This still seems a little high to me:
General Motors on Tuesday put the base price of its Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in car capable of driving about 40 miles on battery power without using gasoline, at $41,000 before a $7,500 federal tax credit.
The Nissan Leaf, a fully electric car that goes on sale in December, will have a starting price of $32,780.
G.M. had kept the Volt’s price a secret since introducing the model as a concept more than three years ago, though executives had hinted that it would cost about $40,000.
The price is substantially more than the starting price of $32,780 for the Nissan Leaf, a fully electric car that goes on sale in December.
The sticker price of a Toyota Prius, the popular hybrid car, is $23,560 to $35,000, depending upon options.
Then again, maybe 33k (after the tax credit) is about right for a full sized sedan.
WereBear
Cars cost what a house used to.
Personally, I’m never buying a new car again. I’m not in a position to lose half of my (interest charging) investment as I drive it out of the lot.
toujoursdan
Given that the batteries in these cars rely on some pretty rare elements (platinum, lithium, lanthanum) for the battery, I have serious doubts that they will ever become cheap enough to replace internal combustion engines. It seems to me that the more that are made, the more expensive they will become.
The real solution to depleting oil reserves is give people incentives to move back into walkable neighbourhoods and only use cars for special needs, but no American government will ever tell people that they need to sacrifice, unless they are poor.
r€nato
@WereBear: I have bought a new auto exactly once in my life. Never again, for the exact reason you cite. It’s really not that difficult to find a one to two year old auto which is still under warranty, only some other sucker took the depreciation hit.
The only exception I might ever make, is when someone finally comes out with an electric or hybrid car which actually makes economic sense. I can’t afford to pay $33k just to make a statement about my environmental ethics.
debit
At 35 grand I’d expect to be able to drive that car for the rest of my life.
Steaming Pile
That is, IF it were a full-size sedan. It’s a midsize at best, and worse than that, it’s a CHEVROLET. There is only one Chevy worth $41K, and it’s made in Bowling Green, Kentucky, with fiberglass and no back seat.
JimF
Remember that they are only making 10K of them this year; so it’s the “collectors edition” I fully expect prices to drop as they work out production issues.
Comparing it to the Leaf without some caveats is not fair either. The Leaf is a pure electric car; while the Volt is a electric car with a gasoline range extender. You could drive the Volt cross-country without a recharge, the same is not true for the Leaf.
El Cid
There have been really promising recent developments in battery efficiency and cost using approaches not dependent on rare elements. Hopefully in 20 or 30 years we’ll be able to use them.
D-Chance.
$41K for a car that can travel 40 miles before becoming just another car, or…
$23K for a car that gets 51 mpg on your commute.
Way to go, Obama Motors!
Edit: Also, note… The Volt’s engine — which will require premium fuel. Yeah, you have to pay an extra 24 to 35 cents per gallon of gas to get the “good stuff”. So you pay up to $20 grand extra up front, plus another $3-$5 per fill up. Wonderful… let me empty out the bank account to be first in line for this deal.
S. cerevisiae
Gas needs to get back up over $4.00/gallon before these cars look attractive to buyers. That could be soon if the attack Iran crowd gets their way.
Pigs & Spiders
The Tesla Model S is looking better and better every day.
MattF
Anyone know how many kilowatt-hours the car uses for an average year of driving (10,000 miles) at an average speed of, say, 30 to 60 mph?
JimF
More like a $41K car that travels 40 miles before becoming like a $23K car that get 51mpg. And even that is not accurate;
the Prius is a parallel hybrid while the Volt is a series.
Keith
For comparison, that’s more than a fully-loaded BMW 3-series, although the rebate brings it a tad bit lower. And the BMW comes with 4 years of full maintenance, including brake pads, oil pads, and yearly detailing.
El Cid
Remember that as far as reducing overall fuel consumption in the US, it’s much more important to take the very least efficient vehicles to a higher efficiency (i.e., from 15 to 17 mpg) than to take moderate efficiency vehicles to a higher level (i.e., 30 to 40).
Comrade Javamanphil
@D-Chance.: In that same low 20K price range you can have a car that gets 37mpg but is a hell of a lot more fun to drive. No regrets about buying one new but I knew I’d be keeping it for a long time.
Southern Beale
The Volt is ridiculously overpriced, especially since the Nissan Leaf, which has NO internal combustion engine at all, will be much less. I think the assholes at GM are factoring in the federal tax credit into their price.
stormhit
@D-Chance.:
“$41K for a car that can travel 40 miles before becoming just another car…”
Yeah, that’s not anything like how it actually works.
El Cid
An old Civic I had got 38 mpg whether city or highway.
Sir Nose'D
@toujoursdan:
Fixed.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
Yeah. The Gasoline it uses is for a generator that powers the battery, rather than drive the car, which is more efficient. Also, it’s not really a full-size. It’s got 2 bucket seats in the back as well, so it’s a 4 seater mid size interior with what looks like a full size exterior.
S. cerevisiae
El Cid makes a good point – if we could encourage families to get out of 15 mpg SUVs and into 20 mpg minivans it would make a huge overall impact on US gas consumption.
