ClimbnSink
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Greg
So vw couldn't get us tax subsidies as chevy did? Every volt you see is 8 grand out of your pocket. Wonder how many atc hours that could buy...
Electric car range and generator
- Thread starter Ken Ibold
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So vw couldn't get us tax subsidies as chevy did? Every volt you see is 8 grand out of your pocket. Wonder how many atc hours that could buy...
Ken Ibold
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Ken Ibold
That logic would apply only in the absence of deficit spending.
Dav8or
Final Approach
Wow. I'm really impressed. This thread got really far before it eventually turned to politics. I avoided the thread because I was sure that by page one, it would already about government hand outs, Obama, progressive agendas, etc... but it seems that people actually want to know about electric power cars.
Here is a great source of information and news about EVs.
To the OP- GM engineers started the Volt out to be pretty much as you have described, but after years of testing they came to the conclusion that having the engine mechanically help out was the most efficient and better matched drivers expectations.
Lots of info about the Volt here with plenty of FAQs.
GM really did great job with the Volt and it does deliver. It's the #1 electric powered car in the world. I just wish they could have stuck with their original hot rod concept car look. Instead it ended up looking like a Prius.
Oriiginal style Volt-
Silvaire
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If you want to talk about tax subsidies there are way, way bigger fish to fry. I see an unfounded hatred from people of a certain political persuasion towards the Chevy volt or anything else that doesn't involve digging something out of the ground and burning it. The bottom line is that these new technologies have to be developed, at whatever cost, because the status quo is simply not sustainable in the long term.
When the airplane was first invented it was very difficult for anyone to envision it ever having any practical purpose. In the end it was war and the infusion of public "subsidies" that advanced the development of aviation to the point it is today.
Wow. I'm really impressed. This thread got really far before it eventually turned to politics. I avoided the thread because I was sure that by page one, it would already about government hand outs, Obama, progressive agendas, etc... but it seems that people actually want to know about electric power cars.
Here is a great source of information and news about EVs.
To the OP- GM engineers started the Volt out to be pretty much as you have described, but after years of testing they came to the conclusion that having the engine mechanically help out was the most efficient and better matched drivers expectations.
Lots of info about the Volt here with plenty of FAQs.
GM really did great job with the Volt and it does deliver. It's the #1 electric powered car in the world. I just wish they could have stuck with their original hot rod concept car look. Instead it ended up looking like a Prius.
Oriiginal style Volt-
I need to go test drive one. I drove the original Tesla a while back, it rocked. The Mitsubishi my buddy bought really impressed me, hope the battery issue isn't too wide spread. It'll only do 80 (managed 83 on a downhill on ramp getting on the highway, but it governs itself down) but really that's faster than you can typically go commuting anyway. My buddy was afraid to take it that fast, but it handled and drove just fine. I had one of the old CitiCars way back in the 8th grade. I was talking with a friend trying to figure out how to best do regenerative braking considering all the hills we had in St. Louis. He went on to become one of the project engineers on the EV-1, guess what it featured?
Electric cars are the future especially with the price of gas as it is.
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe
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Light and Sporty Guy
5 minute summary.
gismo
Touchdown! Greaser!
OK, with the current fiscal irresponsibility in Washington I guess it would be more accurate to say that for every Volt I see our kids are out $8000.
Dav8or
Final Approach
And I hope and pray for an electric airplane and boat someday as well. I really hope to see electric motors running everything one day. We just need a better electricity storage/generation solution...
Oh please, oh please, oh please...
The carbon nanotube H2 storage system is appearing quite interesting.
Name one technological development in the last 50 years that didn't see millions if not billions in government funding? This is what government is SUPPOSED to do. Technology transitions are always as expensive in the beginning as they are lame. Government programs make it economically possible for the tech to gain a public foothold and that is when the tinkering guys without huge budgets can get hold of it which is when the improvements are made which make the technologies more viable both in practical and economic terms. If it wasn't for huge government funding, we would not have the technology to have this conversation.
I don't want to send this thread to SZ, but I'd rather subsidize the Volt than send troops, fuel and money to Afghanistan. The whole Volt subsidy program costs less than one freaking day's involvement there.
denverpilot
Tied Down
Really? There were no major inventions funded by private money long ago, before people started believing this?
No fortunes made and lost betting on the wrong and right things?
No startups struggling to make ends meet, finding the absolute most efficient way to produce a new widget because they couldn't afford any other way and didn't have the debt of the entire nation to back them.
News to me.
Name me a technology developed in the last 50years that, was the question you just answered with a question, yet you didn't actually answer.
Doggtyred
En-Route
30 mpg in a gas jetta (which is generous, to say the least, driving at 55) with unleaded at 3.50 comes out to 11.6 cents per mile.
