Saturday, October 16, 2010

Chevy Volt: Mileage (Way) Less Than Advertised?

Ah, those wacky liberals - they thought the only reason private industry hadn't yet developed a 60 MPG electric car was simply because nobody ordered them to. So Baracky did, and gave GM billions of dollar of our money to do it with, and thus was born the Chevy Volt (not unlike the birthing of an Orc).

The "car of the future"? America's "Volks" wagon? Hardly. Turns out that when test-driven, the Volt's MPG is only slightly better than a 2WD Jeep:

Jalopnik:

In August of last year, we heard GM's then-CEO Fritz Henderson claimed with all the marketing might it could muster at a Detroit-area press event, that the Chevy Volt would get 230 MPG in city driving conditions. Now, as the Volt's being tested by the auto trade press, we're seeing some surprisingly low fuel economy figures amid the expected lavish praise buff books are heaping upon the Volt.

Let's see what they've found out. Popular Mechanics saw just 37.5 MPG in city driving. Car and Driver apparently didn't choose to use their wheel time for any city driving — but found with all-electric driving

"...getting on the nearest highway and commuting with the 80-mph flow of traffic-basically the worst-case scenario-yielded 26 miles; a fairly spirited back-road loop netted 31; and a carefully modulated cruise below 60 mph pushed the figure into the upper 30s."

Motor Trend, like the rest of the trade press other than Popular Mechanics, didn't appear to do any testing in city conditions, but did find that

"Without any plugging in, [a weeklong trip to Grandma's house] should return fuel economy in the high 30s to low 40s."

They also parrot GM's new line of 25-50 miles of all-electric — a far cry from the 230 MPG they originally marketed — that the "Volt provides 25-50 miles of real-world electric operation no matter how hard you flog it."

Add "building a beter car" to all the other things Barack Obama swore only he could do, and failed at miserably.

Pick up your tools and go home, son. But there's a consolation prize for you, Baracky - you will be etched in history as the face of the 21st century's version of the Edsel...

Via I Hate The Media!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice try, but like all good right-wingers you skew the results, manipulate the text and pretend you know what you're talking about.

Motor Trend did some very aggressive testing with the Volt, but you wouldn't know that because you probably didn't even read the entire article.

In these real world tests the Volt got a combined 126.7 MPG.

Again 126.7 MPG is what you could expect driving the Volt like you would any other vehicle, with the radio on, the AC blasting and going 70-80 mph on the freeways.

The longer the trip is with the Volt, the less MPG you'll get but you'll still achieve outstanding fuel economy.

But you still don't get the whole point of the Volt. The purpose of the Volt is to not use any fuel at all while for your daily driving while not being constrained by the range of the battery. People are routinely achieving 50 miles of pure electric range and I expect to see even more impressive combined fuel economy from hypermillers.

But go ahead and keep listening to the filth of Rush and Glen Beck, it'll keep you ignorant which is where I'm sure you want to be.

The JerseyNut said...

Oh yeah? Show your work. The above results are from actual road tests by Motor Trend and Popular Mechanics. Where are you getting your pie-in-the-sky numbers from? And no, wishful thinking doesn't count as fact-based data...

"But go right ahead and keep listening to the filth of Barack Obama and MSNBC, it'll keep you ignorant which is where I'm sure you want to be."