An acquaintance test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors and he writes,
"For four days in a row, the fully charged battery lasted only 25 miles before
the Volt
switched to the reserve gasoline engine." Eric calculated the car got 30 mpg including the 25 miles it ran on the battery.
So, the range including the 9-gallon gas tank and the 16 kwh battery is approximately
270 miles. It will take you 4.5 hours to drive 270 miles at 60 mph.
Then add 10 hours to charge the battery and you have
a total trip time
of 14.5 hours.
In a typical road trip your average speed (including
charging time) would be 20 mph. According to General Motors,
the Volt battery
holds 16 kwh of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained
battery. The
cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never
mentioned, so I looked up what I pay for
electricity. I pay
approximately (it varies with amount used and the
seasons) $1.16 per
kwh. 16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the
battery. $18.56
per charge divided by 25 miles = $0.74 per mile to
operate the Volt
using the battery.
Compare this to a similar size car with a gasoline engine that gets only
32 mpg.
$3.19 per gallon divided by 32 mpg = $0.10 per mile.
The gasoline
powered car costs about $20,000 while the Volt costs
$46,000-plus. So
the American Government wants loyal Americans not to
do the math, but
simply pay three times as much for a car, that costs
more than seven
times as much to run, and takes three times longer
to drive across the country.
The moral of the story is that we MUST weigh choices carefully and not let the enviros
rush us into costly mistakes.
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