EPA Fraud: Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf Actually Get Only 23, 25 MPG
You may have heard the mileage rating for the Nissan Leaf is 99 MPG (miles per gallon equivalent). Here’s what the sticker looks like (I highlighted the relevant portions that I will expand upon):
As Auto Blog says of the rating: “It looks good.” Of course it looks good. But there’s a whole lot more to the story. Note that the MPG rating is MPG equivalent. The MSM has been dropping the “equivalent,” making it seem to consumers that the vehicle is far more efficient than it truly is. Which is the intent, of course.
The ratings for the Chevy Volt have just been released as well. From the Detroit Free Press:
Chevy Volt to hit 93 m.p.g. in electric-only mode; battery-only Nissan Leaf to reach 99 m.p.g.
There is not a single instance of the word “equivalent” in the entire article. Nor is there any mention of last year’s claim that the Volt gets 230 miles per gallon (that was a different fraudulent number, based on a separate fraudulent scheme).
The current “miles per gallon equivalent” is a fraud perpetrated to hide the true environmental cost of these cars. One gallon of gas does have about 33.5 kilowatt-hours of chemical potential (depending on blend, additives, etc). And about that much energy is needed to get the Leaf to go 99 miles, and the Volt to go 93. But here’s where the fraud is perpetrated: the electricity for those vehicles is being generated by mostly coal power plants that are only about 33% efficient (minus transmission losses and losses from charging). Coal plants are off-site power generators (whereas car engines are on-board) and are totally ignored in the EPA rating.
Let me illustrate by example how this scheme works, and why it’s such a fraud.
A moonbat, Liberal, left Wing, Green NAZI never saw an environmental lie and scam he never loved and fell for.
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Thanks
No. Mileage needs to be calculated as it is used, as miles are produced. Gallons of fuel are not the proper denominator for hybrid vehicles either, for them it is miles per penny.
Actually, you’re onto something there. That’s ultimately what consumers give a toot about.
Even MPG for petrol cars is dodgy. The stickers just aren’t that good at predicting reality. In australia, I believe they’re calculated on a rolling road. I rent a lot of different small cars at times, and I’ve driven small cars that were utterly brilliant and returned fantastic mileage no matter how I drove them – and I’ve driven a couple of cars that were nowhere near as efficient as they were made out to be. If you’re considering buying a car, you really can’t beat hiring one for a few days first.
And it does depend what sort of fuel you put in. Shell used to sell a product called “optimax” that gave pretty much everyone I know who kept a book and tried it a bit less than 10% better mileage. But they’ve discontinued it and replaced with “ultimate”, and that really doesn’t. Energy content really does vary.
I agree,
Interesting way of doing the math….
But ultimately meaningless, as different industries evolve seperately, and thats not always a bad thing.
Alot of consumer devices (inventions, innovations and ultimately fortunes) were created just because there was a readily available supply of electricity at our fingertips, almost everywhere they turn.
Light Bulb, Dishwasher… or today think software or App designer verses computer manufacturer. If everyone has a computer, I might invent something unique and desirable to RUN on one. I dont over-think the “who what where how” of the silicone chip, plastic and glass manufacturing, because its not my concern. P/C’s are a pre-existing commodity. My product has value because people already HAVE the means to utilize it.
The inventors of these new items are generally NOT the powerplant builders. They are not, nor should they be, overly concerned with where, or by what method, the electricity comes from….It is a commodity the CONSUMER already has available to them, and they are simply capitalizing upon that. Their concern should rightly end with the compatability of the PLUG to the RECEPTICAL, and nothing more.
Electrons do alot of useful work, and if they can keep me from shelling out my usual 30-50 bucks a week in gasoline purchases, in exchange for LESS THAN THAT DOLLAR AMOUNT added to my electric bill, I say URIKA! FANTASTICO! There is an instant market for THAT technology, whether the electricity to my house is delivered by coal, oil or nuke.
Let the MARKETS work. Better and more efficient electric storage batteries and rechageing capabilities are an attractive consumer item IF THEY WILL SAVE MONEY. Let them evolve on their own, without worry about where the electricity comes from.
Its already here, at my reciptical. It will save me dollars to use this new tool/technology, or it wont. That will be the deciding factor.
Electricity production has a related, but not determinative relationship to the SEPERATE MARKET of electronic devices, including cars.
Its fun to watch electric utility companies now try to square their tiered pricing schemes (the more KWH’s that you use, the higher each KWH costs you!) with advocating electric vehicles. Win-win for utilities but boy the owners can get raked. Utilities are playing games with having you use a separate sub-panel for charging electric vehicles. Every price what an electrician charges you to add a sub-panel!
Indeed. It seems that the EPA wants to over-simplify things for plug-in hybrids, by lumping plug-in electic usage with gasoline usage into a single number (MPGe, Miles Per Gallon Equivalent).
For plug-in hybrids, it’s easier (and clearer) to split the usage numbers between gasoline and electric usage.
Here you go for the Chevy Volt :
If you run on gasoline only, and never charge the battery of the Volt your
mileage is 35 MPG city / 40 MPG highway.
At $3.50/gallon, that amounts to about $0.095/mile (10 cts/mile).
If you plug in your Volt every night, run less than 40 miles/day, then you
run electric all the time, and usage is some 36 kWh/100 miles (2.78
miles/kWh).
At $0.10/kWh, that amounts to about $0.036/mile (3.6 cts/mile).
So the Volt will run 2-3x cheaper on electricity than on gasoline.
If your electricity comes 100% from old coal-power plants, then you won’t
save much carbon emissions.
If you live in California, or another area where electricity is generated
from less carbon-intensive fuel, then you will significantly reduce your
carbon footprint by plugging your Volt into an outlet each night.
Regardless of the power source, as long as your local utility company
charges you less that $0.30/kWh, you will save money on fuel (although you
pay for it in initial investment for this vehicle).
