Word: volts
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...electric car, so long promised, may finally be pulling into your driveway. In the U.S., a humbled General Motors just showed off one of its rare rays of light - the plug-in Volt, which GM says will get 230 miles per gallon when it hits roads in late 2010. Daimler is trialing an electric version of its baby Smart car and claims to get the equivalent of 300 m.p.g. In Japan this month, a confident Carlos Ghosn said that Nissan's upcoming, all-electric Leaf will get 367 m.p.g...
...methodology behind the Volt's eye-popping 230-m.p.g. rating, and those of other so-called extended-range electric vehicles (EREVs), is still under wraps - though GM and others claim to be using it - and the agency says it can't comment since it has not yet tested the Volt. In the meantime, the Society of Auto Engineers continues to tinker with its new hybrid test protocols. It has a lot of automotive fans scratching their heads about the recent Volt m.p.g. claims and how pure-electric vehicles and hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicles stack up. (See the best cars from...
...With the Volt, GM is among the first to make some marketing hay from the unreleased EPA revisions, which evidently take into account onboard gasoline generators like the Volt's. Specifically, GM bases its 230-m.p.g. boast on a blend of the Volt's electric-only mode - which has a 40-mile-range limit - and charge-sustaining mode, with its 1.4-L electric generator running. (The generator is a small gas-powered engine that keeps the batteries charged while the car is being driven, hence the "extended range...
...Here's the breakdown: The 230-m.p.g. number, according to GM's Frank Weber, global-vehicle-line executive for the Volt, is a measurement of the car's "city-driving cycle" - that's the 40 miles it can go without gas, plus one daily electric recharge, plus a little extra help from the gasoline it might need to continue to charge its batteries when they get low during driving in the city. It's basically measuring the Volt's electric-only-mode (with some help) mileage capacity. If the Volt got out on the highway - where it's powered largely...
...says the EPA will weight plug-in electric vehicles as traveling more city miles than highway miles on only electricity, presumably figuring that people buy electric cars primarily for local driving. GM expects the Volt to consume 25 kilowatt hours per 100 miles of city driving. At the U.S. average cost of electricity (approximately 11 cents per kWh), a typical Volt driver would pay about $2.75 for enough electricity to travel 100 miles, or less than 3 cents per mile. (Conversely, a gasoline-powered car that gets 20 m.p.g., for which the driver pays $3 per gallon...