spwolf

well thats the problem, because Volt, only driven on electricity will save you only 15%-20% in fuel costscompared to 50MPG Prius... and since Volt gets only 33-35MPG when out of electricity, if you drive it more than those 25-50 electric miles, you are going to spend MORE than on Prius.

Also Volt is a lot heavier, has cheaper interior than can seat only 4, and smaller trunk. Once out of electricity, it will have problems going uphill since 84hp engine is not strong enough to drive 3800lb sedan. Its Cd is also 0.28, much worse than Prius.

-J-P-L-

Buying a Prius over the Volt is a no-brainer.

I think a majority of people will find that plugging a car in every night is a pain. Hell, plugging in all of our other devices such as cell phones, iPod's, laptops, iPads, ect. is enough things to charge each day.

I'll take a Prius and a lifetime worth of gas instead of the Volt.

Get this...

Buy a $22K Prius + $18K in gas = driving Prius for 327,000+ miles! (today's price of $2.75/gal)

Or buy a Volt which doesn't hold as much, won't last as long, and you have to plug it in everyday.

bagwell

its not REQUIRED to plug in the Volt everyday.

-J-P-L-

Of course. But then you have yourself a Chevy Cruze.

sc-driver

iTrader: (7)

Updated my original post with the new information coming out.

SLegacy99

I'll believe the hoopla about the Volt when the car is actually released and in the hands of consumers. Sames goes with the Leaf. It could be 100 miles, it could be 50 miles in reality. Who knows (yet)?

I'm skeptical that the fuel economy of the Volt could be so low, as a number of average joes who were given Plug in Priui to test average over 60 MPG on a dry battery. And while the Volt may be heavier, it has far better batteries and a smaller engine. Which leads me to the following theory.

Cruising at 70 MPH in the 400h, the RX does well maintaining a charge by powering only the front wheels with the electric motors and ICE. But when placed under stress, such as towing, the rear electric motor must assist, thus the charge of the battery is not maintained and the ICE has to create energy for the battery. The result is a drop in fuel economy. IMO the remedy is a rear drive shaft. I believe that would be more efficient in towing scenarios, but of course less efficient in everyday, which is really where the bulk of the miles are. But perhaps the same is true with the 3800 lb. Volt. Its a heavy vehicle, perhaps it would do better with the ICE directly linked to the front wheels as opposed to serving as a generator. However, I am no engineer. This is just an observation I have made.

toy4two

leave it to GM to screw it up. I was on board, even signed up on the interest list when it was making the car show circuit. Then they redesigned the exterior and we get that ugly as sin car, no thanks. All the disappointing final #'s lead me to believe we will once again have to bail out this failure of a company.

-J-P-L-

These comparisons to the Nissan leaf are hardly relevant, but not saying you shouldn't have made them. We all appreciate the breakdown.

But it is apples and oranges.

The Volt is a far more technologically sophisticated vehicle. It's much more complicated to make an extended range electric vehicle that needs to gracefully combine an electric drivetrain with a backup gas generator, then to build a pure electric.

I would even argue that the Prius is more complicated to built than the Leaf.

And of course a pure electric will always have a much better all electric range than a car with a gas engine backup. There's simply much more room for a bigger battery and overall the car should be lighter.

-J-P-L-

The concept version wouldn't have sold, it was completely impractical for most people. Which is why the Prius is a huge success, and the original 2-door Insight was a sales failure.

What do you think these back seats would be like? Quite useless, I'm sure.
And look at how tiny the doors are, even the front. Imagine getting in and out?



When it comes to the real world, a company must think about practicality. People love how concept cars LOOK, but they probably would sign a check for most of them because they can't do what they need them to do.

Threxx

Yeah all of this MPG rating is getting pretty dumb. The EPA needs to set a president for vehicles like this and rate their battery-only range/capabilities, and then rate their battery-depleted MPG. That would make headlines like this a lot less confusing to the average consumer.

The 'base' Volt comes equipped much closer to a loaded Prius than to a base model Prius.

Sens4Miles

It takes the EPA 4 years to come up with a label (which they STILL have not decided on), when logically it would make sense to simply show it as such:

Miles per Charge (city)
Miles per Charge (hwy)
Miles per Charge (combined)
MPG city (cs mode)
MPG hwy (cs mode)
MPG combined (cs mode)

They need to just lay out all 6 different numbers, because they're all important. You cannot combine them all into 1 or 2 different "equivalent" numbers, because anyway you slice it, you will come up with an inaccurate real world number. I would even add a seventh number to the label (miles per total tank) for further accuracy. This is the ONLY way to be completely accurate and let the customer know exactly what the capabilities this car has compared to other cars.

bruce van

Exactly! Give this man a gold star!