Max
Great research, the EPA is packed with lying frauds…we know this now what do we do?
Stop funding the EPA . Another gov. program set up to steal our freedom .
I have read that, after WWII, there were plans to construct 1000 nuclear power (electricity-generating) plants by the year 2000 in the United States. People bandied the idea about that the average household might pay a mere $5 or less per month for near-unlimited use of electricity, it would be so abundant and cheap.
That might well have happened, because the energy intensity of atomic power is orders of magnitude above even hydrogen fuel. (But with hydrogen fuel, there is still the expensive problem of producing it!) Such ultra-cheap energy from nuclear power plants is the only way electric cars could have made any economic sense.
When any kind of technology improves, especially when there is a game-changing leap, it always delivers more value for less money. The problem is, energy companies don’t like the idea of their product getting dramatically cheaper. Add in the “back to the stone age” global warming enviro-nonsense, and abundant and cheap electricity has receded from practical reach, in fact has been regulated out of existence.
Reminds me of something a little kid would say: “Doesn’t electricity just come out of that little wall thingy?” There’s a lot to be said for not letting anyone vote who doesn’t pay bills.
I remember hearing a really startling claim about nuclear power some years ago on my university radio station during a documentary. This program claimed that the amount of energy used in constructing a nuclear power station exceeded the amount of energy it would generate during its lifetime!
I have no idea if that is true nor where I could go to prove or disprove it. If anyone here has any idea if that claim is true and how I could prove/disprove it, I’d be grateful.
Obviously, if it takes a million kilowatts of energy (a number I’m simply pulling out of the air because I don’t know a realistic number) to construct a nuclear plant that would only generate half that in its lifetime, it is counterproductive to build the plant!
That only makes sense if refining the fuel rods ate up that much energy, and I don’t buy it. It would have been all over the news in any debate about building nuclear plants, not the radiation and life of spent fuel/wastes. Plus, this would have been discussed to death in green circles recently as people looked to modern reactors to replace coal-fired plants- and the many plants in europe would have been the examples of ‘wasted money’.
This sounds suspiciously like the professional flyers my sister brought home years ago from university talking all about how farmers were trying to breed legless cows in order to somehow increase production efficiency (this, alas, is NOT a joke- she vehemently argued with us, but has since seen the error of the liberal campus ways- i.e., she started using her brain again). Slick, engaging, and just outrageous enough to catch the naive college student’s imagination, but utter horse manure.
You are on to the secret of the greenie fraud. Just like ethanol which requires almost two gallons of petrolium fuel to create one gallon of ethanol, bio-diesel and wind/solar are also big losers. They require an infrastructure that will never break even with the piddling amout of power they will produce. There is a reason the auto companies don’t want to make these losers and the only reason they are is to assuage the liberals in the WH. Just think of all the crap that is going on right now. Like electric cars having solar cells on their roofs. What a joke! It takes about 100 square feet to do any good charging the batteries in a battery car. And solar, what the hell do we do when the wind is not blowing? Use the old fossil fuel plants of course! So now we have to invest in both and maintain them both 24/7. This is saving!
Yeah, I heard that claim too and it is absurd. The efficiency does depend on how deep you have to dig to mine the uranium.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparisons_of_life-cycle_greenhouse_gas_emissions
@ ElisaPardo :
The promise of cheap and abundant nuclear energy is a utopia.
There is no such thing as cheap energy.
In France, 80% of electric supply comes from nuclear power, and they pay EURO 0.11/kWh (about $0.15/kWh not counting differences in income).
Nuclear energy is not cheap, and neither is fossil fuel, not any of the alternative energy sources.
And Motor Trend selected the Volt “Car of the Year”? They deserve the oblivion they are hurtling into.
Motor Trend is IMO the worst possible source of information about cars. And the competition for “worst” is lively.
I decided years ago that they just sold there COTY awards. Maybe I was wrong, but it sure seemed that way.
Of course, a fair comparison would include the cost of refining the gasoline and transporting it to your service station for you to pick it up. That’s still probably much less than the losses of electricity generation — but a meaningful comparison is probably very difficult.
Then, the equation will probably differ whether you’re talking about energy cost versus carbon-dioxide produced. A power plant might be able to use cheaper fuel than an internal combustion engine, but with the same carbon output. But then, maybe not, if the power plant is burning garbage or using wind/solar power when the electric car is being recharged.
There is no way to cheat physics or logistics and so with respect to energy consumption, all of these machinations are just dopey theater. In the end, reduced CO2 is always the back stop argument for the green movement. But that concern has been discredited as being either totally false or inconsequential (unless you refuse to face the facts). So they must go overboard to obfuscate on other things like energy efficiency.
We could just let all of this play out until the folly of it all becomes obvious except that it is now on such a scale that it will hurt our standard of living and destroy real jobs.
…a fair comparison would include the cost of refining the gasoline and transporting it to your service station for you to pick it up.
Those costs are built into the price of gas at the pump, unless you then want to consider the costs of mining and transporting the coal to produce electricity. That game could get complicated quickly. Let’s stick with price signals instead, eh?
Interesting tid-bit concerning fuel costs:
Im my local papers “100 years ago today” segment:
“New State Law:
After a local gas station owner posted a sign reading
“Gasoline $0.13, Tax, $0.12″
The Pennsylvania State Legislature has forbidden the advertisement of the price of motor fuels with the tax as a seperate figure”
The truth, fobidden. By Law.
Must have gone Nation Wide with that one, ever notice all gas price signs look EXACTLY the same, no matter where you go?
And they all say “price includes all applicable taxes” but they never say how much or what percentage?
And liberals always blame the business guy, not the Government, for raping us.
Sounds like a violation of the first amendment to me…
The transport costs are part of what you pay at the pump.
Isn’t this an argument to generate electricity from nuclear instead of coal?
Steve,
Everything, except sheer partisan stupidity, is an argument for more Nuclear Power.