Pigs & Spiders
@Comrade Javamanphil: I just got a MINI hardtop last month. Exceptional car. Loving every second of it.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
@El Cid: I just had to sell my 91 hatchback that got 51 mpg and had 283000 miles…
El Cid
@Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac: Wow. Pretty much the same as mine, and I didn’t get near that. I thought I took good care of it (oil, filters, plugs, transmission oil, etc) and kept tires inflated about as high as seemed reasonable. Occasionally I got about 41, but that was rare.
patrick
it’s not a full or midsized, it’s a compact, based off the same delta platform as the chevy cruze…
daveNYC
To be fair, GM’s bosses acted like retarded donkeys well before the feds stepped in.
And my dad used to have a Chevy Sprint that easily got 40+ MPG.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
@El Cid: It was all highway. I live near a highway entrance, and got off the exit right at my work.
jibeaux
Well, I suspect both of these cars are geared towards people planning to use them primarily for short-ish commutes and to recharge them at home. If there was another car in the household available for longer trips such that you were never or almost never buying gas at all (I guess with the Leaf that will be “never”), the math could work out o.k., especially with the Leaf (if it’s $25,280 after tax credits and you’re saving, say, $100 every month on gas.)
But it drives me crazy how long and how hard they’ve been hyping the Volt for such a mediocre outcome. I swear I think I saw ads for the Volt about three years ago.
mizzcudas
The Volt battery has a 100k mile warranty. Wonder what the Leaf and Prius has? Wonder what the Leaf and Prius battery replacement costs are? There is a reason premium fuel is required – lower grades of fuel will contaminate the internals of the charging engine and reduce it’s durability. The structure of the Volt is substantially more rebust that its competition in regards to passanger safety. Well worth the price in my book.
russell
The old Civic I drive now gets 35.
And it holds a full drum kit, even if I use the big 28″ bass drum. I can fit four trash barrels in the thing on a dump run.
120K, I will get another 100K out of it.
For the kind of dough they’re asking for the Volt you can get a really nice diesel sedan, get 50 mpg, and not need a heavy-metals-based battery.
Just saw an ad for a diesel VW Golf, clean as a whistle, 36K, $15K.
Is there any evidence that electric cars, which need to be plugged in to the mostly coal-fired electric grid every time you use them, are net/net cleaner than an efficient fossil-fueled car?
Just cause the smoke doesn’t come out the tailpipe doesn’t mean there isn’t smoke being generated somewhere.
JimF
@jibeaux
New technology is hard, don’t let anyone tell you differently. GMs biggest mistake was when the stopped the EV-1 program they didn’t directly move on to the next electric project. As a result they lost a fair amount of expertise.
tim
40 years since the government first warned of oil boycotts, oil depletion, etc. etc., blah blah blah, and the best all the scientists and corporations and geniuses in the world can come up with is 40 fucking miles on electricity?
I don’t buy it. Forty freaking years and nothing truly revolutionary to move our cars?
I’m thinking there are 100 mpg cars and amazing non-fossil fuel burning car propulsion technologies sitting in warehouses somewhere, being kept secret and off the market for the benefit of big oil. And I’d also guess more than a few people have been murdered to keep things the way they are.
Does this make me a conspiracy theorist? Hell yes. Anyone who ISN’T a conspiracy theorist, after all we’ve seen in this country the last 60 years, is a fool.
roshan
Fuck the Volt, take a look at Yez. Negative Carbon Footprint, now that’s something to talk about.
Egilsson
It looks like a horrible, over-priced car with no future to me.
What else you would expect from GM, particularly a car built by the climate-change denier Bob Lutz.
JimF
The Volt itself may or may not last, but I hope the platform sticks.
gnomedad
@tim:
I believe in some conspiracies. Conspiracies in which the first defector would get richer than Bill Gates are unsustainable.
Punchy
But then all those Mommies would be so irresponsible putting Little Johnnie and Sydney in anything smaller and lighter than a small school bus!
El Cruzado
I don’t really get all the negativity (and I’m saying it as someone who’ll keep buying diesel cars until they stop making them). It’s a new thing, the first of its kind. It’s not going to be perfect. But if it works it will be another arrow in the quiver to get US car average mileage up to a reasonable point. I might dismiss US-designed cars personally, but I’m going to give GM kudos for going ahead with this, even if it doesn’t end up as a huge success.
For those confused about how this compares to regular hybrids or regular electric cars, the closest thing to the way the volt works is a diesel locomotive. The engine feeds an alternator that feeds the batteries/electric motor. Fortunately that can be done with a very small decrease in efficiency compared to a direct mechanical connection (in the case of diesel locomotives there’s also a big mechanical reason why it’s done the way it’s done, since there’s no gearbox that could survive the power necessary to move a mile of cargo down the railway).
For people with known commutes of less than 20 miles each way it’s likely to mean no gas ever goes into the tank. Feeding it from electricity from a carbon plant doesn’t mean it becomes worse for the environment overall. Big-ass power plants are very efficient compared to individual cars, the only problem is that all the pollution is concentrated in one place. On the other hand it also makes it easier to reduce it all in one go.
