"Agreed... and I can't understand how charging batteries with a diesel engine would be more efficient than powering the darn car with the diesel engine itself... nonsens"
Its very simple.
1) fuel powered engines have a specific rpm range where they are the most efficient. At low and high rpms their fuel efficiency goes down MASSIVLY, as does their torque etc. If you use a generator, you run the engine in its optiom range all the time. Means you get a lot more energy generation out of the same ammount of fuel.
2) You arent wasting power at idle when stopping in traffic. When you are idling in afuel powered car you are pissing awayfuel for no work. When you are idling in a electric car with a fuel generator, you are storing most of that energy.
3) When you press the brake of a regular vehicle, all your stored momentum is disappated into heat. IE wasted. When you press the brake of a electric vehicle with regenerative breaking, you store a portion of that energy back into your batteries.
Whats nonesense is their MPG rating.
Using an electric drive train however is anything but nonesense. Even if they only had a battery that could do 1 mile, it would still be more efficient to use an electric drive train with the generator on all the time.
However, the hybrid drive train option is nonesense. When you use both a fuel engine and a electric engine to power the drive train directly you combine the worst of both worlds at twice the price.
volt = hybrid done mostly right. Tho i would have given it a bigger battery. And they should have kept the prototype body look, the production body looks like crap.
They need to be more honest about the MPG rating tho.