Cheap, safe, efficient ….lots of deserts in the Middle east, we can use their EMPTY OIL WELLS to store the radioactive waste…
But then again, If I had my way, above ground storage over there would be fine, because the whole place (except Israel) would be one radioactive sheet of glass anyway.
Go Nuke, and you Defund Terror
Why not just use the radioactive waste to generate more heat and that into electricity?
BTW, is anyone besides me wondering what is in the trucks I’ve seen running around the last few years that consist usually of a 3 axle tractor with a short box, 20′, on a short 3 axle trailer? That combination speaks to me of a heavy, dense load. Radioactive waste would be heavily shielded if it were to be transported and would make a compact (dense) heavy load.
Interesting, the whole of the Middle East nuked, save Israel. Interesting.
Of course, a lot of innocent people would die. I’m guessing somewhere just north of 200 million. Then again, I suppose that’s the cost of keeping innocent people from dieing. Makes perfect sense to me.
We should start with Iran. Anyone who has a stated goal of genocide – the systematic destruction of a people – needs to be dealt with. Now I know this may cause a little angst where those Iranian protestors are concerned. Remember them? The cause celeb of the conservative movement here in America? They’ll just have to be happy with their role as collateral damage in the glassing of the cradle of civilization. I’m sure they won’t mind. Besides, deep in their hearts they hate Americans anyway. I have no idea why. It’s not like we want to wipe them off the face of the . . .
Good plan. I like it.
As far as I’m concerned, using domestic coal over foreign oil is a big win for national security. I’m for anything that gets us off the addiction. These cars are a glimpse at the future. Yes, there are issues, but things are looking brighter indeed. Just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Just in case anyone out there is opining that we should therefore go with “renewable sources” (wind, solar etc.), that will make the available energy problem even worse.
But nuclear powered cars might be pretty cool.
Eventually buyers will avoid the VOLT. Edsel & Yugo fool-types will buy it at first. Lots of ignorance out there. GM will bankrupt once again…MARK MY WORD!
I agree with your basic premise that the EPA fuel mileage calculations are more politically correct than scientifically accurate. However, just to be a bit more complete in the comparison, if you wish to include the energy required to generate the electricity it would probably be better to use the mix of electric generation as well as the energy required to mine and transport the various fuels to the generating stations as well as the energy required to mine and transport crude oil to refineries, refine it into gasoline or diesel fuel and transport it to the pump. I suspect the diesel would be the winner, and electric the loser, but that calculation is far too rigorous for the EPA even if they understood how to go about it.
By your calculations, my 49 MPG Volkswagen Jetta diesel beats the snot out of virtually anything on the road today. I’m not going to argue with that.
By your calculations, my 49 MPG Volkswagen Jetta diesel beats the snot out of anything on the road today. I’m not going to argue with that.
By your calculations, my 70 MPG 1992 Honda Civic Vx beats the snot out of your Volks.
According to the EPA website, Jetta diesel owners are reporting an average of 47.5 MPG, and 2002 Civic owners report an average 42.8 with the highest reported at 49. Maybe you are getting 70, but I owned a much newer 2005 Civic and despised it. More then 500 pounds lighter, far noisier, with a fatiguing ride, and with surprisingly poor fowl weather traction, I would have sold it even if mine got 70 instead of 38. Mileage is important, but it is not the only thing.
Unfortunately, Honda could not make a VX or HF today that gets anywhere near the mileage they used to – U.S. safety and emission standards would weigh it down too much.
Several diesels sold in Europe easily beat the Volt and even the diesel Jettas. The VW Polo and Renault Clio diesels can both hit the 70 mpg mark but are kept out of the U.S. by the same federal busy-bodies who think we should pay 3-times more for a Volt.
Hey Old Soldier,
Dont you just love the governments “Enginnering by Royal Decree” mentality?
Get better mileage…by tomorrow…make gasoline deliver more power, cleaner, but make the cars heavier, and safer, or something..just do it”
Imagine that with the Wright Brothers?
“I DEMAND it shall fly by Tuesday”
Its exactly why every “serious” liberal has as much credibility as to me Veruca Salt
“Daddy, I want an Umpa Lumpa NOW!”
Ignorant, spoiled, self important idiots
I’ve always thought the Wright brothers got credit for that first flight when it really wasn’t due. To get credit for the first powered flight they should have done it without a catapult launch.
Yeah, and Beverly Hills has zero emissions too: they just out source them (produce the carbon) in other states and then buy carbon offsets (indulgences) for the remaining on site emissions to get around on Rodeo Drive.
Thank you. The “zero emissions” claim is also dishonest until we switch to 100% non-carbon electricity generation, which is well beyond the lifetimes of anyone alive today.
The use of energy only matters if you are a global warming true believer. If you are worried about the use of oil, bought with dollars sent to Iran, Saudi Arabia, and al Qaeda, then an automobile that runs on electricity produced from American coal is far superior to one that runs on oil.
The Volt and Leaf may do nothing for “global warming” but they will put Mr. Ahmedinejad on a diet. That is good enough for me.
Don’t worry about Mr. Ahmedinejad. China and India will buy his oil. Maybe his “diet” ends up being one less fig per week. In the meanwhile, we will pour hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into a scheme that the free market would reject off hand. Good trade off! You would never make such a decision with your own money. I’ll bet you would not pay anywhere near what a Volt actually costs and you probably have a million reasons why it would be too inconvenient for you to own one.
There is definitely a market for oil. but the less we consume, the lower the price. This is elementary supply and demand economics. Besides, if we could use only American coal to power our cars, we at least would be immune to oil shocks. If China and India want to continue kowtowing to Mr. Ahmedinejad, so much the worse for them.
By the way I do own a hybrid. I am glad to cut the budget of Iran and Al Qaeda by that little bit.