Bob In Pacifica
tim @ #31. Yes. Russ Baker’s Family Of Secrets.
My ten year-old Corolla, built at the old NUMMI plant in the East Bay, is a little rusty but still chooglin’.
jibeaux
@JimF:
Oh, I know that. So wait til you’re closer to actually bringing it to market before the hype, is all I’m saying.
Alan
@El Cruzado:
Plus we wouldn’t be feeding the Middle East petrol dollars.
Joey Maloney
@r€nato:
The way I look at it, the depreciation only matters if you’re planning to sell the car in a couple of years. If you’re going to drive it into the ground, the price is either worth it or it isn’t.
The last car I bought was brand-new, a first for me. I got 5 years bumper-to-bumper and 10 years powertrain warrantee. And after 11 years I handed it down to a niece when she went off to school.
I definitely got my 11 grand worth, even if its theoretical value dropped to 7500 as soon as I drove it off the lot.
Zifnab
The battery is, frankly, a lost cause. It’s overpriced, heavy as shit, and only propels you a meager 40 miles. That said…
@Pigs & Spiders: THIS. DO WANT.
Seriously, though. It would be far better to just make the transition to fuel cells already. Cobalt and palladium are obnoxiously difficult to obtain and work with. Hydrogen and Oxygen are all over the place and store energy just as well. Once we engineer around the whole “Your batteries explode” thing, there’s really no reason why we should be gassing up the car with anything more liquid than Aquafina.
Hugin & Munin
Yep. Put me in the ’89 Civic Hatchback club. 35+ MPG and huge interior with the backseat down. Too bad it died the death of road salt. Sigh…I loved that car.
Zifnab
@Joey Maloney:
Not exactly. If I can buy a ’10 for $40k or an ’08 for $32k, why on earth would I pay an extra $8k for two years of car on a vehicle I plan to drive for fifteen. The math just doesn’t work out.
On the flip side, resale values really aren’t nearly as bad as they used to be. Toyotas and BWMs in particular tend to hold their value fairly well inside the first two years, in part thanks to the widely expanded secondary market. A lot of the reason a car loses a big chunk of value when you drive it off the lot stems from the suspect nature of selling a car less than a year after buying it. Why ditch your vehicle so quick unless A) you’re desperate or B) the car is a lemon? But now that leasing and flipping cars inside a year or two isn’t so unusual a feat, and services like carfax help calm a prospective buyer’s fears, every newish used car doesn’t come with a giant question mark over the top of it.
Joey Maloney
If plug-in cars sell well and get ahead of building out a charging infrastructure, I wonder how long before we get people stealing juice like they steal wifi? Pull up to a house that’s vacant but not abandoned, or around the back of some business where the outside outlet is unobserved, run out your extension cord and relax for an hour or two, then drive on.
For awhile I was hearing about cars designed for the whole battery to be swapped out rather than charged, so you’d pull into the “gas” station and the “pump” would take your battery and put it in the back of the queue and give you one that’d been topped up fully. What happened with that?
Catsmeat
The money you would save buying a $16,000 car that gets 35 MPG, would pay for enough gas–at $4.00 per gallon–to drive it over 150,000 miles. And there are cars that get over 40 MPG and cost even less. Even with the tax credit, $41,000 is way too much to pay for low fuel consumption.
Zifnab
@Joey Maloney:
You need a lot of electric cars on the road to make that business model work. Right now there are just about…
/checks parking lot
/checks freeway
Zero.
Corey
A “meager” 40 miles? How much are you people driving a day?
Anti-Arpaio Sane
We live in AZ and plan on getting our Leaf in December. Ya gotta start somewhere.
Steve
Of course it would be great if you saved enough gas to come out ahead at the end of the day, but I’m hardly surprised the technology hasn’t reached that point yet. In the meantime, there’s nothing wrong with people who are willing to pay a premium in order to help save the planet (although George Carlin’s point is duly noted).
The tax credit definitely affects the price. If you lease the car and let them keep the tax credit, your lease price is $350 a month which is pretty affordable.
I think they structured the federal tax credit poorly. The way it works, the credit is phased out after a given manufacturer produces 2,000 qualifying vehicles. So the incentive is to build a small number of high-priced vehicles to maximize the tax credit per vehicle, as opposed to building a large number of mass-market affordable vehicles.
Cackalacka
Yeah, just said goodbye to an Accord with 215,000 miles on it. Last time I filled her up, 32 mpg.
Honda execs should be beaten with a rubber hose for their product line; apart from the Civic and Fit, they have been targeting the coveted “Least Common Denominator” market sector otherwise known as the American motorist. Crazy that my ’96 gets far better mileage, 2 wars, one gas crisis, and 200,000,000 barrels of oil in the Gulf later. Where are the double-wishbone hot hatch Civics that get 35-40 mpg? Oh, here’s a Crosstour that gets roughly the same mileage as a 2001 Jeep Cherokee.
Fun fact: next years low-end V6 Mustang will get the better mileage than most of the Accord trims.
Think about that for a second.
