Sunday, March 4, 2012

Thinking About Buying a Chevy Volt?



     I heard on the TV News that GM has stopped producing the Chevy Volt. However, TV advertising for it still continues. Apparently, they are trying to work off inventory.
     The following is from a friend:


Subject:Thinking about buying a Volt?

How patriotic
 
From one of my engineering friends at  Stanford....
 
CHEVY VOLT CAR COST TO RUN
 
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 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 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 Obama wants us to 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.
 
REALLY?

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