Not to extend this into an argument because I am sure we want the same end – but hybrids rely primarily on gasoline and as been mentioned elsewhere in this thread, they are often bettered in net miles per gallon by diesels and some other conventional gas models. The question remains – would you buy a Volt for the price of a BMW and then suffer the higher cost of driving it and the inconvenience of limited range and readiness. And has anyone calculated the extra money that the middle east will make from the build out of our infrastructure required to support large scale use of EVs. After it is all done, we have no real net gain in standard of living for trillions spent. As I said, no sane individual would make such an investment – but collectively we are being herded over the cliff on this.
Just like the corn-fools who buy “FlexFuel”….dinosaur blood cut with ethanol to make it appear “environmental”…
…except that the ethanol is distilled in coal-fired plants with neither catalytic converters NOR gasoline-engine efficiency.
One day the landfills will be strewn with disposable diapers AND Prius batteries….what will the environmentalists say about that?
….he said while watching the comment zinged over the head of Liberals.
I can’t believe that having something plugged into a 240-volt outlet 8 hours a day 365 days a year is only going to cost $561 on one’s electric bill.
What a shame a Ph.D. college professor can’t do better than this! How hard can it be for Mr Kobus to explain how the EPA came to their measurements and then explain why he feels there are shortcomings? Instead, he makes a series of unattributed statements to support his bias.
Amongst the shortcomings of Mr Kobus’ own reasoning: he ignores the upstream energy costs of getting a gallon of gasoline to the gas station.
By his own standards, Mr Kobus is as much a fraud as the people he condemns. That makes him a hypocrite.
Ron,
Dr. Kobus’ argument was soundly based on thermodynamic calculations, and not rhetorical hyperbole. If you actually have an education in chemical engineering, physics, and chemistry, it would be obvious where the numbers came from. So, if you need a citation, find any text on the subject that begins with a discussion of the carnot cycle and the thermodynamics of heat and energy flow.
I think you might be surprised at where I stand on gasoline vs. electric cars.
It’s not Mr Kobus’ thermodynamic knowledge with which I take issue. It’s his strident use of the word fraud when he talks about the EPA’s upstream electric energy calculations compared with his own silence on the corresponding gasoline costs.
I repeat that the man is a biased hypocrite
Right, as if there are no upstream energy costs to build and maintain electric plants, and to mine and transport coal.
Got anything that makes sense as an argument?
Are you a moron, a troll, or both?
Do the number crunching! I don’t care where you begin. Just do it and compare your aggregate energy balances.
Is that too much to ask? Or is it just that you don’t know how to do it in the first place?
Go argue with a wall. I am tired of dealing with petulant and lazy commentators who add nothing to a discussion.
Sorry proreason,
Your response appeared as a response to my posting. I think that your comments were meant for Ron, and I was annoyed that a neutral comment could have deserved what I thought your reply was.
Hey Ron. Google “Carnot efficiency”. Educate yourself. You obviously have no comprehension of thermodynamics.
The sticker shows an electric usage of 34 KWH per 100 miles. In California, my last KWH used costs approximately 30 cents. At 30 cents per KWH, the 100 miles electric usage (34 KWH) would cost $10.20. The present cost for gasoline in California is approximately $3. Thus, the 100 mile electric range would cost the same as approximately 3 gallons of gas resulting in a mpg of approximately 33 mpg equivalent.
This is before adding in the additional inefficiencies detailed by Mr. Kobus above.
Get real; a Volt is a toy car for toy minds. The Volt is an urban-mobile designed to fill in the gap between golf carts and Toyota Corollas. The Volt is great for flat level terrain with no headwinds. Try driving that POS-Volt from LAX to Barstow using “the Crest” i.e. CA-2. First of all, could you even get your wife’s and daughter’s checked baggage into the Volt? Then, what kind of mileage will you get?
In suburban Chicago electricity goes for 11.5 cents per KWH so the numbers look much better
Who cares about MPG. DOLLARS OUT OF POCKET is what is important. We pay under 10 cents/kwHr here in Utah. So the cost to run 100 miles would be under $3.40. Not bad compared to $3/gal gas (gas cost for 100 miles would be on the order of $15.)
I am pondering the question, ‘what will it cost to me?’ regardless of the political rantings. If one does not pay a premium for the new technology, (give it 5 years) I believe my wallet will come out ahead using domestic coal to run my car.
I am a conservative but I am also Engineer so that precludes being mindlessly opposed to all things green. I have been anticipating the impact of Coskata on the biofuels market. They claim with will be able to produce ethanol from any organic imput, including solid waste.
Anyone who can Google TDI records can see that the diesel VW TDI Jetta TDI set a Guinness World Record of 58.82 mpg. Not years in the future but right now. They get 30 to 49 mph when driven by average drivers. Too bad the brain dead greenies can never comprehend that battery powered electric cars need coal and oil fired power plants to charge their cars. The same ones they refuse to allow to be built. Sounds like a perfect definition of insanity to me. Wind does not always blow, solar only works when the sun is out and sea waves corrode everything in a few years. Diesel supplemented electric cars could work in a year or two with the technology we have now, not Alice in Wonderland, maybe someday wishful thinking greenie lunacy.
58.82 MPG??? Check again. Not since the FED smashed over the road diesels with Tier III NOX restrictions! With the exception of particulates for some older design combustion chambers, diesels were very clean prior to the ‘California Way’. The TDI is now barely 30 MPG thanks to EPA stupidity. Modern automobile engine exhausts are cleaner than the air they breathe. When will the LEFT hand stop monkeying with destructive regulation designed to eliminate personal transportation from the grasp of the public?
If the public wants good fuel economy AND low emissions then a compromise position must be taken, not just some inefficient BS solution that looks good on some Politician’s 15 seconds of CNN face time.
Euro VW Polo’s and similar diesels can beat 70 MPG easily.
LiveAboard is right – the EPA hates diesels and has prevented the good ones from making it to the U.S.
