fast and loose with numbers here... so I might as well too :D
[gm-volt.com]
states that the first 40 miles should cost ~ $0.80 with average electrical rates.
Assume a new car gets 35mpg and an average gasoline cost of $2.80 ([www.fuelgaugereport.com]) then it would cost $3.20.
So energy costs for the Volt after 150,000 miles (assuming never using the ICE) is $3000, vs $12,000 for a car getting 35mpg or a difference of $9000.
The points about the time-value of money are correct... but no way would it amount to $60,000 under a reasonable interest rates.
Today, when gas is relatively cheap, this car doesn't really make sense. In a couple of years when the car costs $30,000 and gas is $4/gal then it does.
08/11/09
08/11/09
Only New England and Hawaii pay $0.20 a kWh. DOE says "The average retail price of electricity for April 2009 was 9.69 cents per kilowatthour (kWh)"
Regardless of the math, all car features cost money; "less gas/less-polluting" is about the only one that's partly offset by reduced operating costs. It would be nice if this one feature magically paid for itself, but economics suggests that will never happen.
The bigger point is anyone who buys any car other than a used Geo Metro XFi is a moran, economically speaking. Every car fan should be wearing a dunce cap with a $ sign on it.
08/11/09
08/11/09
drive 30 miles to work - plug in with portable unit
drive 30 miles home - plug in at home = unlimited city MPG
drive it on the highway and drain the battery in 40 miles, switch to gas and you got your +/- 43MPG
with a combined of 250 MPG!!! give or take a MPG
clever, very clever
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Generating power in a power plant still requires coal or oil. 80% of all power in the US is generated by Oil burning.
Clean diesels can regularly achieve 70+ MPG in Europe having far more range than the Prius and Volt together.
I bet when all is said and done, the energy used to *create* a Volt (manufacturing every component) and the energy used by the car (and the cost and pollution of generating it) when added to a given service life of the vehicle is FAR GREATER than that of a comparable vehicle with a clean diesel.
If you were to make pure electric vehicles and all your power to make them and feed them was from a green source (hydro dams, solar, wind, wave, etc...) then you would have a point.
Anyone suckered into buying one of these will never, ever recoup the investment for a comparable milage/pollution cost of ownership stand point.
One more tiddbit... As an example, if the State of Florida had 30% or less of electric plug in vehicles, their power grid would completely collapse due to power demand. Do you think other states are in better shape...? Think again.
08/11/09
So yeah, I'm right, you're wrong.
08/11/09
Also I think a Triple-Hybrid is also something that should be interesting in the future.
Electricity, petrol (diesel or gas), and hydrogen, since hydrogen can be centrally created as well, using (from what I understand), electricity and water (again infrastructure/delivery we already have implemented)
One thing all of this doesn't bring into account, is the significantly higher drain on our electric grid to residential, in comparison to now.
Kind of like how the mobile infrastructure for cellphones sucks balls but is usable. Significantly underestimating, and not planning ahead, utilities companies need to plan ahead, and invest, they will be critical to all of this.
Also investments and planning ahead by individual consumers in generating power at the source, via solar panels and as alpha mentions heat recovery.
My next house WILL have solar at the least, if not put in by me, it will already be there by the builder. And if I don't move from my house for some time I will invest in solar, and increase the value of my home.
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Please note I am specifying thermal efficiency.
The largest diesel engine in the world PEAKS at 51.6% thermal efficiency.
08/11/09
Now a certain previous poster commented on oil being the source of 80%, which is ridiculously wrong, unless he happens to run primarily on a gas generator out back of his house (neither coal or natural gas are oil based, but so he probably meant fossil fuel burning). A slightly more reliable poster up a ways posted a DoE figure of around 50% coal nationwide (for me its 60), 15% NG (me 20%) and the rest Nuc/Renewables (I don't remember their efficiency, but it is not enough to move the national average outside of the 21-25% range just yet).
So, optimal efficiency in the now should be roughly in the 23-24% range for BEV, and ones TDi gets 20% say.
...Yep, Alpha, you're still right, and will continue to be more so as power plants shift away from fossil fuels.
08/11/09
Power plants are more efficient than ICEs. There's no way around that fact.
08/11/09
Yes, Power plants are more efficient. But not all achieve 96% efficiency.
Many do have excelent scrubbers but not many have all the heat recovery they could, so they are not 96%.
Clean Diesels on the other hand, usually reach 45% or better efficiency from the theoretical 75%.
My point is that the energy used to create a car (such as the Volt) and operating it during it's lifetime and disposal after, might be equal if not greater than a much cheaper comparable car with clean diesel technology.
It's the same as Solar cells. Zero pollution in power generation, but the pollution to create them, maintain them clean (water usage, soaps, cleaning aids and the pollution they create to make them) and disposal of cells after their average 10 yr life span DOES NOT clearly justify the cost of implementation for the average home owner. They are good for some applications, but not the average user.
Same thing as Hydrogen for cars. Hydrogen is not a fuel, it is a currency. You need to make hydrogen to burn it. It's not a fuel source by itself.
08/11/09
And as noted above, I was off on my numbers. The UT power plant operates at ~73+% efficiency. I need to check my report on it to see where I got the 96% from. I was sure I'd seen it somewhere. That may include the heat extracted to heat water for the campus as well.
You're right though, solar cells and and hydrogen are typically not efficient for many applications.
08/11/09
All studies of lifecycle energy use but the laughable CNW Marketing report "conclude the vast majority of energy is consumed during "vehicle operations," with lesser quantities used during materials acquisition, fabrication, and vehicle disposal." Besides the WWF report, there's a list of independent reports in the footnotes on p.3 of this report.
Re: solar PV pollution it hasn't been true for over 10 years. From 1999 "the energy pay-back time was found to be 2ยท5-3 years for present-day roof-top installations"
So you add in cleaning aids and the pollution to make them
Are you serious? A bucket of soapy water and a reusable cloth vs digging up and burning tons of fossil fuels?
Re: average 10 yr life span
You're living in the past. Here's the warranty from BP Solar for my 170W PV modules
"This warranty assures 80% of minimum warranted power output after 25 years of service, and 90% of the minimum warranted power output at 12 years."
Cite your sources.
08/11/09
The car energy lifecycle footnotes are in [www.pacinst.org]
;
the solar PV lifecycle analysis is
[www3.interscience.wiley.com]
08/11/09
can i figure that out by 120V x 6-to-8 hours, or something like that?
08/11/09
08/11/09
If as Wikipedia claims, the ICE keeps the battery from depleting below 30% and the recharge takes it back up to 85% SOC, and if you assume a charging efficiency of 95%, recharging the Volt's 16 kWh battery pack takes 16 x (.85 - 30) / .95 = 9.2 kWh. (That would cost me $1.11 at PG&E's summer all-electric rate.)
I'm sure GM is still tinkering with the details as they learn about long-term battery characteristics.
08/11/09
08/11/09
08/11/09