For those who call the Volt full/mid/compact; Patrick is closest. It is on the Cruze (compact) frame, but the middle-seat in the back is divided by the batteries. So, basically, this is a car with marginally more passenger space than a Mini Clubman at a price point about 14k less.
Oh, and it comes with the vaunted GM quality we’ve all grown to love.
I was hoping my old beater would last until the LEAF became marketed on the East Coast. Alas, t’was never meant to be.
As for those folks who swear up and down they will never own a new car thanks to depreciation, take a quick lot tour. Thanks to elements due to the economy, 1-2 year old cars are priced very closely to new ’10/’11 models. Last week I saw ’07s sitting next to ’10s for only a $2-4k price point difference. Of course, I probably could have haggled and much of that is dealer mark-up, but according to what I’ve read, even the 7 year old makes that are hitting the used auction circuit are jumping up to bizarre prices.
Its not that it makes economic sense to buy new, it’s just that it currently makes less economic sense to buy used.
cmorenc
I have a Ford Escape hybrid, which is a “small” SUV having the same frame and body as the all-gas version of the Escape. The nominal real-world gas mileage (30 to 32mpg) is very good for an SUV-class vehicle, but rather mediocre compared to many compact all-gas sedans, which cost 5 to 10k less than the 30K price of the Escape Hybrid.
Nevertheless, the Escape Hybrid has proven to be remarkably reliable and inexpensive to maintain over the 100,000 miles I’ve put on it so far. The type of driving where its hybrid efficiencies are a huge advantage is city rather than highway driving, quite the opposite of gas-only cars since that is in fact where the majority of the least efficient fuel consumption takes place in gas cars, and also the hardest wear-and-tear on an all-gas engine.
It would be worthwhile if folks who are still driving Caddy Escalades and other Brontosaurus-sized SUVs would switch to the smaller, but still quite generously-sized Escape Hybrid type vehicles, which are fully functional as SUVs. We’re never going to make real progress toward resolving our country’s imbalance on fossil fuels so long as cars like the Escalade are considered “positive statement” items to too many people still. In my own neighborhood, there’s still one jackass who tools around in his full-sized Hummer, including trips to the grocery store a walkable quarter-mile away from his house.
Cackalacka
*edit, per the Mini Clubman/Volt comparison I made, that should read 14k MORE, not less.
El Cid
@russell: It’s still the case that it’s much more environmentally sensible to buy a less fuel efficient vehicle used than pay for a brand new vehicle to be built, even if the fuel efficiency is higher.
magurakurin
@D-Chance.:
My understanding of the Volt is that after the 40 miles is does not become “just another car.” The gasoline engine will kick in, but it never drives the car. The drive train is connected to the electric motor so the car always runs as an electric car. The gasoline engine when it kicks in is a generator which provides electricity for the motor. It therefore can always run at peak performance since it only has to generate electricity.
I don’t know if it will be a success, but the characterization that it is “just another car” after 40 miles is not correct. It is not a hybrid in the Prius model.
Cackalacka
I should add, I’m not trying to pan GM for this product. I am panning the entire industry for encouraging inappropriate consumer choices with fatal (be it active safety or environmental) consequences.
Plus, if automakers were run by engineers (and not MBAs,) this item should have been offered by 1990.
Mr Furious
Since GM is going to lose a fortune on the Volt regardless of the price they set, they might have chosen to be slightly more competitive.
These two first-gen consumer electrics are more about setting a bar and determining a direction for the market (think VHS v Betamax) than actually making money for either company at this point.
Both cars will sell out at a massive loss before they roll the first one off the line, so the real test will be the user experience and which type of electric works better in the real world.
burnspbesq
@Comrade Javamanphil:
Minis are cool, but not terribly practical if you have a 150 pound dog.
Jetta TDI wagon is my next car.
Cackalacka
@burnspbesq:
I heard that, test drove a Mini hatch two weeks ago. Fell in love with the handling, and the economy didn’t seem half bad.
Then I took a tape measure to the back seat.
150 lb dog? I wouldn’t be able to tote my 90 pound lab back there, even with the seats down.
Mr Furious
Part of my current job involves driving new cars on a daily basis on a 60-mile, mostly-highway commute to work (and home again). I’ve tested a dozens and dozens of different cars of all types in the last several months
Because of this I no longer need to own a car, but if I were to spend my own money on a car, it would be a TDI Volkswagen.
Nothing else is even close.
Fun to drive, gorgeous interiors and mileage in the 40s.
Mr Furious
@burnspbesq:
Smart choice. I have not driven a wagon, but I averaged 46 mpg in a Jetta Cup Edition sedan (sport tires, and suspension) over a couple days of mixed driving. Mostly highway, but very aggressive at times, plus a good amount of traffic thrown in.
We have a GTI in our permanent fleet that I drive pretty regularly, and the TDIs that come through are 90% as fun to drive and get almost double the mileage.
These cars are nothing like what most American drivers think diesels are like. They’re world’s apart from VW’s own TDIs of just a few years ago.
VOR
There is a tax credit for other hybrids and electric vehicles too. Maybe not 7 grand, but the Leaf will have a substantial tax credit.