Maybe they are protecting the domestic auto industry? Maybe they just hate us.
A friend of my family has a hybrid (can’t remember which). We have a Vue, gas engine. our Vue does much better on mileage than the hybrid. The vheicles are both SUV types, and about the same size.
Excuse me for busting your bubble but the issue is OIL! We have coal, we don’t have oil. We are running our society dependent on the Saudis and we need to be independent.
A recent test driver of the Volt cut his gasoline consumption something over 75%.
I don’t know what price you put on you your liberty but I price mine pretty high. Furthermore, with mass production and economies of scale, the cost of Volt tech will come down (don’t take my word for it Adam Smith says so) meaning Voltec can eventually lower the cost of ownership to something more affordable.
So do you love your country and want to cut your oil consumption? Buy a Volt, every mile you drive is one less penny the Bin Ladens get.
Agree.
But then market it as such.
The deception has me thinking this isn’t about energy at all…rather, its about PROFIT.
What about your bubble? We have 24% of the world’s oil reserves in the Americas and only about 10% of the world’s population. Tell me again why the answer to Mid East dependency is the electric car? It is so frustrating to deal with people who make decisions for the rest of us based on ideology and not facts.
Unfortunately you are wrong. The precious metals that are used in making the new high tech batteries will never get cheaper and in fact will likely get more expensive. The car part of the equation may get a little cheaper by cutting out the things that the rich greenies like but these cars are very complicated and have a lot of complex systems. Just imagine the level of competence at your Mr. Goodwrench group! The other unmentioned problem created by these new batteries is the waste and polution created by the mining and stream/aquifer devistation done by it. Of course it will be done in green countries like China so we don’t have to worry about it. Don’t you lefties know that there is no free lunch? Only in a Demorat Congress does the free lunch exist.
With all this talk about the Chevy Volt, nobody seems to be analyzing how much these cars will cost the consumer in increased electrical costs at home. I hate to break it to the Obama administration, but electricity IS NOT FREE!!! And if Democrats try to increase energy costs through cap and trade, these energy costs will skyrocket. So, whatever few pennies you may save by not buying gasoline, you’ll lose in sky high home electrical bills. And how do these plants that produce this electricity operate? If it isn’t through nuclear energy, then you’re causing even more pollution by increasing electrical capacity. So bring on the electric car. You have nothing to lose except the last dime you have.
Great to see an analysis of what everybody with a brain knew anyway. Electricity isn’t free, and the dominant way of creating it produces as much if not more co2 than gasoline.
There may be one cost point to make in electicity’s favor. Overnight charging is at off-peak rates. But how long would that cost factor last if everybody was doing it?
Stack up the costs and benefits, and the case is overwhelming for gasoline-powered cars. Nature gave us relatively efficient batteries that are as portable as gallons of milk. It’s insanity not to take advantage of it.
The real cost of electric cars, by the way, is the multi-trillion dollar investment it would take to convert from gasoline to electicity. Nobody talks about that. And how do you put a price on convenience?
Green is just another marxist scam.
There may be one cost point to make in electicity’s favor. Overnight charging is at off-peak rates. But how long would that cost factor last if everybody was doing it?
Exactly! The whole idea of charging lower prices for electricity at certain times of the day or week is strictly arbitrary. It doesn’t even exist in some areas; we are only just in the midst of phasing it in here in Ontario Canada where I live. The people that set the pricing for electricity could change the pricing at any time for almost any reason. There would inevitably be political pressures for and against this but the bottom line is that the whole idea of off-peak pricing could disappear.
Also, if some significant percentage of people *did* charge electric cars overnight, overnight might *become* a peak period simply because consumption was dramatically higher.
Volt 25mpg? Leaf 23mpg? Heck, my (very low mileage) 1989 Prelude Si just delivered 31mpg heavy highway driving over this past Thanksgiving week. As it happens, over that same weekend I read Robert Bryce’s “Power Hungry” which handily debunks most green energy claims. He not only confirmed many of my own skepticisms, but provided loads of data to bury those claims.
My own inclination is to move to clean diesel and natural gas, not electric (pure or hybrid). As to the Volt, ask yourself: Why would I want to pay BMW prices for a Chevy compact?
Electric cars are decoupled from the generation source. The grid gets much cleaner over time.
Electric cars are the only cars which get cleaner over time.
I drive a Quaalude.
It gets a mind-numbing 280 mpg…without leaving my sofa!
This whole line of thought, slightly incoherent by the way, is based upon using coal or other fossil fuels to generate electricity. Wind, dams, tidal generators, and others have a net gain in energy regardless of that used to build them and can recharge the Chevy Volt and similar vehicles without adding CO2 to the atmosphere. Expect more ways to make energy as we go along. This vehicle is a breakthrough and a game changer. For my driving habits, roughly 100 miles a week I would use no gas at all, as the NYC area is a mix of power plants its difficult to quantify the fossil fuel useage, but it has to be way less than filling at a station. Eliminate the tanker that brought it to the station for starters.
Miles per gallon is a totally useless, ignorant and obsolete measurement.
If we all would drive vehicles powered only by gasoline fueled prime movers, then gallons per 100 miles or liters per hundred kilometers makes sense.
Throw in diesel with its higher heating value per pound and things get a little fuzzy. Add flex fuels such as gasahol or ethanol blends, hybrid cars, or electric cars, and a new standard measurement is needed and the only ones that make sense are Kilo-watt hours equivalent per hundred miles or Kilo-watt hours equivalent per 100 kilometers.
Maybe the failure of the Volt with finally kill off the conspiracy theory lie that the EV-1 was killed off by “big oil”. Or some such.
Meanwhile the whole global warming diversion has taken the focus off real pollution of the kind encountered when burning coal – sulfur, heavy metals, etc. I’ll bet we’d be further along solving those problems so we could safely burn our own supply of coal.
