HEVs,PHEVs and E-REVs...Oh my!
Reminds me of the phrase "If you can't impress them with the facts, baffle them with BullShite".
What are they saying, that in most cases a series hybrid has better mileage than a parallel hybrid. That's not news to me.

Make that Toyota's proposed future 7 mile AER

If GM had not shredded all of the working EV-1s they could have had many E-REVs on the road many years ago. They sold the battery factory to an oil company. They did not offer to sell a single EV1, so they did not have any idea how well they would sell. Their leasing policy contract should have offended all people. Nothing can be said about the salability numbers of a car that was only leased in small numbers with performance far inferior to the battery technology available even back then. Never did GM introduce any other car that required leasing. Throw an OPOC or a Honda generator in the back of an EV1 and for a hundred pounds including fuel you have a range of 400 miles. The ZEBRA battery was ready and available for the EV-1 to give it a range of a hundred kilometers. Fuel cells will never be cheap enough to power any production automobile, and the majority of hydrogen has to be produced from hydrocarbons at less overall efficiency than the oldest operational coal fired power plants in commercial service. Why not reenable a museum EV1 and put it on the road. COATES LTD makes a remarkable high power long life modification to motorcycle engines for much higher power. Or use an OPOC. SHADENFREUDE is the term to use how I feel about GMs EV1 adventure and their present losses. They could have had their E-REV in almost instant production if they had not spent billions to eliminate the CARB ZEV requirements by weak advertising and lawsuits and lobbying or worse; and promoting fuel cells as a diversion with no economic returns possible before hydrogen fusion is producing all of the electricity in the US...HG....

So ... now we know ... Electric automobiles are more energy efficient ... And GM knows.

But the GM Volt will deliver about 32 all-electric miles, not the 300 miles it could be designed to give.

The E1 lesson is that we can't trust GM to make a useful Electric car, and must support other companies.

It sounds like GM is pointing out that series hybrids never run the gas motor at suboptimal RPMs, which is goodness. That doesn't make it most efficient though, depending on how the PHEV is designed.

I thought UC Davis concluded that a through-the-ground parallel hybrid with a big electric motor and an ICE just big enough to maintain highway cruise speed was the best you could do for efficiency. It gets all the benefits of electric for starting and regenerative brakes. It avoids the conversion losses of powering a generator, charging a battery and then going through the electric for highway steady highway speeds where ICE is most efficient.

I think GM is also saying, "See, we shouldn't have to use big costly batteries!" Dunno if I agree with that.

If GM had not shredded all of the working EV-1s they could have had many E-REVs on the road many years ago.

They could have put one of these in the truck of an EV1 back in 1999.

Wow. They haven't shipped the Volt so who cares?!

Charge them on night rate Nuke electricity (if you are lucky enough to have it).
If you are feeling green, build lots of windmills / solar and design a time variable charging system / wireless protocol to control the charging when there is excess power.
Also, make the cars fairly small - don't do this with 6000 lb monsters.

2 - 3000 lb vehicles should do most people.

Some people need the ability to move heavy things, some people like the ability to accelerate fast, the trick is not to insist on combining them (like SUVs).

sorry about that - browser locked up - JM

Pointing out that electrical energy has its own carbon footprint (usually), is sort of a Captain Obvious thing. It would be nice to see that sort of metric figured more prominently in this study, especially since most intelligent readers aren't Captain Oblivious.

Possible caveat to the E-REV vs. PHEV duality - aren't some HEV-based conversions able to get up to 60mph by virtue of their beefed up electric motor, e.g. MG2. Sure it's not the same grunt as a Tesla or EV1 motor, but it still covers a lot of highway speeds.

That said, it's good that GM honestly admits that US06 would deliver 32, not 40 miles. Gives us some perspective.

At the end of the day I'm still thinking "Viva la Volt" in my head though.

One thing that GMs analysis doesn't take into account is the possibility, hopefully required for future PHEVs, of having an EV only button. In that mode the acceleration and top speed would be limited to what the electric only could handle and I'm sure the results would be much more comparable to REV. Their analysis is undoubtedly putting people in standard cars and simply seeing how often in that unconstrained environment the drivers accelerate or drive too fast for whatever parallel hybrid configuration they are modeling. I think many people who would consider buying a PHEV would also consider using such a mode for a lot of driving if it were available.

One would probably learn how to avoid the engine cut-in thresholds even without a EV only mode... but why not simply put it in the car?

GM lost how many $billions this year and they have the audacity to suggest that the Volt will be the greatest thing since sliced bread. I dont beleive their calculations can be trusted. Methinks I will wait until they prove it, as I expect the Volt they produce will be a cross between a Vega and a golf cart, cheap enough they can make millions of them yet small enough they wont take up too much room in the landfill two years later when they fall apart.