Volt is clearly a work in progress. It is release 1.0 technology. I agree the price is too high but I bet they sell all 10k built first year. Hopefully Volt 2.0 will lower the price as they figure things out. And hopefully they can expand use of this technology.
Volt is a start, not an end.
Cackalacka
@Mr Furious: Yeah, damn shame that the Golf TDIs are essentially nonexistent in North America.
Gromit
I’m often suspicious of these discussions where folks start tossing out mpg figures for their cars, old and new. Are you all keeping meticulous logs of fuel usage and mileage? Are you occasionally checking the mileage on long car trips? Or are some of you just assuming the EPA or manufacturers’ efficiency ratings carry over to real-world driving conditions? In my experience, very few non-hybrid cars actively monitor fuel useage (though I have started seeing this in newer models), and probably fewer drivers are obsessive-compulsive enough to keep the detailed records necessary to get a true picture of fuel economy in practice. And EPA ratings can’t account for differences in driving and maintenance habits.
Am I out of touch with the habits of the driving public? Admittedly, I don’t spend a lot of time in other peoples’ cars, but I get a the feeling that these aren’t apples-to-apples comparisons, to say nothing of the “the plural of ‘anecdote’ isn’t ‘data'” thing.
Steve
@Mr Furious: Do I have to find a gas station that sells diesel? That sounds annoying.
Facebones
I remember watching car ads during football in the early ’80’s, and remembering high end sedans going for $7995.
So anything over $8K seems expensive to me.
burnspbesq
@Steve:
Can’t speak to any other part of the country, but diesel is available at just about every major-brand gas station in SoCal. Just look for the pump with the green rubber thingie on the handle.
Gromit
@El Cid:
This seems specious. The way I see it, new cars are going to be manufactured to meet demand, whether you buy new or not. If the environmentally-minded just soak up used car stock, this just means less demand for new, more efficient technology, not less demand for cars generally.
malraux
@Zifnab: New car depreciation cost is heavily dependent on Make. I just got a Honda Fit. It was cheaper to buy new than used because of the higher financing costs with used vehicles.
scott charmin
WHY WOULD I SPEND THAT MUCH MONEY ON A CHEVROLET?
no seriously. i don’t get how american car companies don’t understand how to compete with japanese car companies.
for $42k, i can get a pimpin’ BMW, Mercedes or Lexus. I think the Lexus Hybrid is cheaper than that, actually.
and for half that price, i can get a real hybrid (from honda or toyota). Hell, even the Ford Fusion Hybrid is $27k
Gromit
@scott charmin:
If “pimpin'” is what you want, why would you be considering a Volt in the first place? Different people have different priorities.
Ab_Normal
@Gromit:
My spouse uses the trip odometer on the car, resetting it after each trip to the gas station and writing the MPG on the receipt. ‘Course, we’re both tremendous nerds who like to brag about the good mileage on our old VWs…
Spork
The tax credit is misleading because it decreases with increasing income. If you can afford $41k, you’re probably not eligible for a tax credit.
A hybrid Lexus costs more than this (granted, Lexus Chevy), and the Highland Hybrid does very well at $34k list price. I don’t think the $41k price tag is going to make this unsuccessful, and at a lower price I doubt GM would be able to be able to produce enough.
magurakurin
Down to the VIP car-rental booth, where I traded the Red Shark in for a White Cadillac Convertible. “This goddamn Chevy has caused me a lot of trouble,” I told them. “I get the feeling that people are putting me down — especially in gas stations, when I have to get out and open the hood manually.”
“Well … of course,” said the man behind the desk. “What you need, I think, is one of our Mercedes 600 Towne-Cruiser Specials, with air-conditioning. You can even carry your own fuel, if you want; we make that available. …”
“Do I look like a goddamn Nazi?” I said. “I’ll have a natural American car, or nothing at all!”
They called up the white Coupe de Ville at once. Everything was automatic. I could sit in the red-leather driver’s seat and make every inch of the car jump, by touching the proper buttons. It was a wonderful machine: Ten grand worth of gimmicks and high-priced Special Effects. The rear-windows leaped up with a touch, like frogs in a dynamite pond. The white canvas top ran up and down like a roller-coaster. The dashboard was full of esoteric lights & dials & meters that I would never understand — but there was no doubt in my mind that I was into a superior machine.
HST Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Corner Stone
@Cackalacka:
This is one good argument. When I bought my 2008 CR-V brand new there was an exact car (color, trim) for sale 2007 with 18K miles on it. After all was said and done it cost me about $700 more to buy the brand new car, get the full warranty and not have any questions about the car.
I have a friend who only buys used. By my calculations he has put more money into repairs than he would’ve have lost due to depreciation ~ if he had chosen to sell. The repairs weren’t optional.
Steaming Pile
@S. cerevisiae: The minivan form factor is probably friendlier to electrics. All that floor space, you know.
Paul in KY
@Pigs & Spiders: Good looking car. Looks sorta like a Masarati Quattroporte’s little brother. I’m guessing it will also be priced like a Masarati Quattroporte’s little brother.
