VOLT 230 mpg - What a Load of Crap

GM (Government Motors) claim that the Volt gets 230 miles per gallon is one of the biggest lies a Government division as ever told. If you read the specs on the GM website under were it says that the Volt gets 230mph ,in the fine print, it says that the Volt uses 25 kwh per 100 miles. Some simple math will show what a lie the 230mph is.

First lets talk about how much energy the gas you put in to your car holds. I looked up this information on the Internet. I did not go out and do any test to find these numbers (to lazy). I found many different number they were between 33.33kwh & 39kwh. The main factor that is going to affect this number is the Octane in the fuel. I am going to use the lost number for the math here to give the Volt as much help as I can.

Next you have to find out the efficiency from the Power Plant all the way to the rear wheels of the Volt. This is very hard to find out. It can be very different from one place to the next. The Power Plants efficiency would depend on many different variables. Some examples would be how old the plant is, what type of fuel the plant uses (coal, gas, nuclear). Of course the electricity that is used at our house can come from many different plants. You are also going to loose efficiency from the power plant to the house, were the power enters the house to the wall socket you loose efficiency. Then you have the efficiency of the car itself. In my equation I am going to use 60% efficiency. I think that this is very generous efficiency and would really be much lower.

Now we have to establish the efficiency of the of the power plant in the car. Of course this depends on the car. The older the car the less efficient it is going to be. Some cars to day can be 25% to 30%. I used 15% to give the Volt as much help as I could. This will only be used to find out how many miles per kilowatt hours the power plant of the car gets.

To Find Miles Per Gallon of Gasoline in Volt Equation:
-33.33 kwh(kilowatt hours) per gallon of gasoline
-60% = .60 efficiency from power plant to rear wheels of car
-25 kwh per 100 miles or 4 miles per 1 kwh
-(4 x 33.33) x .60 = 79.99 mph(miles per gallon of gasoline)
So you see that the 230mph that GM (Government Motors) tells you is a load of crap. Now this is still pretty good gas millage if you are always using the batters. I do not know how what kind of gas millage the little engine on the Volts gets. There is also the efficiency of the Power Plants that you can not be sure about.