How GM "Lied" About The Electric Car
The Chevy Volt has been hailed as General Motors' electric savior. Now, as GM officially rolls out the Volt this week for public consumption, we're told the much-touted fuel economy was misstated and GM "lied" about the car being all-electric.
In the past, and based on GM's claims, we've gone so far as to call the Volt GM's "Jesus Car." And why wouldn't we call it that? We were told the Volt would achieve 230 MPG fuel economy and would always use the electric drivetrain to motivate the wheels — only using the onboard gasoline engine as a "range extender" for charging the batteries. It now turns out that not only were those fuel economy claims misleading, but the gasoline engine is actually used to motivate the wheels — making the Volt potentially nothing more than a very advanced hybrid car and pushing some automotive journalists like Scott Oldham at Edmunds.com to claim "GM lied to the world" about it.
First of all, let's talk about fuel economy. 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."
But while even providing only 10% of the fuel economy initially touted, these more real-world figures are merely an exaggeration. The bigger problem is that, as Mr. Oldham now claims, is that GM lied to them about the powertrain.
Since the Volt was first unveiled as a concept car, GM engineers, public relations staff and executives have all claimed adamantly that the internal combustion engine did not motivate the wheels. If that were the case then the Volt would be nothing more than a very advanced hybrid. Even as late into the development cycle as this June, we were told the only drivetrain that motivated the wheels was the electric one. The auto trade press swallowed the line, hook and the sinker. Sam Abulesmaid at Autoblog even ran a piece headlined "Repeat after us: The Chevrolet Volt's gas engine does not drive the wheels!." And why shouldn't he have lapped it up when in online chats, the Volt's chief engineer Andrew Farah was saying:
"you're correct that the electric motor is always powering the wheels, whereas in a typical hybrid vehicle the electric motor and the gasoline engine can power the wheels. The greatest advantage of an extended-range electric vehicle like the Volt is the increased all electric range and the significant total vehicle range combined."
This meant that the gasoline engine was nothing more than a "range extender" designed to charge the batteries which would allow the electric drivetrain to continue to move the car — and allow GM to claim that the Volt was something different, something new and something worthy of taxpayer dollars.
It turns out that's not correct. We're now told by Volt's engineering team that when the Volt's lithium-ion battery pack runs down and at speeds near or above 70 mph the Volt's gasoline engine will directly drive the front wheels along with the electric motors.
That means that for all of the all-electric or extended-range electric vehicle (EREV) hype GM's imbuing in the Volt, it's really nothing more than a plug-in hybrid vehicle. A very advanced plug-in hybrid, but a hybrid nonetheless.
That's enough for Mr. Oldham to claim GM lied to the world and to then go ahead and endorse (via a retweet on Twitter) the all-electric Nissan Leaf (full disclosure — Mr. Oldham's brother works for Nissan) as the only choice for an electric car.
It's enough for us to wonder why GM pushed the 230 MPG number in the first place and why they didn't just come clean on the powertrain this summer when asked a straightforward question.
Send an email to Ray Wert, the author of this post, at ray@jalopnik.com.
Your version of Internet Explorer is not supported. Please upgrade to the most recent version in order to view comments."when the Volt's lithium-ion battery pack runs down and at speeds near or above 70 mph"Okay, so it only uses the gas engine to power the wheels when the battery's dead AND at highway speeds. And you have the audacity to say that this is flawed?!
The fact of the design is that the car is designed as an extended-range plug-in electric vehicle. The range is extended by a gasoline engine. When the battery is depleted, rather than wasting the kinetic energy of the engine's moving parts that is a byproduct of electricity generation, the Volt will use that motion to power the car. It's a concept called efficient use of energy.
Which is kind of the point.
Wert, you've missed the point. Reply
IMHO having the engine directly-power the wheels when the batteries are depleted is a good thing. With the original Volt there was only 100 hp driving the front wheels in hybrid mode vs 140 in all-electric, with this design you get all 140 all the time. Seems like a winner to me.That said I'd rather they had simply brought back the EV-1 all-electric car as a hybrid just doesn't interest me as much.