Steaming Pile
@russell:
Here’s your evidence. An electric motor runs at 90-something percent efficiency. An ICE runs at 25% efficiency, and then only when it’s extremely well-engineered (think Honda) and maintained by the book. Using the Nissan Leaf as an example, its battery stores 20 kwh and runs 100 miles on a charge, so says Nissan. 20 kwh equates to about 2/3 of a gallon of gasoline, for an effective MPG of around 150.
So even if your electricity is generated with dirty, nasty old coal, you get several times more actual work from it than you ever did from gasoline, so using electricity is a big net gain for the environment.
Steaming Pile
@Punchy: Not only that, but Daddy will complain about his poor little marbles shrinking every time he has to drive the minivan.
Martin
The Volt is still a good bargain for a lot of drivers. Consider the target market – California. 20-30 mile commutes are pretty common out here. Gas is also expensive. Even at Prius mileages, you’re going to spend about $3.50 per day on gas just on the commute – about $17.50 per week – about $900 per year. Increase that by at least 50% for other driving – going to the store, weekends, etc. So $1500 per year on gas at commuter distances all that will get offset by much cheaper electricity. When you do need to drive further (which is also common here) you don’t need a 2nd car to do it, unlike the Leaf.
For single car households (or individuals) with moderate commutes (not a small demographic here), my guess is that the Volt will be price competitive with the alternatives factoring in a 5 year ownership.
(And put me down as a TDI fan as well – wish I had that engine in my Honda)
Tim
The level of ignorance on display is both surprising a disappointing.
FIRST THING: JOHN… You left of the part about GM offering a lease on the Volt of $350/mo for 36 months which is identical to the Leaf. And yes, you can buy the car at the end of the lease. They did learn some things from the their last foray into electric cars.
The Leaf’s pricing also takes into account the Federal tax credit for electric cars.
Battery technology has long been the stumbling block for people working on electric cars with realistic range. It’s only with the advent of Lithium Polymer batteries that the energy density necessary for the sorts of range most people require in a car has become practical.
GM has always said that the Volt design is an interim step. And the platform has been designed to be range extender neutral, so while the first iteration of the car has an internal combustion engine, it could also use a diesel or a fuel cell. This is because, as someone else pointed out, the Volt is a true electric car in that the IC engine never drives the wheels directly.
I admire Nissan for taking the leap to electrics but it’s a hard road ahead. We need charging infrastructure.
And I also admire Honda for their FCX Clarity fuel-cell powered car, but they require hydrogen refueling stations. Got any of those around your house? Unless you live in So.Cal it’s very, very unlikely.
The Volt has a 40 mile range because their studies have shown that 75% of drivers in this country drive less than 40 miles per day. The Volt is designed to be plugged in every day so you could easily go months without using a drop of gasoline if you’re in the 75%.
tim
@gnomedad:
But you can’t get rich if you’re dead. Supposed they powers that be offer a bribe to make you quite wealthy, but you refuse to play. So they kill you. And terrorize your family and anyone who knows you into silence.
I’m guess this happens all the time, for all kinds of reasons, all over the world.
Martin
@Steaming Pile: Coal and oil power plants only get about 30%-40% efficiency. Nat gas gets up around 80%.
But the hidden efficiency costs come with the fuel infrastructure – how much energy is used to get the fuel to where you need it, for you to go get it, and so on. When you start plumbing those depths, electric cars really start to pull ahead in terms of overall efficiency. The big breakthrough will come in about a decade when we should start seeing supercapacitors replacing those battery stacks. They don’t degrade, charge much faster, and are lighter and more environmentally friendly. We’re getting comparable energy densities to batteries in the lab, but not yet in production. Soon.
Steaming Pile
@cmorenc: It’s worth noting that one sees a lot of Escape hybrids being used as taxicabs in New York City.
Lee
I’m waiting for these to go into wider production so the costs go down a bit.
Aptera Car
suzanne
@Corey:
Out here in Phoenix, I go through roughly a tank of gas a week. 280 to 300 miles. (And that’s with doing part of my commute on the light rail.) If I could drive as little as 40 miles a day, I’d be thrilled.
Egilsson
Ok, so people typically drive less than 40 miles a day, and can go months without using the gas in their Volt.
Gas goes bad. What happens then?
suzanne
I’m driving a 2000 Honda CR-V, with almost 150,000 miles on it, and I love the damn thing. Front seat fits two adults comfortably (my husband is over 6′, but I’m kinda short, and we’ve had a hard time finding cars that have easy visibility for us both), and we’ve got another munchkin on the way, and the backseat will easily fit two car seats (though if we have anyone else in the car with us, it’ll be tight back there). And the cargo area holds the dog. We plan for the second car (currently a ’99 Civic) to be a compact gas-sipper, but we love the CR-V, and I would love it if there were more hybrid/electric options than the Escape at this size/style. I’m dreading the day I have to get something else.
Chris
@toujoursdan:
This is … not right. The article you linked has the details correct. I don’t mean to insult you but your phrasing here is quite misleading, because “these cars” appears to refer specifically to the Volt. The Volt uses lithium-ion batteries. Lanthanum is found in nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries, such as in the previous (but not next) generation Prius.