I agree with you about the overall trade-off. A calculation a few years back showed that a switch to all-electric cars would, in some european countries, result in a net increase in emissions. The reason is that auto engines have become very efficient, and the losses in generation and transmission from coal actually emit more than a small, modern engine would to simply drive itself.
That’s absolutely true. And it’s actually impressive. Hats off to our engineers for making car engines so clean and efficient! But …
I’m not sure you’re necessarily correct to declare that “the electricity for those vehicles is being generated by mostly coal power plants that are only about 33%”
I’m writing this at a distance, and what you’re saying is definitely true for australia:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf64.html
But not necessarily for the US:
http://igs.indiana.edu/survey/projects/energy_report/images/electric_prod_objects/electric_prod_album/pages/7113332_U_S_%20Gross%20Electricity%20Generation%20by%20Fuel%20Type,%202005_png.htm
All of the figures I’ve seen show US electricity generation by coal to be less than 50%. Natural gas and nuclear make up the bulk of the remainder.
Now, maybe the states where these cars are available (because they’re not being sold in all states) have mostly coal-powered plants, I don’t know. But even then it’s not simple – if there are interstate electricity markets then it’s not that easy to say how your particular joule was generated.
But the MPG figures are silly – everyone knows that. EV-geeks seem to agree.
I’m also not sure you’re quite right to say: “lithium — the mining of which is one of the dirtiest operations known to man”. These days, I think lithium is mostly extracted by evaporating brine pools. I don’t think it’s considered particularly dirty. Maybe you’re thinking of the nickel mine in canada that everyone loved to point at when dissing the prius?
What you’re missing is that that’s the current production breakdown. The question is, what’s the incremental breakdown going to be when you add this load on? The short answer is that it’s going to come out of fossil fuels, either coal or gas, because nuclear and hydro are already at capacity.
The other thing to remember, and Australia is the same way, in the US, the mix varies hugely from location to location. What may be primarily hydropower in one location may be primarily coal in another. So even the attempt to rate these vehicles with an “equivalent” is fallacious, because that varies with location. There is no “national grid” in either the US or Australia. No electrons make the trip from one coast to the other.
Yep. That seems fair enough.
There’s no doubt that as long as we generate our leccy using coal, shifting more transport to the electricity grid is just going to make emissions worse. If you think thats’s a bad thing, then something needs to be done about the coal. It’s not going to be cheap, though.
It’s shameful that PJM uses the same techniques of obfuscation that EPA and other Greeniacs use. There is no need, the data speaks for itself if presented in plain English. Forget the 300hp Cadillac and get your numbers from the spinning reserve providing the power and express it regionally. Probably the truth is somewhere int the 40mpg range for both vehicles. Truth fellas, truth. That’s what we need from the media. Get a Grip!
Looks like another instance where they can use the phrase “saved or created”.
“GOD,” save us now we have politicians selling cars. They will screw that up too, because politicians can not do anything except spend our money!
In many cities, there is collection of yard waste. Using existing technology, this can be converted to the equivalent of light crude oil, and refined in the same way that normal crude oil is refined. There are/were 2 pilot plants running, and the cost, with reasonable amortization of the physical plant,was about $20 – $25 per barrel of crude oil produced.
The net carbon emissions would be zero, as the CO2 used to construct the green plant waste with the addition of sunlight and water would just be recycled and recycled.
Were there legislation forbidding the price of crude oil entering the US or crude oil produced here to be less than about $40 per barrel, these plants would be great sure-thing investments. Cheapest fuel, and no overall net carbon emissions. I am quite sure that Big Oil would be most unhappy.
Yeah, let’s all switch over to bio-fuels; that way there’s only enough fuel for in the country for Al Gore to fly around in airplanes having meetings with Sean Penn in the back of a stretch limo.
Bio fuels are stupid, inefficient, and INCREADIBLY slow.
Without subsidies they are enourmous wastes of time and money
Think:
The energy value in one day from ONE broken pipe in the gulf
Verses:
Staring at 500 acres of corn… all summer long, chanting “hurry…up….groww damnit… GROW!”
Or better yet, a tablespoon of plutonium against 10 of those cornfieds.
In terms of dedicated land area, labor intensity, yield, efficiency, time management, predictibility to demand, its the Grand Mother of all Boodoggle Bad Ideas. Rediculous beyond description
Biofuels could be a suplemental bennie from the waste products of OTHER productive industries. MAYBE save some landfill space while just about breaking even on the garbage carting costs….
But as a dedicated, efficient profitable fuel source?
Thats an idea that only the Government could thing is useful.
Makes about as much business sense a paying someone to throw away a perfectly good car.
Bio Fuels?
Maybe as a suplemental, instead of throwing alot of bulk into landfill space (that we SHOULD be dedicating for SPENT FUEL RODS, but thats another argument)
But Bio Fuels are WAY too slow and inefficient to produce anything in the volumes we need. The difference in scales and efficiencies are beyond astronomical.
We need “mountains per minute”, biofuels are a “grain of sand per hour” in terms of productivity
Pipelines have “on” and “off” valves for a reason. Because there is THAT much pressure and volume to be had, instanly, just by poking a hole in the ground.
Nothing that takes even 5 minutes to “grow” will ever match the efficiency, simplicity and value of that, EVER.
Stop wasting time waiting for the corn to grow, and the leaves to fall, we have REAL WORK to do to get Clean Nuclear to save us from the Mullahs
It has been pointed out several times that all incremental electric production for electric cars will come from fossil fuels. (Since our nuclear plants are running near capacity already because the fuel is next to free compared to coal, oil, or gas)
We also lack the transmission and distribution systems required for widespread acceptance of electric vehicles. Our systems just aren’t robust enough for a car charging in every garage.
Interesting way of doing the math….
But ultimately meaningless, as different industries evolve seperately, and thats not always a bad thing.
Alot of consumer devices (inventions, innovations and ultimately fortunes) were created just because there was a readily available supply of electricity at our fingertips, almost everywhere they turn.
