People don’t believe me when I tell them I can get 25 mpg out of my ’92 Jeep Wrangler. Sure, it was all highway mileage, and the speedometer never crept over 55 mph… but I still did it. It just goes to show that often, the most important factor when it comes to gas mileage isn’t the car, but the driver. A light foot means more mileage, while a heavy foot means, well… less mileage.
GM seems to have reached this understanding as well. On Thursday, they revised the Chevy Volt’s expected all-electric range from 40 miles, to between 25 and 50 miles. Sounds better to me, though some people might accuse GM of the ol’ “bait and switch.”
This new information was revealed in filings with the Securities Exchange Commission regarding GM’s upcoming IPO. The reasons for the 40 mile range are many. GM claims that 80% of commuters drive 40 miles or less to work every day. Thus, GM could market the Volt as a commuter car that takes away the need for frequent fill-ups. Just like any car though (electric or gas-powered included), the range of the Volt can be dramatically affected not just by how you drive, but where you drive and the weather as well. Instead of sticking with the absolute 40-mile range, GM has revised the Volt’s electric range to between 25 and 50 miles.
Personally, I have no problem with this. It is just like fuel economy ratings. Just because the Prius is rated at 50 mpg, doesn’t mean you will always get 50 mpg. The same can be said about the Volt. If its the middle of winter and you’re driving up the Rocky Mountains as fast as you possibly can, don’t expect to go 50 miles without the range-extender kicking in. This revision will also cover GM’s rear end when the inevitable angry customer comes back claiming they only got 39 miles of all-electric range, rather than 40.
Does this in any way change your opinion of the Volt?
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Thank you for a great article highlighting the importance and effectiveness of Eco-driving! Ford did a study and found people improved their efficiency by an average of 25%! That’s almost as good as an Eco-boost engine, but imagine eco-boost plus eco-driving…
Sounds like they may have either tweaked their controller software a bit, and/or they have enough real world testing to know the actual ranges? Another possibility is they have improved the regen setup?
And yes, ecodriving helps any car, no matter the drive system.
Sincerely, Neil
So they worked out they have to account for heavy footed drivers.
This does not surprise me, and is welcome candour. All vehicles built to high efficiency, lean-weight standards, it seems unavoidable to me, will be more sensitive to variances in energy burdens imposed by heating, air conditioning and ascending steep grades because simple flat-road acceleration energy, minus energy recoved during braking, becomes a smaller part of the total energy budget the powerplant serves. The other work it has to do, formerly a negligible slice of the pie, matters now.
I’d expect California springtime beach MPG to be better than New Mexico summer MPG to be better than Alaskan winter MPG.
Sure how you drive matters a lot with 100 to 300 HP ICE powerplants, but with 2-digit HP powerplants, where you live and what today’s weather will be, I expect, will matter in ways far more significant.
When running on electricity you’ll get a huge range because everything we take for granted in a gas car (e.g., headlights, AC, etc.) has a greater impact (percentage-wise) on power. A gas engine has power to spare and isn’t affected as much (have you ever seen a regular gas engine with a highway MPG rating double what the city rating is?). A Prius is much closer to a gas car and thus doesn’t have this huge swing in range or consumption. A Prius spends most / almost all of its life running on the gas engine whereas the Volt theoreticlaly spends most / almost all of its life on its pure-electric mode. It’s an absurd and invalid comparison.