FIRST GOOD ESTIMATES OF RUNNING A CHEVY VOLT ----

[Vegas]

Cost to operate a Chevy Volt


Eric Bolling (Fox Business Channel's Follow the Money) test drove the Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors.

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 1/2 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 s peed (including charging time) would be 20 mph.


According to General Motors, the Volt battery hold 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 only that gets 32 mpg.


$3.19 per gallon divided by 32 mpg = $0.10 per mile.


The gasoline powered car cost about $15,000 while the Volt costs $46,000.


So you pay 3 times as much for a car that costs more than 7 times as much to run and takes 3 times as long to drive across country.

[stealer]

http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/chevyvolt.asp

Its range is still crap.

[owner123]

Also, consumer reports tried testing out the car. It failed on them before they were even able to test it. How reliable.

[stealer]

The whole electric car stuff just depresses me.

probably a side-effect of having watched the documentary Who killed the electric car?

[Dekar]

Over one dollar per 1kWh? Surely not! In Germany it's around 22 cents and in Norway around 6 cents. I think Japan has one of the worlds highest electricity costs around 28 cents per kWh. So unless you're in Antarctica this can't be right. Besides that I think that cars burning natural gas are pretty interesting, it is extremely cheap and they aren't as expensive as electric cars.

Edit:
It is as low as 7 cents per kWh in Montreal, thus a charge costs $1.12!
16 kwh x $0.07 per kwh = $1.12 (If the other values are correct)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricit ... nada#Rates

[Unscrewed_Magic]

That's nothing, My delorean gets 1.21 gigawatts on a single lightning strike and holds it for a range of 80 years.