Platinum, symbol Pt, is used in catalytic converters. These are in all internal-combustion-engine cars; so much for that complaint. :-) (Pt is very expensive, which is why thieves steal catalytic converters. One can substitute Pd, palladium, for Pt, but Pd is also expensive.)
Lithium (Li, as in Li-ion batteries) is not at all rare. It’s easy to obtain from dry lake beds, such as are common in the western United States, and throughout the South American deserts. However, the first extraction step is to add water, so it is cheaper to mine it from brine lakes, which are relatively rare (since dry lake beds are found where it’s, well, dry). This is why people keep claiming that the lithium supplies are limited—they’re not, it’s just that if you want to save a few pennies, you go where the dry lake beds are wet, and that is limited. (And, as it turns out with commodities, saving a few pennies per ton makes all the difference in the world.)
Neodymium (Nd), used in supermagnets, is a “rare earth element” but “rare earth elements” are also not actually “rare”. In fact, Nd is as common as Pb—lead. What makes rare earth elements expensive is that they tend not to be concentrated into ore bodies. That is, there’s plenty of Nd out there, you just can’t often find a good place to mine it because it’s spread thin over the entire world. That makes it relatively expensive, and most of the good mines are in China (and the rest are in Africa, I believe).
See also wikipedia entry on chemical elements, section on “as found in Earth’s crust”.
Bill Murray
One big issue is recharging time. Using standard house lines, it takes around 8 hours to recharge the Volt and around 20 hours to recharge the Leaf, so you probably need to have a 220 line to charge the Leaf. Wouldn’t hurt with a volt either
Chris
@Martin: Natgas electric does not get you to 80%, at least, not electric-only. The best combined cycle power plants are about 60% efficient. You can do better if you do “combined heat and power”: burn the gas to make electricity, then use the leftover heat to heat (and cool) things that need heating (and cooling). That gets you 70 to 90% overall efficiency, with low to mid 30% electrical efficiency in the mix.
toujoursdan
@Chris:
Thanks for the correction. I knew that rare earth elements were not necessarily uncommon but you are correct about how the different ones are used. I appreciate that.
I don’t think it changes my overall point by much though. All we are doing is switching from one finite substance to another (and, even then, it will still take fossil fuels to mine and transport the stuff, and the cost will continue to fluctuate based on the cost of oil). Recycling may extend the life of these materials, but recycling doesn’t give anything a 100% return.
The best solution for a truly sustainable and far more shockproof economy (as well as reducing some of our social ills) is to create incentives to make car use less necessary – i.e. higher density cities, walkable neighbourhoods, streets set aside for bikes and walking and an efficient public transport system.
Mike
I think people are missing the point on the Volt.
It offers the benefits of an electric for most needs, with the range and refuel-ability of an internal combustion engine.
The Leaf works fine if you stay within a 50 mile radius of your home, but if you have to take a longer trip, suddenly battery depletion and recharge become a problem.
The Volt will go on its plug in charge for 40 miles.. then roll over to a backup generator run on gasoline power. That means that your range is significantly extended to that of a standard internal combustion engine, and you can also make use of the extensive refueling network for gasoline engines.
Its trying to get the best of both worlds, which may be necessary for widespread adoption of electric vehicles.
Fred Fnord
It really is amazing how many people here think they’re experts on electric cars, and how few of them are right. Seriously, of the ‘informative’ posts in this thread (and no, I’m not counting any of the opinions, most of which are actually perfectly reasonable), the majority of them would not have posted if the person posting had done literally five minutes of quick research first.
(Me? I spent a week or so researching whether I could turn my car into an electric vehicle last year. Result: it’s possible, but it would then be almost impossible to register in California, and would be a bit out of my current price range. That hardly makes me an expert, but it does enable me to catch the ‘down is up’ kinds of mistakes.)
-fred
Gina
@Pigs & Spiders: Nice! I read recently that the Toyota RAV-4 all electric will be making a comeback, with a Tesla powered engine. Of course, we’ll have to wait til 2012 or so to see if it lives up to the hype, but at least the original RAV4 EV’s from the late ’90s worked very well. Hopefully, they won’t fuck this up.
Davis X. Machina
With an ICE + electric traction car coming out, it appears that there’s a simultaneous argument for getting freight off roads and behind locomotives and what are effectively locomotives on roads and in front of people.
Funny old world.
Chris
@Egilsson: (re those with short enough commutes to run off electricity most of the time)
I wondered about this myself since I have been lusting after the Fisker Karma. I’m not sure anyone has a final version of the software yet (for either vehicle), but as I understand it, the software will track “when was the combustion engine last fired up” and will use it often enough to keep the gasoline in the tank from forming harmful varnishes.
You could also use a gasoline stabilizer additive (as people do in lawnmowers and snowblowers and such).
(With the Karma, all you have to do is drive it in “sport” mode now and then. The Karma’s 300 kW (400 horsepower) electric motors get only a little over 150 kW from each of the batteries and generator, so to make the Karma use all 300 kW, you have to pull power from both at the same time. The Volt’s electric motors are much lower power, so there is no need for this on the Volt.)