Guess we'll have to wait for the Tesla Model S to get our "Jesus Car" as you put it. Reply
Whatever the reason, this does not bode well for GM's future. All the money that was wasted on this silly car could have been better spent on a good diesel small car with comparable economy numbers and a substantially lower cost. After all, if you want more people to drive fuel efficient cars, more people need to be able to afford them in the first place. Then again, this was never about practical solutions, but rather it was about building a car that politicians and environmentalists could feel smug and vindicated about. However, environmentalists and politicians are not engineers nor are they technically savvy, so they were easy to dupe due to their ignorance. Reply
Hey, love on the rocks, ain't no surprise. As I see it, if the car holds gas, and uses it in some way to make power, directly or not: it's a hybrid! The fact that it does drive the wheels directly, only reinforces that.
/feeling like an old fart Reply
Wow, what a brilliant snow job by GM.Guess I will be sticking with Ford for my American car fix. Reply
Wow... What a let down. I was hoping for something truly special here. I suppose a straightforward hybrid isn't all bad.I have this suspicion that GM was designing the car to do what they've been claiming. The intention had been to have the gasoline engine only charge the batteries and not actually motivate the car. But during development they started realizing that it was harder, less reliable or more expensive than they had hoped. So they had to find a compromise and that solution was to turn the car into a more conventional hybrid.
This car has been in development for a long time. I find it hard to believe all that effort was expended merely to develop yet another hybrid. Especially when they could just license the technology from someone else.
And all else aside, it's still a hybrid which is nothing to sneeze at. It's about time an American automaker has offered a proper one to compete with the Prius's and Insight's of the world.
I would also take Car & Driver's mileage claims with a grain of salt. They have a habit of extracting poor mileage out of most cars they drive. Well, for GM's sake, the Volt had better get mileage at least in the range of the Prius. Reply
I have not followed the Volt any more than the typical person on the street and the impression I always got was that the car would be 100% electrically powered and the gas engine was only there to supply electricity. Reply
So hypermiling at a reasonable average pace in a Porsche 911 can yield better economy than the Volt. ([green.autoblog.com] What a farce. Reply
I'm not going to argue that GM didn't overhype the Volt. They did. And so did media outlets like Motor Trend, Popular Mechanics, etc.Is the media feeling all disappointed and hurt right now?
Well, they should. They deserved that one. Critical thinking and rational skepticism have long been considered founding blocks of good journalism.
But apparently, the flying cars debacle over the past 60 years has taught us nothing.
And for the record, do note: It was not GM that called the Volt "the jesus car" and pinned so much hope and expectation on it; it was the media.
Now let's address those concerns, starting with Popular Mechanics. Typically, I respect Popular Mechanics, and this one little bit of context that was not mentioned in the post justified my respect for them:
Fuel Economy
In addition to measuring EV range, we also recorded the fuel use when the car was in its "charge sustaining" mode. In other words, we computed the fuel economy after the battery was depleted, both on our city loop and the highway trip. In the city, we recorded 31.67 mpg and achieved 36.0 mpg on the highway. If we factor in the distance traveled on the battery's energy the fuel economy jumps to 37.5 mpg city and 38.15 mpg highway.
Note that they are completely upfront about the fact that the fuel economy numbers that they calculate took place after the battery ran out on the highway trip, which took 33 miles to happen. Let's assume that they only went 38.15 miles past the point that the battery died on their trip. In other words, let's say they used precisely one gallon of gas once they ran out of battery. Let's also assume, that for the sake of us lay people, that the standard formula for calculating MPG, distance traveled divided by gallons of fuel used, remains in effect.
That means that they were able to travel 71.15 miles on a single gallon of gas. That's pretty damn impressive if you ask me.
As far as fuel economy once the battery runs out, that sounds about right, when you consider that the Volt is a midsize-car, and a rather heavy one at that thanks to the battery weight. Still, it's better than the MPG offered by the four-cylinder Camry, Altima, Fusion, etc.
GM didn't tout the gasoline-only MPG of the Volt. They touted the combined fuel economy of the Volt. Did they do so utterly inaccurately? Yes. Yes they did. I'll chalk that up to them not having a clue how to effectively translate that combined economy into a useful metric, and Department of Energy that didn't correct them because they were equally clueless.