Light Bulb, Dishwasher… or today think software or App designer verses computer manufacturer. If everyone has a computer, I might invent something unique and desirable to RUN on one. I dont over-think the “who what where how” of the silicone chip, plastic and glass manufacturing, because its not my concern. P/C’s are a pre-existing commodity. My product has value because people already HAVE the means to utilize it.
The inventors of these new items are generally NOT the powerplant builders. They are not, nor should they be, overly concerned with where, or by what method, the electricity comes from….It is a commodity the CONSUMER already has available to them, and they are simply capitalizing upon that. Their concern should rightly end with the compatability of the PLUG to the RECEPTICAL, and nothing more.
Electrons do alot of useful work, and if they can keep me from shelling out my usual 30-50 bucks a week in gasoline purchases, in exchange for LESS THAN THAT DOLLAR AMOUNT added to my electric bill, I say URIKA! FANTASTICO! There is an instant market for THAT technology, whether the electricity to my house is delivered by coal, oil or nuke.
Let the MARKETS work. Better and more efficient electric storage batteries and rechageing capabilities are an attractive consumer item IF THEY WILL SAVE MONEY. Let them evolve on their own, without worry about where the electricity comes from.
Its already here, at my reciptical. It will save me dollars to use this new tool/technology, or it wont. That will be the deciding factor.
Electricity production has a related, but not determinative relationship to the SEPERATE MARKET of electronic devices, including cars.
Continued immigration with no building of new coal or nuclear plants. Wind an solar won’t cover the increased demand and produces more expensive electricity. Electric costs are projected to increase 4x in the next 10 years. Factor that into the calculations.
I used to have an 80 Diesel Rabbit. 62 MPG.
The Professor is right about the energy and physics. But car buyers are concerned about costs, not physics. What is the MPGE?
There is no definite answer. MPGE will vary depending upon your driving, your local electric utility, and the price of oil.
So a driver needs a table or graph of gasoline price v. electricity price. That would suffice for the pure electric Leaf.
But for the hybrid Volt it is not enough information. The driver needs to know how many miles he will drive on pure electric and how many with the ICE running and how many with the ICE driving the wheels.
Rule of thumb. We can assume for now that long trips will produce at most 40 mpge for the Volt. And very short trips perhaps 100 mpge.
“the electricity for those vehicles is being generated by mostly coal power plant”
Check your facts. As of the end of 2009 coal plants produce only 45% of the electricity in the U.S. and that number is dropping about 2-3% a year as they are replaced with natural gas plants (60% efficient) and wind power.
Source: u.s. energy information administration annual energy review 2009
http://www.eia.doe.gov/aer/pdf/aer.pdf
7.7 MB PDF file page 266
The electric cars in California will be recharged by electricity produced in another state or in Mexico. So they figure they’ll get cleaner air (until the wind changes). I live in west Texas and can remember the sunsets, as a child, not being red unless a lot of dust was being picked up. Now the power plants in Mexico make red sunsets the rule instead of the exception.
What they ought to do is publish Carbon Emissions per gallon equivalent.
According to EPA one gallon of gas emits 5.33739lbs of CO2 (2,421 grams).
And the US average for electricity generation is 1.341 per kilowatt.
So if the Leaf uses 33.5 kw to go 99 miles that is the Carbon Equivalent of 8.41 gallons of gasoline.
So we come up with new benchmark of Miles per Carbon Gallon which is defined as: how many miles you would you travel to emit as much carbon as a gallon of gasoline.
The Nissan Leaf gets 11.77 Miles per Carbon Gallon (MPCG). Whereas of course the US average Miles per Carbon Gallon for gasoline driven cars is 22.6.
Of course I’ll be licensing MPCG(C) to both Nissan and GM because they’ll want to include this new metric all of their advertising.
The sticker for the Volt says 34 kW/100 miles. So, assuming a 100% efficient charging system and my current electric rates (including all taxes) of 10.2 c/kWhr and gas at $2.60/gal (what I paid today) that is the financial equivalent of 75 miles/gal…pretty good…
What about losses in the charging process? There are two components, the efficiency of the charger itself and the charging acceptance of the battery (how much energy has to be added above that used in the discharge cycle). Chargers are at best 90% efficient and numbers I have seen suggest charge acceptance is not better than 80%. In short, the overall efficiency is probably more like 50 mpg equivalent.
Except that everyone acknowledges that the range described can only be achieved under optimal conditions which means new batteries, level roads, minimal ‘auxiliary’ demands such as windshield wipers, air-conditioning and heat (the big one!).
Consider a winter operation in a traffic jam…you will run out of electricity way before your commute is over…probably before you get to work! Then you will be limping home on the gas engine – which is not even considered in this theoretical mileage number. Note that heat costs nothing extra in a gasoline powered car – it is an otherwise wasted commodity BUT in an electric car it must be generated and that is very costly…and will quickly drain the batteries.
I won’t say that the EPA algorithm is accurate. I will say that Chris Kobus doesn’t have a clue what kind of mileage the Volt gets. He’s never driven the car or spent any time with it. I write for The Truth About Cars, a site that is generally considered unfriendly to GM and when we had access to the Volt, the worst mileage that our testers got when the Volt was in extended range mode (i.e. running on the genset) was a bit over 28mpg and that included quite a bit of stop and go bumper to bumper congestion.
Looking at the Volt simply as a car, without considering the price or the surrounding political events, it’s a very impressive piece of engineering. Some of the world’s most talented engineers work in Detroit.
