Minimum All Elctric Range for PHEV

How many miles (km)

  • <5 (8.1)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 5-10 (8.1-16.1)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 10-15 (16.1-24.1)

    Votes: 2 8.0%
  • 15-20 (24.1-32.2)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • 20-25 (32.2-40.2)

    Votes: 5 20.0%
  • 25-30 (40.2-48.3)

    Votes: 11 44.0%
  • 30-40 (48.3-64.4)

    Votes: 3 12.0%
  • >40 (>64.4)

    Votes: 4 16.0%

  • Total voters
    25

Sxotty

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In the other thread this question became interesting to me so what is the minimum all electric range you would want in a PHEV.

This means how far you can travel before you start using gasoline/diesel/ethanol or whatever else.
 
A 20-25 mile range would probably remove something like 90% of my fuel use. In some ways I'd want to have more just in case, but I'd have to see how the balance sheet works out in terms of cost for that extra electric range to really know what would be best for me.
 
I drive. A lot. So I need as much range as I get out of a gas-powered vehicle, or I'm sticking with gas.

You get that range. In some proposed PHEVs
Volt Range on one tank of gas+ charge =600miles
Charge by itself =40 Miles


The entire point is what is the range of electric only would be useful to you. If you drive more than 40 miles every day then obviously you would want>40. If usually you drive 20 miles, but drive 60 every other day then a 20-25mile all electric range might be fine.

I drive many miles, but usually on trips so a 20-25 mile electric range would take my normal driving out and then I would use gas when I drive from PA to CA.


Here to clarify it;
GM said:
The Volt electric could recharge on electricity every night for 6 hours and provide 40 miles of pure electric fuel. At 60 miles per day and with the assistance of a conventional fuel, the Volt could achieve up to 150 mpg. After 60 miles, the fuel efficiency continually drops to about 50 mpg until it reaches its end range of around 600 miles.
 
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One thing to note is that even if you drive double the all electric range of a PHEV, you'd still use half the gas of a normal hybrid.

I think the two stats that would be most interesting are median/typical daily driving and average daily driving. You could then form a reasonable idea of how much they'd save per year with an X km range PHEV, as well as what proportion of their driving is done in long trips.

In any case, we can see that 30 miles per day of electric will let you afford a car with a monthly payment of $70-$100 more per month. It probably costs a lot less than that to go from hybrid to PHEV, as the car makers probably only need 4 kWh of battery storage to go this far. PHEV really is a no-brainer.

My workday commutes would be enough to exceed 40 miles a day, unfortunately.
Such is life, I guess.
The whole "effective MPG" concept is really convoluting matters more than it needs to. A 40 mile range saves owners up to ~$4 per day if they drive that far, and that's all you need to know. There's really nothing unfortunate about it for you.
 
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Another thing to take into account is, that with most commutes you spend (on average) much more fuel with the stop and go driving in the city and the congested highway junctions at the start and end, which is where electric shines. The intermediate highway travel is more efficient, and so costs less fuel on average.

I would be happy with a hybrid that could do 20-25 miles electric. And I don't mind having no mechanical brakes when using hub motors. That also allows you to lose a Porsche at the traffic light.
 
Don't discount that the electricity in your car has a cost, also. Its not "free".

Yep, at my current electricity rates it would cost me around 75 cents for the first 40 miles (it could be a bit less than that or nearly double that in some locations in NA). Still significantly cheaper than any current car could manage at the price I have to pay for gasoline.
 
It probably costs a lot less than that to go from hybrid to PHEV, as the car makers probably only need 4 kWh of battery storage to go this far. PHEV really is a no-brainer.

The carmakers need to think about the longevity of the battery though. This means not charging it to the max and never below 30%, or something like that:

http://www.autobloggreen.com/photos/volt-briefing-april-2008/733650/

It's estimated to use around 8kWh to reach it's "electric only" range of 40 miles and it'll have a 16 kWh battery:

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/0...date-all-systems-go-malibu-based-mules-comin/

The benefit of the PHEV still remains of course since a pure EV would need the same "backup" to reach the same calendar life on the same type of batteries. I would f.e be able to charge at work so something like a 12-15 mile range on electricity would take care of my daily commuting. Selling a pure EV with a 12-15 mile range would be impossible.
 
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Yep, at my current electricity rates it would cost me around 75 cents for the first 40 miles (it could be a bit less than that or nearly double that in some locations in NA). Still significantly cheaper than any current car could manage at the price I have to pay for gasoline.

i'd be close to $2 to fill up the battery. To get 40 miles on my suv i'd use over 2-3 gallons of gas depending on the driving. Thats 6-9 bucks right now.

Fair trade to me.
 
It's estimated to use around 8kWh to reach it's "electric only" range of 40 miles and it'll have a 16 kWh battery:

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/0...date-all-systems-go-malibu-based-mules-comin/
It seems I made a little mistake with my calculations, as the energy density figure I saw was per kg, not per gallon. Whoops.

So yeah, a 16 kWh battery sounds right for 40 miles. That's a little tougher to finance with the money you save on gas. Still much better than a pure EV, but not as advantageous over a regular hybrid as I thought.
 
It's not that difficult to finance if you pay 7.56$/gallon for gasoline and 20 cent/kWh for the electricity (hope i got that right) like we do in Sweden. The Volt should use around 1.2 kWh/10km (40 miles = 65 km), or get 5 miles/kWh if you like. The cost should then be something like:

Electricity: 1.2 * 0.20 = 0.24$/10 km

Compared to a normal small car which would use around 0.6l/10km , 2$/l = 1.2$/10km.

That's about 1/5 of the cost for the "fuel" here in Sweden. You could argue that a small diesel could run on perhaps 0.45l/10km but that would still be 0.45*2.1 (diesel is a bit more expensive now) = 0.945$/10 km. Still 1/4 of the cost if you run on electricity. Then add the environmental benefits when running on electricity on top of that.
 
well, put in a car running on CNG and the cost will become 1/2 of that, and CNG produces much less polution than gasoline/diesel.
Then add environmental damage in order to produce batteries and dispose them...
Dunno, all-electric sounds cool, but I just think that technology for storing/rtecycling electricity is still not up-to-whats needed.
 
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No, the cost when running on CNG wouldn't be half of that (i'm assuming that you're talking about diesel), at least not in Sweden.

Li-ion batteries aren't considered harmful for the environment and doesn't even have to be recycled. The same can't be said for the current NiMH batteries though , f.e the ones in the Prius.

But Tesla will still recycle the batteries:

http://www.teslamotors.com/learn_more/recycling.php

The cost of the recycling is "built into" the price of the car so they will recycle the battery when the time comes to do that. The Li is still usable.
 
No, the cost when running on CNG wouldn't be half of that (i'm assuming that you're talking about diesel), at least not in Sweden.
What are the prices in Sweden? Currently in Bulgaria its like
A95 - 1e /l
A98 == Diesel - 1.1e /l
LPG ~0.55 e/l
CNG ~ 0.5 e/kg, which is roughly 2x cheaper than LPG, and a friend of mine told me prices in Italy are similar. Next year another jump in prices of gasoline/diesel is expected as we have to increase taxing of these - in order to reach those prescribed from EU-rocrats (they suck :p)
And with recently signed treaty with Russia for transpoortation of CNG during next 20-30y, I look forward my next auto to be with gasoline/CNG (Like ones in Zafira or new VW TSI-based)
 
In the US, diesel seems to be about 20% more expensive than premium gas. About $4/gallon (or $1/liter)
 
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