Chevy Volt Grabs 230 MPG Rating, With Catches

[geoffs]

[citation][nom]AllAmericanMuscle[/nom]The bottom line is that the cost to power my car would be cut down from $225 to about $35. If I own the car for 8 years, that's about $18,000 in fuel savings, or half the price of the car.[/citation]Assuming you ONLY charge it at night and that your "night" rate is available for enough hours for a full recharge, then that's valid, sort of. Oh no, it's time for a reality check and some math.

If you're spending $225/mo @ $2.50/gal, that's 90gal/mo. 90gal * 25MPG = 2250mi/mo. However, the Volt can only go ~40mi on battery only. 40mi/day * 25 days/mo (~6 days/wk) = 1000 mi/mo on battery. To drive as much as you do, you'll have to charge 2x/day or do at least half your driving while running the gas engine. To charge 2x/day, you'll either need 2 Volt cars, or you'll have to pay the higher electric rate for at least one of those charges, and you'll still need to use gas for at least 250mi/mo. Buying 2 Volts would of course double your up front costs. Charging 2x/day would probably require that you can charge it while you're at work (unless you're the company owner, good luck working that out).

Therefore, your energy costs (assuming charging 2x per day and 250mi/mo on gasoline @ 50MPG, and that the Volt can go 40mi on 10 KWh) for the Volt are at least:
10KWh * 25d/mo * $.06 = $15.00/mo.
+ 10KWh * 25d/mo * $.15 = $37.50/mo.
+ 5 gals gas/mo @ $2.50 = $12.50/mo.
Minimum energy cost/mo. = $65.00/mo.
Since that's the bare minimum, let's round it up to $75 average (allowing an extra 4-6 gals of gas/mo because you didn't quite get a full charge every time and/or because you occasionally drove beyond the battery range).
Maximum monthly energy cost savings = $225-$75 = $150.
$150/mo * 12 mo/yr * 8yr = $14,400, or about 1/3 the price of the Volt. And that's if you're diligent about charging it to minimize the amount of gas used. It's even worse if you can't charge 2x per day.

Alternatively, since your current vehicle gets about 25MPG, switching to a Toyota Prius would reduce your gasoline costs to $115/mo. If you own it for 8 years, you'll save about $10,500 in fuel, or about half the price of the Prius. You'll only spend about $22k for the Prius and you won't have to worry about when to plug-in/charge the car to get the lowest electricity rate.

 

[geoffs]

[citation][nom]coverfire[/nom]well considering I can go to work and home on a single charge and then be recharged by the next day I would save roughly 200.00 a month in gas.[/citation]Not unless your current vehicle gets terrible gas milage. Let's do a little math.

If you can drive to/from work on a single charge, your drive to work is under 40 miles round trip since that's roughly the battery range on the Volt. Let's assume the full 40 to make it easy. Further, let's assume you work 5 days a week and you run some errands and/or go to church on the weekend, so we'll count 40mi/d * 6 days/wk, which is ~ 25days/mo. 40mi/d * 25d/mo = 1000mi/mo.

GM estimates it'll take 25KWh to power the Volt for 100 mi, so you'll need about 250KWh/mo in electricity @ $0.11/KWh. Your energy cost would be about $27.50/mo.

Now, for you to be spending $200/mo on gas @ 2.75/gal, you would need to buy about 72.7gal/mo. 1000mi/mo / 72.7gal/mo = 13.75MPG. However, to save $200/mo, you would actually need to be spending $227.50/mo, which is 82.7 gal/mo, which means your current vehicle would need to be getting less than 12.1 MPG.

Maybe my imagination is limited, but I can't imagine anyone who is driving a large SUV, full sized truck/van, or high-end sports car (i.e. one of the vehicles that gets that low gas mileage) actually switching to driving a Volt. Maybe one of the later vehicles GM is planning to introduce based upon the Volt platform, but not the currently announced Volt. Larger vehicles built on the Volt platform will of course cost more to operate and/or will have a shorter range, so while the exact numbers will change, they won't change dramatically unless you can significantly extend the range, and that will only matter to people who drive more than 40mi per day.

I applaud GM's effort, but they need to find a way to get to Volt under $30k and/or extend the range to 60+ miles per charge.