Also, Andrew Farrah didn't lie:
You're correct that the electric motor is always powering the wheels, whereas in a typical hybrid vehicle the electric motor and the gasoline engine can power the wheels. The greatest advantage of an extended-range electric vehicle like the Volt is the increased all electric range and the significant total vehicle range combined.
As is mentioned not only in the referenced articles and in this post, the electric motor is always powering the front wheels. He was completely straightforward about that fact. What he didn't mention was that the gas engine could kick in and power the front wheels in parallel with the electric motor.
He just happened to leave out a key detail, that's all. Lord knows it happens to engineers, program managers, and journalists alike.
As for the Autoblog article...well, yeah...this is Autoblog we're talking about. Overall, they are neither the sharpest tools in the shed nor the best journalists in the world. There's a reason why I come to Jalopnik and not Autoblog.
Finally, I still don't get the bitching going on about this car. Even after it's media-hyped jesus car-ness has been shot down by the realities of life, it's still an impressive car and an impressive piece of automotive technology that's more gasoline efficient than anything else out there.
If my money as a tax-payer had to go to bail their asses out, this is the sort of thing I want them to be building. I want them to have the balls and creativity to go out there and experiment with new technologies that will give them a head start on other companies who haven't tried them yet, and won't do so until someone else does because they're to timid. I want GM to innovate and try new things like this. If they don't, then what the hell was the point of it all?
We got all pissy with GM and the government about the bailout, and only half-jokingly insinuated that they damn well better act like they deserved it, or else, and they did. They tried something new. They innovated. They took the first steps in laying the foundations for new automotive technology, and even gave us a usable product out of it that's better than anything else on the market.
And here we are bitching them out for doing exactly what we told them to do.
Tell me again, what is the problem here, and where does the problem lie?
It's doesn't lie solely with GM, that's for sure. Reply
"It turns out that's not correct. We're now told by Volt's engineering team that when the Volt's lithium-ion battery pack runs down and at speeds near or above 70 mph the Volt's gasoline engine will directly drive the front wheels along with the electric motors."I'm sorry, where are you hearing this? I don't see this in the car magazine publications. Reply
Ray Wert promoted this comment
Here is the question for the day!
What is the top 10 biggest ALTERNATIVE letdowns in automotive history?....my answers
not in any order
1. Chevy volt ELECTRIC
2. Chey EV1 ELECTRIC
3.Crysler partriot FUELCELL-FLYWHEEL
4. Ford Think Stirling (VIA DEAN KAMEN)
5. ANYTHING FROM ZAAP
6. THE PERSU HYBRID
7. HONDA PHIL (CNG)
8. BMW CLEAN ENERGY (FUEL CELL TECHNOLOGY)
9. THE MERLIN sPARROW
10 THE FLUX CAPACITOR ReplyBuckus promoted this comment
Would be sweet to own one of these if you have solar power set up...pretty much free fuel, provided you dont drive outside of its range very often.People need to understand that this car has a bigger value to those who fit in its commute category, which should be most people. If you have a 30-mile commute to work, and can plug this in while your there, thats a win-win. And you dont have to feel tied down like you would with the Leaf, because regular ol' gas is always an option for longer trips.
Pretty much an ideal for many of us city folk. Reply
So, off by an order of magnitude---unless the happy smiley plug face doesn't represent a zero?
There are also a lot of Volt defenders here who say things like, "The wheels are always driven by the electric motor. It just appears that under some cases the engine also sends some power to the wheels in addition to the electric motor. Why does this matter?"
Because it means that the first statement is a lie; and "appears" is hedging; does it or doesn't it? And what are the "some cases"?
Might be some General workers here. Reply
Geesh, I already get that kind of milage with my 2009 Honda Fit. When I hear about people writing/talking about how "green" a car is, I always wonder: What is so "green" about:- Non-renewable electricity used to power said vehicle?
- Extremely polluting, toxic battery chemicals that aren't recycled when the battery dies?
- Petrochemicals used in manufacturing all the plastic and rubber?
I hate to tell the self described "green" person riding around in a Prius, but if you really want to practice what you preach? Ride a bike. Reply
Monday, October 11, 2010
How GM "Lied" About The Electric Car
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