Not good news for the Chevy Volt!

[longbow]

How bad might the Volt failure be?

Consumer Reports: GM's Volt 'doesn't really make a lot of sense' | detnews.com | The Detroit News

Will it be Bush's fault?

 

[longbow]

$48,000 for 27 mile battery range in the winter.....With that, I would not be able to get my daughter to school and return home in the morning on just battery power.

That just seems like a lot of money to just make local trips.

 

[Disposable Heart]

Good article. Shows that the Volt has some problems that cannot be addressed with current, fiscally viable, technology that would be in the price range of the affluent American.

Screw it, let's just race until peak oil, fight tooth and nail with other nations for oil, kill thousands if not millions of our children in these wars and stick with the guzzling, fatted and ignorance of our father's pension filled dreams of yestertomarrow.

There are so many other technologies out there, hydrogen (can still use a proper heater), pure electric for warmer, urban areas, natural gas, etc... Naw, we just want to rape everyone elses' cheap oil stockpiles, then go to war over the reserves on our soil after we destroy everyone's nations with our greed. Options? No such thing with the amount that Americans can afford on a vehicle if we are going to reduce dependance. Americans either need to accept some things odd about electrics or prepare for the fight of our race.

 

[Woodsman]

Let me guess... Another government decision that went bad. Who would have thought?

 

[longbow]

At my place the cost to charge it would 13.4 cents kw for six months and 7.6 for six months . Guess when I would not be driving it in just electric mode? Summer and winter months are peak for my electric company. Peak electric rates, which are becoming the norm will kill the electric car.

 

[Leadeye]

I would imagine that if the car does not sell well over time the government will just keep the subsidy up on it. I have to wonder how long the batteries last and what the value of the car is when they go bad. Battery replacement may put you upside down on your car value verses loan balance.

 

[Bubba]

Instead of paying almost $50k for a car that only fills the needs of urban drivers that only have to travel a few miles at a time, how about said urbanites take a walk or ride the bus/train/other. When I was living in a decent size city the bus was more than adequate to get me to the grocery store or the mall for whatever I needed to do. If Americans need to accept any "odd things" how about we start with not starting the Range Rover for a 3 block trip to the gas station for smokes?

We are reaching a tipping point where more Americans are living in urban areas than rural areas. Just because a technology fits the needs of one segment doesn't mean it is the panacea for all our future vehicle needs. I'm all for new innovations in vehicle powertrains, but I won't defend the viability of a technology that won't even get me from home to work without recharging. Screw the Volt, screw GM, and if they ever admit their bailout "payoff" was just an overhyped bait-and-switch I might give them the courtesy of a second look.

 

[LEaSH]

So many critics of ethanol, but Brazil has been doing it with cane sugar for a decade and a half.

Michigan used to produce the most table sugar from sugar beets.

If only they had a pair they could have actually started an industry up there.

It appears Michigan only likes to break things, though.

 

[hoosier_gooner]

These things are a joke. Green energy is the fallacy du jour. Electric cars are what say 45% dependent on coal alone. By that I mean the breakdown of US energy production by source in 2009 was 45% coal, 23% natural gas, 20% nuclear, 7% hydroelectric, 1% oil, and around 3.5% other. The EPA and along with envirofascist lobbyists are making it more difficult for the US to exploit the vast amount of natural resources that we have here, thus doing its fair share to make the global energy markets more scarce; i.e. tighter markets. Thus raising Volt owners' recharging bills by not allowing private investors the permit to create a less expensive fuel source for the bloody things. Government is the sole arbiter of creating widespread misallocations of wealth in unsustainable markets; whether it be housing, internet start ups, or 'green energy' companies and electric cars.

If it were a real concern to solve this false 'energy' problem, central governments should step out of the way of the market process and allow laissez-faire capitalism to work. Distortion in the market does nothing but consume wealth, create waste and leaves us with cars that nobody wants. But then again if they allowed the market to work, politicians would be cut out of it altogether and not receive kickbacks.

Quick history lesson, the actual term for 'monopoly' goes back circa 1600s England. A famous case in Parliament was the Statute of Monopolies 1624 - where Parliament challenged the Crown for the right to grant monopolistic privilege. Until the last century and the introduction of Keynesian and Neoclassical economic thought, the real legal and economic definition of monopoly was a right granted by government, which is not granted to the public as a whole.

By challenging governments' authority to interfere in the market; by arguing for a more free market, you are essentially telling the High Crown that it does not have the authority to grant monopolies, they don't have the authority to grant privilege and they always try to respond to this proclamation with this fallacy, with this circular logic nonesense that markets fail, you need us to respond to market failure. You need the sole arbiter of monopolistic privilege to use force to see that monopolies do not exist and it astonishes me that that this fallacious argument has been bought for so long.

What can I say, politics is a racket.

 

[Woodsman]

I would imagine that if the car does not sell well over time the government will just keep the subsidy up on it. ...

Yeah, instead of an Eddie Bauer edition they'll call it the Amtrak edition. Perhaps the vice president can be it's spokesman?