Cackalacka
Fred Fnord,
I assembled an EV (to be clear, an SLA-enhanced hub motor bicycle) two years ago. Am I qualified to contribute to this topic?
Perhaps you can clarify what information you find is incorrect. Most of the items here are pretty spot-on.
Davis X. Machina
What part of a major auto company’s product line is completely indefensible if we were all the hominēs oeconomicī of the micro textbooks and went through showrooms not kicking tires but thinking about marginal utility?
Half? Two-thirds?
Chris
My general overall reply: I think GM have indeed set the price just a little too high (maybe 2 to 3 thousand). As several people noted, it is a sort of loss-leader experiment in building a plug-in hybrid, and as such (and with the intentionally limited production run) they could take a bigger loss. On the other hand, the limited production run will limit the supply so it’s certainly possible for GM to set the price on the high side.
If you look at what you get, though, the Volt is pretty much a “loaded vehicle”. Assuming you can subtract the $7500 tax credit (and don’t mind paying extra state sales tax etc)., you’re looking at $33.5k for an almost-fully-loaded sedan that, by all accounts, is quite nice to drive. Its main limitation is four (instead of 5) seats. Depending on your electric rates, charging up for your next 40 miles will be pretty cheap: 8.8 kWh will cost you anywhere from about 70 cents (in states where you can’t buy the Volt anyway) to about $1.50 (Washington DC area, where I hear high end electric rates are about 17 cents per kWh, which is similar to what I paid in California in the early 2000s). But it will take you a long time to make up the difference in cost compared with gasoline, even if gas goes back to $4/gal.
I can’t buy the Volt here: I’m not in one of the states in which it will be sold. I can buy the Fisker Karma, which is a much nicer (more luxurious) vehicle and looks way better, but costs way more. Still … tempted. :-)
Chris
@Steaming Pile:
Indeed, even if these rough estimates are off (and they no doubt are, but, in which direction? :-) ), there are at least two freakin’ huge advantages to powering cars with electricity, even coal-fired electricity, vs powering them with gasoline:
1. Gasoline mostly comes from other countries, with huge fractions of it coming from places that require lots of military intervention (direct or indirect). Depending on whose estimates you use, the “oil subsidy” might easily be $5 per gallon of gasoline. So if you pay $2.399 at the pump, you’re actually paying $7.399 … it’s just that a big chunk of it is in taxes. (At least the income tax part is progressive though.)
2. Burning fuels produces pollution. This is unavoidable. But, which is better: dumping your sewage into the air you are breathing right now, undiluted; or, dumping your sewage into the air many miles away, so that it reaches you diluted? The smog-forming haze that comes out of the tailpipe goes right into your (and my) lungs. The stuff coming out of the electric plant’s smokestack is not good either, but in general, it is a lot further away from all of our lungs. There’s a reason we have sewage and septic systems, and we should apply it to our air as well as our water.
(There’s another bonus here: it’s far cheaper to clean up the pollution at the power plant than it is to clean it up from tens of thousands of car tailpipes. This is a bit further down the line, as it will likely take decades to move enough commuters to electric cars to make any real difference in pollution-distribution here.)
Chris
@Davis X. Machina:
I’d guess under 10%. :-)
trollhattan
Were I still car-commuting the Volt would be ideal, as my round trip was only 20 miles or less my last three jobs and even weekend errands seldom covered more than 40-50/day. I’d probably buy gas half a dozen times/year.
Here’s hoping the concept succeeds and they end up selling sufficiently well that GM ends up making money off them. We need to see this succeed, for a hundred good reasons.
trollhattan
p.s. FYWP
Cackalacka
This doesn’t bode well for Chevy, either.
Lori Flynn
Overpriced electric sedan-style cars are a bad solution to our country’s problem. Instead, increased availability of mass transit and a safe bicycling infrastructure are what we need. Increased availability of mass transit means more access (including the last-mile, and via bicycle) as well as 24-hour schedules that make them practical to give up a car to switch to public transit.
bago
@Lori Flynn: Seattle and San Francisco have routes designed to mitigate hills. 3 Bike carriers every run.
jehrler
Not that anyone will ever read this, but for those people who live where it can get cold in the winter (ahem, Minnesota for me), the Leaf (and any other pure electric car) is just not going to be viable due to the loss of battery power plus the need to run a heater.
The Volt solves that by allowing a gas engine to fire up (providing heat and juice) on those cold days.
P.S. At least here in Minnesota, there is a *lot* of wind power so I would love to go “sailing” down the road in a Volt.
Cackalacka
Hey Jehrler,
If it makes you feel any better, I read it. And point taken… I’d be curious as the LiPo-based ICE replacements become more mainstream, if drivetrain/battery-heating technology becomes more robust as well.
From what I understand, our neighbors to the north (fairly close to you) oftentimes have outlets on parking lots/rest areas for the express purpose of warming diesels with electric blanket doodads (again I live in the dirty south so take it with a grain of salt)… Perhaps those will move south as more folks in the upper regions use thermally-challenged vehicles.