EoW July 2012

Transatlantic Cable

Even considering the tax writeo s (call them government subsidies) available to buyers of the Volt, Mr Meier points out that an Eco owner would still be money ahead for years. Nor do the Volt’s lower fuel costs wipe out the advantage, since the Eco is no gas hog, either. It delivers 28 miles per gallon in city driving; 42 mpg motorway; 33 mpg combined. Mr Meier said that this is not to knock the high-tech, innovative Volt – just to question the economics of ownership. He wrote that, unless the price premium for plug-in electric vehicles – notably the $10,000-$15,000 current cost of a battery with kilowatt-hours enough for an electric car – is narrowed, EVs will “remain halo cars for car makers and ecologically virtuous, well-to-do buyers.” Doing the arithmetic for such prospective buyers, General Motors construed these equivalents for the 40 million electric miles clocked by the Volt owners: • 16,373 cross-country trips (2,443 miles New York-Los Angeles) • 1,606 trips around the world (24,901 miles each) • 167 moon trips (238,657 miles each) As to fuel savings, 2,130,000 gallons of gasoline not burnt equal: • 50,714 barrels (42 gallons per barrel) Early respondents to the online version of “GM Claims” demonstrated the highly charged tone of discussions of US automotive ecology: • Love my Volt and happy to be saving oil • Love my Volt too. It might use fossil fuel for the electricity but at least it’s American fossil fuel and much cleaner than gasoline You may love your Volt because you like being green and American, not because you are saving money. Maybe some things are more important than money. Like being green and American? Elsewhere in automotive . . . † Ford Motor has chosen China for its largest factory expansion programme in a half-century. The news, on the eve of the Beijing auto show in April, of a $760 million Ford assembly plant to be built in Hangzhou was the second such announcement within two weeks. • 387 semi-truck tankers (5,500 gallons each) • One supertanker of fuel (2 million gallons)

Automotive

At twice the price, is an alternative-fuel General Motors car that much more virtuous than an ‘ordinary’ GM model?

In the new metric of electric miles, the 2011 Chevrolet Volt has provided its maker with some striking statistics. According to General Motors records, Chevy Volt owners have driven their $40,000 cars the equivalent of many trips around the world and not a few to the moon and back. Collectively, the company says, they have saved a supertanker’s worth of gas since the extended-range plug-in went on sale in the US in December 2010. On the basis of the Volt owners having driven more than 40 million miles on electricity alone, they would have saved about 2.1 million gallons of fuel. Automotive reporter Fred Meier of USA Today accepts that “GM should know,” since it monitors the operation of all Volts through its GPS (global positioning system) feature OnStar. The Volt can go about 35 miles on the plug-in charge before the gas engine kicks in. (“GM Says Volt Owners Saved Supertanker of Gas,” 17 th May). The OnStar monitoring indicates that Volts are being driven about 60 per cent of their miles electric-only, so they have also gone about 27 million miles on gasoline. Volt marketing director Cristi Landy interpets that this way: “With each click of the odometer, Chevrolet Volt owners are measuring their contribution to reducing America’s dependence on foreign oil and to preserving the environment.” Ms Landy added that the Volt people saved about $8 million at the pump, minus the cost of the electricity. Therein, to Mr Meier, lies both the virtues of the car and the rub, “at least for folks of average means.” His reasoning: The $8 million will o set the (approximate) $535 million the owners spent to buy 13,374 Volts from roll-out through April of this year, plus the cost of chargers in their garages. But those owners would have spent half that amount if they had bought the Chevy Cruze Eco, a comparable car with a sticker price of around $20,000.

Image: www.bigstockphoto.com Photographer Zsolt Ercsel

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EuroWire – July 2012