I'd need 20m round trip for my daily commute to work. One or two days a week I'd need 30ms or so (comics , new video games , gf's house) . But normaly 2 days a week i'd need a range of about 50-60 miles thus the gas engine would keep me going. For vacations the 444m trip would allow me to go further than my equinox will currently let me go (tops out at 320miles with perfect highway driving)
Chevy Volt - Electric Car
- Thread starter nintenho
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Here is a better video
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It's probably easier to explain the benefits of the plugin hybrids:
No charging stations needed
No fast-charging of the batteries needed (see charging stations), it's not that i can't be done with todays technology, but it's not necessarily the best for the batteries either.
You only have to pay for the electric range that you need on a daily basis, my daily commute is 30 miles f.e. And batteries are the expensive part.
The ICE can be a really small & simple engine cause it would run only in the range in which it's working efficiently. And it only has to take care of the average energy consumption of the vehicle. Perhaps with a little bit of headroom of course, lets say 60-80 hp ICE for a 150 hp electric motor. Think small motorcycle engine. It wouldn't run most of the time so it wouldn't have to last as long as a regular engine, mileage wise that is.
There are of course a lot of arguments for going all electric instead but there's no competition between the two as i see it. Though imo, the pluginhybrid is something that would work for most people, regions of the world. The pure EV is more of a niche product.
I really like the Project Better Place idea though but i'm not so sure that i would work that well in f.e the US, or Sweden for that matter. It'll probably work in Israel and Denmark though, the two countries that have signed up for it currently.
Coal is too clumsy, why don't we try something better, like gasoline or such?
Well, pulverized coal is actually feasible to be used in a diesel engine
I couldn't find a better internet link than this:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...serid=10&md5=5eec936fa286636c4af796d78601e199
I remember reading about it in one of my alternative energy course books.
Anyway, just saying! Probably not the way of the future though.
Well, pulverized coal is actually feasible to be used in a diesel engine
I couldn't find a better internet link than this:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...serid=10&md5=5eec936fa286636c4af796d78601e199
I remember reading about it in one of my alternative energy course books.
Anyway, just saying! Probably not the way of the future though.
Pulverized carbon made from coal can be converted to electricity at about 80% efficiency in a direct carbon fuel cell. The technology is a bit expensive and a bit clumsy at the moment and it's intended for increasing the efficiency of coal power plants, but you never know.
Makes at least as much sense as the "hydrogen economy" to me.
A massive amount of information about the Volt can be found here:
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/0...y-volt-update-details-on-just-about-every-as/
A very interesting read. You might want to listen to the audiofiles too.
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/0...y-volt-update-details-on-just-about-every-as/
A very interesting read. You might want to listen to the audiofiles too.
Speaking of green cars, here's a list of cars, many of which I hadn't heard of before, that are in the 'green' field:
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/04/22/top-20-most-exciting-green-cars-we-wish-we-could-buy-today/
http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/04/22/top-20-most-exciting-green-cars-we-wish-we-could-buy-today/
Chevy Volt is 230 mpg in the city? What?! They're using some new formula, but there has to be some funny business.
Edit: I found a link, which I've now lost, that said if you calculated the same way as hybrid vehicles, you'd get around 100mpg. Basically you get about 40 miles purely from the battery and then the gas engine kicks in to recharge the battery. The 230mpg is not representative of what you'd get if you went and drove non-stop until you ran out of gas. I'm really not sure how they got to that number.
Edit: I found a link, which I've now lost, that said if you calculated the same way as hybrid vehicles, you'd get around 100mpg. Basically you get about 40 miles purely from the battery and then the gas engine kicks in to recharge the battery. The 230mpg is not representative of what you'd get if you went and drove non-stop until you ran out of gas. I'm really not sure how they got to that number.
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Actually the mpg would have been infinite b/c the Volt could complete the entire EPA city test cycle on electricity.
Thus the EPA wanted to test the vehicle with the battery dead. That would be the mpg in charge sustaining mode.
GM on the other hand said hey who is going to buy a PHEV and not plug it in (toyota and others will agree with this btw whenever they get a decent PHEV out). And 75% of drivers would do all their driving on electric on any given day so we want some huge mpg number.
EPA said that sounds bad how about we do some complicated BS.
So they hashed out something that is taking into account driving patterns and trying to see what the vehicle would get in mpg terms if you just gave it to 100 people and told them this is only for city driving.
In the end they should have:
MPG in charge sustaining mode (battery depleted = HWY driving)
kWh/mile in city/hwy
and the weird blended thing they came up with here to get 230 mpg.
Thus the EPA wanted to test the vehicle with the battery dead. That would be the mpg in charge sustaining mode.
GM on the other hand said hey who is going to buy a PHEV and not plug it in (toyota and others will agree with this btw whenever they get a decent PHEV out). And 75% of drivers would do all their driving on electric on any given day so we want some huge mpg number.
EPA said that sounds bad how about we do some complicated BS.
So they hashed out something that is taking into account driving patterns and trying to see what the vehicle would get in mpg terms if you just gave it to 100 people and told them this is only for city driving.
In the end they should have:
MPG in charge sustaining mode (battery depleted = HWY driving)
kWh/mile in city/hwy
and the weird blended thing they came up with here to get 230 mpg.
Oh, so 100mpg is what they estimate you'd get if you started driving with a "dead" battery.
That's pretty darn good. The EPA numbers never seem right though.
Yeah, I guess it gets complicated for the consumer. Some people want a number so they can estimate how much gas they'd use if they had to drive 150km. Other people just want to know how much money they'll have to spend on gas in a week. This car definitely complicates fuel consumption more than Hybrid vehicles do, but the important part is, it should still get a hell of a lot better gas mileage than any gas or hybrid powered car on the market.
I'm not sure about other pure electrics though.
It is actually unbelieveably good. The volt will have this giant weight of a battery strapped inside it 16kwh vs. 1.8 kwh in a prius. The volt will lose a few things that a prius has so it will not gain weight directly in proportion to the 16/1.8 ratio above, but it will still be higher.
I thought the charge sustaining mileage would be around 45 mpg. I think originally the EPA really had no idea of how to test it and give a singular number to the public. It could have been they just made some arbitrary decision at first such as "lets test it half and half that's fair." Otherwise I don't see how it would get anywhere near as high as 100 mpg.
Oh and with electrics the way you test will have a huge effect.
Is the air conditioner/heater used? Other peripherals? As you get more aerodynamic all that stuff has a bigger effect on final outcome.
I think that the volt should actually do 40 miles on electric for the vast majority though b/c they are being fairly conservative (now that they are allowing 10ish kWh of the pack to be used instead of only 8).
Ok, I'm starting to think the 100mpg figure is wrong. I'm reading so much different information. Some are talking about 3 cylinder gas engines, and some 4. Wikipedia has it listed as a 1.4L 4-cylinder. I've read 50mpg in charging mode, and I've read up to 100mpg in charging. I've read various estimates up to 150mpg combined, using an older estimation. I guess I'll have to wait for the real info from Chevy, or some real test drive info.
The engine was going to be a 3 cylinder turbro specifically designed for the volt, but GM decided that taking an engine (4 cylinder) they already had and using it would be cheaper than designing a new one that was more optimal. Basically it is a cost cutting measure.
50mpg could be believed, I was just guessing at 45 mpg.
50mpg could be believed, I was just guessing at 45 mpg.
Wanted to wait for one of these, but given the GM troubles and the experimental nature of this car we decided to wait for a generation or two. Instead we just put a downpayment on a Prius 3