

First Volt owner has driven 12K miles in 2 years, burned 26 gallons of gas - MikeCapone
http://www.treehugger.com/cars/first-chevy-volt-owner-usa-has-driven-12000-miles-2-years-burned-26-gallons-gasoline.html

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whalesalad
Very cool. It would be nice to see a breakdown of where the energy he received
while plugged-in at home came from. I think it's great that we are reducing
our dependence on fossil fuel, but at the end of the day if the energy to
power that car is being generated by dirtier or more costly ways... it doesn't
really matter.

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josefresco
It does because instead of directly burning said fossil fuel, you are
indirectly burning it. This abstraction if you will allows change or
improvement to the source of the electricity in a way that you cannot do with
gasoline.

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hadem
Can you further explain? Maybe I misunderstood you but if the power plant
generating the electricity is equal to the automobiles burning the fuel, in
the end, isn't it a wash?

Similar to hybrid cars. They are better for the environment but that isn't
that offset by the production of the batteries needed for the hybrid engine?

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schiffern
>Similar to hybrid cars. They are better for the environment but that isn't
that offset by the production of the batteries needed for the hybrid engine?

No. The oft-cited "Dust to Dust" report has been thoroughly debunked:
<http://grist.org/article/dust-to-dumb/> For just one example, they assume
(with no real justification) that a Hummer will last 300k miles and a Prius
just 100k. Invalidating that single assumption flips the result, and it's not
the only one.

There's a false equivocacy going on in our heads when we fall victim to this
kind of misinformation. "One advantage vs. one disadvantage. They must cancel
out!" This is why it's important to do quantitative analysis. In reality, the
addition of a battery and motor only adds about 10% to the embodied energy and
disposal impact of a car, which itself is dwarfed by the fuel burned in its
lifetime (by about 3:1).

The interesting question for me is: why do people worry about the Nickel in
their car's battery but not in their car's steel-alloy frame?

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mc32
IIRC, what worries some people is the REEs that go into the mfg of electric
batteries. REE mining tends to be dirty and tends to be, for now, in counties
with little in the way of enviro regulation monitoring mining methods, etc.

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islon
for those who don't live in USA

    
    
        12k miles -> 19312.1 kms
        26 gallons -> 98.4207 liters

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dmix
Also compared to a 2012 Honda Civic which has 39 miles/gallon.

The volt had 459 miles/gallon.

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wmeredith
How many tons of coal did they burn?

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parfe
Assuming 2460 kwh/ton of coal, and 36kwh per 100 miles of driving this driver
burned 1.7561 tons of coal.

Assuming he drove a gas powered Honda civic instead he would have burned 375
gallons of gasoline (12000 / 32 combined MPG).

One ton of coal releases 2.86 tons of C02. One gallon of gasoline releases
19.64 pounds of C02.

Driving the electric vechile released 5.022 tons of C02.

Driving the gas civic would have released 3.68 tons of C02.

All numbers shamelessly cribbed from whatever google result seemed nice.

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DannoHung
> All numbers shamelessly cribbed from whatever google result supported my
> thesis.

FTFY

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whyenot
Snark like this is annoying and doesn't contribute in any way to the
conversation. If you don't agree with someone's numbers, then take a few
minutes and critique their data or do a little of your own research and post
your findings. It's a lot more interesting and a more successful way to get
your point across.

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seany
He must not live in a location where he needs to drive that much. I'm sure I'm
a bit of an outlier, but I've driven 30k miles in the last 11 months... 12k in
2 years is practically unfathomable to me.

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dalke
According to the DOT, a male 55-64 averages 15,859 miles per year. The average
for the US, all ages, both sexes, is 13,476. I can't find a distribution for
those numbers to say how much of an outlier you are.

Anyway, if you had read the article you would see that he also drive his
wife's car for long distances and as a retired airline pilot he gets free air
travel. He was picked not for being representative but because he was the
first.

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nvmc
Twelve thousand soul suckingly boring miles. I know hybrids are the future,
but I'm happy for the future to wait until I die.

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SeanLuke
A Volt is not a Prius.

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clientbiller
Now how much does a tesla burn after 12k miles...?

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flagnog
is there some way to make sure the gas doesn't go bad? Or a way to drain the
tank?

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iyulaev
Eh, people worry about this but in my experience with storing vehicles is that
it's really not that much of a problem. I put a motorcycle away for 1 year
with zero prep. Next year, fired it up, ran the gas through (it seemed a
little sluggish but nothing that can't be attributed to placebo), and filled
it up fresh. And that's on a carburetor motorcycle with transistorized
ignition, which is going to be much more finicky than a modern fuel-injected
car with computer-controlled ignition.

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xradionut
Try that with an E15 fuel blend.

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justin66
There's also the issue of temperature. I'd be a little concerned about keeping
a tankful of some summer gasoline blend (I'm sorry I don't know what any of
the antigelling chemical additives are called) over the winter someplace
really cold.

On the other hand, I really believe that engineers working in Detroit of all
places would have considered this.