One thing I don’t understand about the hostility to better MPGs is the following:
Any MPG improvement means less consumption of oil, the bulk of which comes from the Gulf States, Iran, etc. Even with other significant producers, like Russia and Venezuela (no friends of the US), we are still dealing with about half of our oil in the US coming from the Middle East. Moreover, Saudi Arabia is the only entity with enough unpumped supply at any given time whose spigot they can turn on and off at will and determine world oil prices,
Any effort to improve MPGs is welcome. Ideally, we’d not depend on oil at all. Of course, any power source would come at some price. There is no such thing as a perpetual motion machine. But just getting rid of Saudi et al. oil would make the world a much, much better place. Imagine a world where Saudis would not have the wealth to fund terrorist activities, madrassahs, new mosque building with the proviso that they preach the Wahhabi/Salafist line, etc. And impoverished Saudi Arabia would mean a much safer and more stable world.
So I don’t understand the conservative animosity to fuel efficiency. Better MPGs on oil as fuel and, better yet, complete independence from oil, which will always be a commodity that the Middle East is particularly enriched in (lots of prehistoric plants and dinosaurs died there without being oxidized), is something conservatives should encourage.
This analysis is way off base. If you are taking the production of energy back to the source for electricity, you should do the same for that gallon of gas. How much energy does it take to drill the oil well, pump it out of the ground, transport it to the refinery, refine it into gasoline, pump or ship it to the distributor, pump it into the delivery truck, pump it from the truck to the underground storage, and pump it into your car. The electric car equivalent probably is closer to that 233 miles per gallon than 99 or your silly 25mpg.
Mostly coal? I just looked it up, and coal is 1.8% of California’s electric generation mix. Less than 2%. What is the reason for all this anti electric car disinformation? I see it everywhere, usually delivered with a condescending if not downright hostile attitude. I would think people who love their gas driven cars (Including me) would be thrilled if electric cars caught on, because it would save the dwindling supply of oil and keep prices down.
> So I don’t understand the conservative animosity to fuel efficiency.
I don’t have any animosity to fuel efficiency. My own animosity is to the lies, damn lies, and total bovine excreta by which things like this are sold.
The only proper way to choose between a Volt/Leaf, a Prius, and a pre-Prius era Honda Civic (which was the optimal fuel efficiency car at the time) is to consider any of several numbers
One is true operating efficiency. The real fact of the Prius is that your gasoline cost savings over the price boost between the Prius and that Civic ONLY occurs if gasoline prices are GREATER THAN –SEVEN– DOLLARS A GALLON for the entire 5-year typical ownership of a car. That is, the Civic was four to six thousand dollars less than the Prius. To save 4-6k$ in gas efficiency — even at the lying-EPA-bastard rate of 60mpg vs. 40mpg — would require gas to cost $7/gallon for a typical high-mileage driver (12k-mi/yr) over 5 years. And that assumes the currently unknown repair/service costs of a Prius are not higher over that 5+ year span over the very-predictable and well-known costs of that Civic.
For the Volt/Leaf the facts are even worse.
The second option here should be a higher standard STILL for choosing between the three — what are the total life-cycle costs of each vehicle? From the ore mined and plastics refined, the shipping/transport cost of parts and assembled vehicles, through to ownership, usage, and repair, to final disposal/recycling — WHAT ARE THE ENERGY VALUES INVOLVED?
I’d lay HUGE odds on the Civic as being FAR cheaper if no government subsidies (US, Japanese, or ANYONE’s) are applied to any of the three.
Cost info is usually a good indicator of this sort of thing, though there are some (like battery disposal) currently unentered into the balance sheet — which damned well should be (that is, pay up-front for a substantial portion of that battery to be disposed of, since chances are it’s going to be found abandoned on the highway when the then-owner finds out it costs $5k to dispose of!), much less BS subsidies which cause ME to wind up paying for YOUR car from my taxes.
And the fact that the Volt/Leaf and Prius would likely cost, without heavy subsidies — far more than they do — and probably suffer from very, very low sales if the actual costs WERE borne by the buyer — says ALL I NEED TO KNOW about how “efficient” these vehicles actually ARE.
—
P.S., BTW — Government mandates about the makeup of cars sold by Detroit, etc., in terms of mileage figures, forcing MFRs to make lots of cars they **can’t sell** ARE a form of government subsidy to that variety of car.
Even if the out-of pocket costs were the same for the Volt (hybrids) and another gas powered car, the Volt will actually cost the PUBLIC more.
Where will the government make up for the taxes lost in the non sales of gasoline?
Those taxes supposedly pay for infrastructure, public transportation and roads.
When talking economic costs remember to compare apples to apples. The only reason the Volt might actually work is it’s failure to pay highway use tax. Same problem with used fry oil vehicles.
Image miraculously all vehicles stopped using gasoline, which includes about a 30% federal highway tax along with other taxes (federal state and local). Electricity doesn’t include such taxes. Now the government has to make up the revenue loss so look for it to tax electricity.
If it taxes all electricity, those without cars in urban location will subsidize those who commute 40 miles a day. Can you say urban sprawl?
The other alternative is separately metered charging stations with special plugs. Can you say added costs (another payoff to GE) followed by Illegal charging?
The reasons why smart people do not buy Electric or Hybrid cars are: Batteries are expensive, short lived, efficiency isn’t 100 % and the electricity is not free. Going electric you won’t decrease Air Pollution because 50 % of the electricity is produced by burning COAL. By the way a Jetta Diesel, TDI for $23000 makes 40MPG.
The reasons why smart people do not buy Electric or Hybrid cars are: Batteries are expensive, short lived, efficiency isn’t 100 % and the electricity is not free. Going electric you won’t decrease Air Pollution because, 50 % of the electricity is produced by burning COAL. By the way a Jetta Diesel, TDI for $23000 makes 40MPG. With a full tank of Chevy Volt, driving non-stop, you make 37MPG, plus $3 or more, the price of electricity you charged 16.0-kW-hr lithium-ion, the hefty $10000 of the 750-pound battery pack.
Using Chevy Volt, in the Electric Mode Only, Charging and Discharging the battery pack every day, is going to cost you $1000 in electricity, plus $3000 in the battery amortization, with a TOTAL of $4000 per year.