40 mpg in a diesel jetta (which is what I get driving 70) with diesel at $4.00 comes out to 10 cents per mile.
If I drive 60 mph my MPG comes out in the 50's and my fuel cost drops to the 8-9 cents per mile range.
I would say the advantage is still there. But thats just my opinion based on my experience with only three late model diesel jetta's. I traded in a Ford F350 4x4 power stroke for the Jetta, was upside down, and still saved $200/month in (fuel costs) for the driven miles after accounting for the extra money I paid to get out of the truck.
The 120 eMPG must be the equivalent of how much gas it would take to generate the power used to propel the car, if it had a gas motor. Much of the economy occurs because of the generation process at the power plant and its economy of scale.
Silvaire
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To keep the topic on aviation, the modern commercial airliner would not exist today if development had always relied on "free market" capitalism driven purely on a motive of privatized profit. Government, whether you like it or not, is a collective pooling of social resources. The R&D that was done by the government with the peoples money, largely during WWI and WWII was the major source of technological advance. The "free market" benefited from that research which is something they wouldn't have dropped their own dime on if left alone.
If you are losing sleep at night because of government investments into something like the Chevy Volt, if you really believe your kid is getting the shaft because of that then you seriously need to watch less Fox News.
Just a suggestion.....
If you are losing sleep at night because of government investments into something like the Chevy Volt, if you really believe your kid is getting the shaft because of that then you seriously need to watch less Fox News.
Just a suggestion.....
MAKG1
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And example #1 for aviation would be the NACA airfoils.
There are a whole bunch more, but that series of government studies did more to get aviation out of the crazy rich guy tinkering phase than anything else, including the Wrights' work.
More recent government work includes supercritical wings, weather radar, "NextGen" air traffic management, studies of supercell and microburst dynamics and so on. It just doesn't fit neatly into the American up-by-the-bootstraps mythology.
There are a whole bunch more, but that series of government studies did more to get aviation out of the crazy rich guy tinkering phase than anything else, including the Wrights' work.
More recent government work includes supercritical wings, weather radar, "NextGen" air traffic management, studies of supercell and microburst dynamics and so on. It just doesn't fit neatly into the American up-by-the-bootstraps mythology.
Dav8or
Final Approach
...or how about the internet we're typing through, or the GPS systems we navigate with? The very first customer for the airplane was the US government. Were Wrights subsidized and was that a bad thing?
If you're only paying a fifty cent premium for Diesel, you're lucky, around here it's $1.10.
gismo
Touchdown! Greaser!
The Internet. I think Al Gore invented and developed it with his own money.
More seriously, LCD displays, WiFi, and Cellphones, just to name a few. All came to us courtesy of corporations investing their own money although there may have been some tax incentives involved.
denverpilot
Tied Down
As in "discovered" in the last 50 years, or the continual new ways to integrate and utilize old technologies?
Example: Nothing in the general device called a "cell phone" was truly new tech in the AMPS days. Analog radios, lots of towers for coverage, a way to transfer a call in real-time through a back-haul analog microwave or T1 network between tower sites, etc.
What was needed was capital to build it. And lots of it.
Wayne knows some folks that did pretty well fronting that stuff, I believe.
So when you say "new technology in the last 50 years", what do you mean? Innovation is constantly happening, in small pieces. Someone integrates them into useful things. Then if it catches the eyes of investors, it gets built and hopefully sold.
There's nothing inherent to that process that requires government to do it.
Silvaire
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"Government" is nothing more than the collectivization of resources. It's plain old "socialism" whether you want to admit it or not. It doesn't suddenly become "bad" just because the guy you didn't vote for got elected.
Government may not be required in the process but to say that it has no effect on the outcome is nonsense. Of course it does.
Dr. O
Pattern Altitude
Our airport manage bought a Chevy Volt. It is 24 miles from his house to work. When he gets there he plugs it into a 220 volt outlet. It is fully charged when he goes home at night. Has had it two months and has yet to buy any gas for it. Before the volt his pickup was averaging 3.5 gallons of gas a day - mix of city and suburban driving.
For some folks a Volt, et. al. is the better mousetrap.
For some folks a Volt, et. al. is the better mousetrap.
wickedsprint
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How much more does a TDI Jetta cost over a like equipped gasoline model?
It might be costing you $5 grand to save a few cents a mile.
Alexb2000
En-Route
One thing I see changing as electric/hybrid cars become more popular is more taxation to offset the reduction in road taxes. With the all in road tax at ~.40-.70 a gallon the effect will be dramatic once these vehicles become more prevalent. Take an example of someone that replaces a truck they drove 15K per year with a volt and use basically no gas the government loses somewhere around $700 per year in road tax.
wickedsprint
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They were talking about that on the radio here recently. I think one of the proposals is more reliance on electronic tolls.