Going green?
Tell us please, where does that free electricity come from when those batteries have to be recharged at night? Zero-emissions is about as valid as free-money. To make any electricity at any power plant requires the conversion of something to make that energy.
How many times have we been lied to about the "car of the future"?
BTW, since you can’t mfg. a toothpick without creating pollution, how does one create a ZERO-emission car…and does it run on AIR…the Earth’s magnetic-field? Maybe faith? Those electron’s don’t come for free, and someone has to make a buck off that electricity for all those electric cars.
Zero-emission is about as valid as free-money.
The 230 mpg estimate comes from an EPA draft method which rates vehicles in kilowatt hours per 100 miles, then converts that measurement to miles per gallon. Effectively, the testing procedure doesn’t give an mpg rating. It merely shows that a vehicle will use energy that equates to a certain mpg rating.
http://autos.yahoo.com/articles/autos_content_landing_pages/1042/questions-surround-chevy-volt-fuel-economy-claim/
It’s not a zero emissions car. But it is low emissions than a gas car.
http://www.ecohuddle.com/wiki/introduction-to-electric-cars-and-electric-scooters
exactly, improvement, maybe
It’s utter bullshit.
Fossil fuel burned in power plants to charge the car are not counted.
By this reckoning pure electric vehicles get infinite mpg.
My preliminary estimates put the Volt around 39 mpg equivalent. ($ per mile)
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090812162305AApjuAX
This isn’t bad, it’s just not groundbreaking.
The Volt is an EV1 with a generator slapped on.
Nothing like the genuine engineering of the Japanese hybrids, that actually squeeze extra efficiency from their IC engines.
Feel free to weigh in your opinion here.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090812134154AAnuv8X&r=w
You’ll be charging at night, right? Then you need to look at which particular power plants generate power at night.
Power demand goes up and down day to night – WAY up and down! Like 3:1. As such, they run different plants at different times. They run the natural-gas "peakers" only at peak load and even then sometimes only in summer when air conditioning is humming. Whereas once you’ve spent the gigabucks on a nuke, you darn well run that 24×7!
The wind blows when it blows, so wind is also part of base load. Obviously solar doesn’t work at night, so that makes it necessarily a "peaker". Surprisingly, big hydro is a "peaker". Not least because at night, they can use surplus base load to "back-pump" water from the bottom to the top of the dam. Geothermal is base load 24×7.
So what charges your car at night? Base load. Nuke, wind and geothermal, with maybe some coal if your state burns a lot of that. Here, our base load is pretty much all renewable, except for the nukes.
Will this blow out the power grid? Two separate government studies both say "No problem." That’s because the power grid is built to support absolute peak load, and there’s plenty of spare capacity at night.