Quote of the Day: Steal a Little Thunder Edition

by Edward Niedermeyer

Published: August 11th, 2009

quote of the day steal a little thunder edition

“Nissan Leaf = 367 mpg, no tailpipe, and no gas required. Oh yeah, and it’ll be affordable too!”

NissanEV shoots back at the latest Volt hype on Twitter, using the same DOE estimate as GM. That hit from the PR crackpipe sure didn’t last long.

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KixStart on Aug 12, 2009

GM's PR victory is likely to be Pyrrhic. When GM announced the Volt, Toyota was probably happy to let GM have it's day "leapfrogging" Toyota with a car that was ridiculously uneconomic. However, the unexpected complete distortion of the EPA process has likely awakened a sense of alarm at Toyota HQ and the prospect of a Volt with an EPA rating (however meaningless) of 4X the Prius is something that they probably won't tolerate. I predict they will announce something. This was achieved locally, using a Prius, by a group of students with a small grant: 170MPG Prius That's just the talented kids. Imagine what Toyota's best people can do when they are really motivated to kick GM's butt on the 230mpg number. GM is going to rue the day they cooked the test.

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KixStart on Aug 12, 2009

folkdancer, You are exactly right. There is plenty of power off-peak and the incremental CO2 footprint of charging at leat the first big wave of xEVs is likely to be relatively small.

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Dr. Remulac on Aug 12, 2009
@folkdancer and kixstart folkdancer's simplification is a little too oversimplified. There are spinning reserves that consume fuel and can be ramped up quick enough to meet fluctuating demand, however, they consume fuel while "idle" but they are not fully loaded and don't consume 100% of their rated input while spinning idle. It is true that flattening the daily electric demand curve is desirable. But merlynbrit has a point, 57% of the countries power generation is coal driven. These cars consume electricity from the grid, the grid is on average 30% efficient. Therefore about 3 times more energy was consumed at the plant for what goes into these cars batteries. It is reasonable to assume a good portion of the electric vehicles consumption will result in increased consumption and pollution at coal plants. It may not be a one to one relationship for reasons stated above, but increased load at night is increased fuel consumption by the generators. Liking these technologies (as I do) should not give us a license to skew all facts in their favor.

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Buick61 on Aug 12, 2009

I don't see how this steals any thunder. The ratings are ridiculously high for both, and the Leaf's takes nothing away from the Volt's. The Volt takes a hit because it offers an extended range, which I think is a well-meaning and useful sacrifice. wsn : August 11th, 2009 at 3:15 pm # gordonjs : August 11th, 2009 at 3:11 pm I can use a Volt as my primary and only vehicle, I couldn’t use the Leaf as that, and neither could a lot of people. ———————————————– “A lot of people” cannot afford a $40k car. Period. "A lot of people" cannot afford the $25,000 - $33,000 estimated cost of the vaporware Leaf, either.

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