 

[jd4320t]

I thought the Volt was a great idea, finally Detroit was getting in the game. Then I started reading more and was totally let down. It's a freakin joke.

 

[henktermaat]

I have been saying this from the beginning...
1) Math don't add up. You have to REALLY believe in it emotionally...
2) You shift the oil money to china for batteries. That's not better

 

[longbow]

Don't be shocked if these become police cars........I kid you not!

 

[henktermaat]

I also have a close friend who was involved in the GM battery program.

It's so wrought with failure, fraud, and weird internal politics that he had to get out for moral reasons.

 

[Hornett]

I knew it. Like Henktermaat said, the math doesn't add up.
It violates the first law of thermodynamics which basically states "You don't get something for nothing."

I feel the same way about flex fuel cars.
Yeah, the brakes put energy back into the system, but there is that second law of thermodymaicsw which says "You don't even get to break even.
There are so many losses that you can't put enough energy back into the system.
They will never build a flex fuel car that will be more efficient than an small underpowered pure gasoline car IF you take into account the cost of electricity.

Edit to add:
Be careful about bashing on the fossil fuels.
They have a bad rap because of politics.
They work because they are cheap and contain a LOT of energy per volume used.

 

[gunman41mag]

Even if chevy can fix the VOLT & make it work good{which they won't} What is going to happen to the grid when millions of AMERICANS plug in their cars for 12 hours of charging ???

 

[rhino]

What would these cars actually cost on an open market without government subsidies (coming from our pockets)?

How much longer will electricity be so cheap? The current president vowed to bankrupt coal-fueled utilities and additional taxes on burning fossil fuels are inevitable.

How much longer until the prices of electricity are manipulated in as capricious a manner as gasoline prices have been the last few years?

I'm not against exploring interesting technologies, but the bottom line is that if electric cars were superior or even comparable, the market would have made it obvious and it would have happened before now.

 

[jblomenberg16]

hoosier_gooner said it pretty well, and I'll supplement with the age old saying of "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch."

Energy is energy folks, and transportation will be only as efficient as the least efficient means of producing that energy. Large coal, oil, and hydro power plants are more efficient at producing a watt of power than say a traditional gasoline engine. However, you add in the transmission lines, transformers, etc. and you really don't end up any more efficient.


My friends, the future of cars is not 100% electric. It will be some sort of hybrid. Internal combustion engines are actually pretty efficient when running at optimized conditions. Hence highway MPG is usually better than city MPG because of the stop and go driving in the city cycle. Accelleration really sucks the fuel on a typical IC engine.


That is where the magic of a hybrid comes in though. The electric motor can accellerate the vehicle much more efficiently than a gasoline or diesel engine. But at cruise conditions, a proplerly sized and tuned gasoline or diesel will beat the electric motor on range any day of the week. Throw in some regenerative braking for good measure and you have a pretty effcient package overall.


I'll be bold to say that the electric car will have its place with very short urban commuters that can't quite rely on a public transit system. But for those that drive their cars more than say 75miles per day, they won't catch on.


I think you'll see a series of highly efficient diesel electric hybrid cars, trucks, etc. by the time it is all said and done. Perhaps some advanced hydrogen fuel cells in there too if the technology becomes more affordable (which it will). Modern gasoline engines are becoming very fuel efficient too with direct injection. Add a small turbo that gives you about a 1.0 or 1.5 pressure ratio and you eliminat pumping losses and pick up a few efficiency points.


Diesels are the most fuel efficient internal combustion engines that man has invented thus far that can be economically mass produced (typically more than 10% more efficient than gasoline, nat gas, etc at the same power output) and with modern technology as clean or cleaner from an exhaust emissions standpoint. When properly tuned a diesel can easily do better than 40% BTE (brake thermal efficiency) which is really darn good. However, that still means that 60% of the fuel energy is leaving in the form of some other form of energy, namely heat (radiators and tail pipes). Now, if someone could just do something with that 60% energy... hmm...



The big barrier to entry for diesel electric hybrids is the added cost and weight of a hybrid system. The short life cycle of existing cars (usually 100,000 miles give or take a bit) makes it tough to justify the upfront cost when the paypack may not be until 75,000 miles or more into the life. That is usually well past the first owner, and into the second owner.



Ok, sorry for going all engineer-speak on you guys...I just have a real passion for this stuff and wish the real physics could be told by the media and government, not just the hype.

 

[hoosier_gooner]

Don't be shocked if these become police cars........I kid you not!

So they'll be in a hot pursuit for say...uh... 27 miles till they have to stop and recharge

 

[hornadylnl]

A few years ago, I calculated the cost savings of a diesel jetta over the gas version. The diesel cost $4500 more and assuming diesel was the same price as gas. Even at the 15 mpg rated increase, it would take 180,000 miles to recoup that $4500 added cost and break even.

I did the same thing for the Honda civic hybrid. It gets 9 mpg more than the gas version at over $7000 more. It was close to 400,000 miles for the break even point.

People aren't going to pay thousands more just so they can feel good about the environment.