Ten years ago, GM built the only electric car that made any sense as a practical, affordable car.
This was the Chevy Volt (RIP).
It wasn’t especially quick – no “Ludicrous” mode – but that wasn’t the point. It did not make you wait – as all other ludicrous electric cars do. And it did not make you sweat, because its range was about the same as any other car of its type – about 350 miles, unaffected by summer or winter or the use of accessories such as the heater and air conditioner. It cost about $33,000 to start when it was last offered back in 2019, about $20,000 less than a new Tesla Model 3 – which does make you sweat (and then, wait).
Here was a car you could drive like any other car. Spur of the moment, as far as you liked – without having to think about range or plan around recharge times. It thus solved every problem of practicality and functionality associated with electric cars, which was the point of the thing.
But that was just the problem.
A practical, affordable electric car is the very last thing wanted – by those using electric cars to make driving impractical and unaffordable, so as to get ordinary people to stop driving.
And so they found a problem with the Volt. That being the small gas engine it carried along as a generator for the 18.4 kilowatt-hour battery pack that powered its two electric motors.
If this sounds like a hybrid, it is – and isn’t.
In all other hybrids, the gas engine provides most of the propulsive power. The electric side of the hybrid drivetrain comes on when the hybrid isn’t moving – or moving slowly. A few plug-in hybrids have bigger, more powerful batteries – and so can operate on battery power for a bit longer – and faster. But none of them for more than about 30 miles. After that – after the charge has been dissipated – and the gas engine comes back on. From that point onward, it propels the car in the usual way – via a transmission connected to the drive wheels.
What made the Volt unusual – what made it unique – was that the electric side was full-time.
The gas engine would come on – after about 50 miles of driving – but only to recharge the batteries, so they could continue to power the electric motors that always propelled the car. This made it different from any other hybrid car – and any other electric car, too.
You had the best of both worlds: An electric car without the electric car hassles – and costs. The gas engine used so little gas that gas going bad in the tank was the car’s biggest problem. Owners could go weeks without refueling because even if they drove 100 miles each day, 50 miles of that could be covered without burning any gas, at all. The remaining 50 covered by the burning of about 1 gallon of gas (the Volt averaged 42 MPG when the gas engine was generating electricity to power up the batteries).
That’s a great way to deal with gas that costs $4 per gallon. As opposed to paying $50k for an electric car that makes you sweat – and wait.
Naturally, a problem had to be found with the Volt. And that problem was the fact that it still burned gas – even though almost none. Even though burning almost no gas results in the “emission” of almost no gasses – the dread carbon dioxide those cattle-prodding us into impractical/unaffordable electric cars feign such “concern” about.
It did not matter that the Volt was within a hairs’-breadth fraction of being “zero emissions” by EPA regulatory standards and probably “emitted” fewer gasses in totality than ludicrous electric cars that suck voltage ginned up by utility plants that “emit” great gaseous clouds of C02.
What mattered was it worked. Too well. Too affordably.
Maybe Mazda can make a go of it, this time.
The same concept underlies the 2023 MX-30. This time, using an even smaller rotary engine – a Mazda specialty – to generate the electricity that powers an electric vehicle. It will reportedly be capable of traveling more than 100 miles on a charge, before the gas engine kicks in to recharge the 35.5 kilowatt-hour battery pack. This is more than twice as far as the Volt could travel before the charge ran low and the gas engine stepped in to recharge the thing.
If that range figure is right, it means the MX-30 will burn even less gas – and “emit” even less, too. Many owners will probably have to deal with the same problem that Volt owners had to deal with – i.e., how to keep gas (in the tank) fresh when it stays there for weeks and even months before it’s burned. 
But – aye – there’s the rub.
It still burns.
It doesn’t matter that it’s hardly any. Nor that hardly anything objectively harmful is “emitted.” Mazda – not being run by psychopaths – is charmingly naive in that it seems to believe that a car that isn’t a problem is the solution.
This was the Volt’s problem, too.
It is the same problem – fundamentally – that well-meaning people have when they try to reason with “maskers.” They – the “maskers” – don’t want to solve the problem. They create problems in order to further a solution very different from the one they pretend they are aiming at.
It will be said the MX-30 “falls short.” That it “emits” too much “gas” – the amount of the “emitting” never put into context, never shown to be correlative to any objectively harmful consequence.
Once again, like the “masks” – and the “safe” and “effective” Jabs.
There is consanguinity here. It is precisely the problem in need of solution.
. . .
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Cost comparison Diesel vs EV…..
A Mk 1 VW Golf 1800 lb., was fitted with a Mk 4 turbo diesel, it was fast, 0 to 60 in about 6 seconds and got 65 mpg highway. That is better then an EV in lots of ways.
65 mpg = 1.5 gallons to go 100 miles @ $4.00 a gallon = $6.00
travelling 100 miles in an average EV uses 1.03 gallons equivalent of fuel = 34.7 kwh of electricity @ $0.16 per kwh = $5.55, that is the net amount,
1 gallon at the car = 4 gallons burnt back at the power plant…tax payers pay for the other 3 gallons burnt to produce the electricity…..3 gallons @ $4.00 gallon = $12.00
The diesel used 1.5 gallons to go 100 miles = $6.00, the EV in reality (fuel burnt at power plant), used 4 gallons of fuel = $16.00, The EV used 160% more fuel to go 100 miles, this is 160% more waste and pollution……
(under not ideal conditions this can easily double = $11.10, the cost to charge the EV).
under ideal conditions but at top speed a mercedes EV used 90 kwh of electricity in 100 miles which = 3 gallons of gas ………90 kwh of electricity is $14.40
3 gallons at the car = 12 gallons burnt back at the power plant…tax payers pay for the other 9 gallons burnt to produce the electricity….. 9 gallons @ $4.00 gallon = $36.00
BUT ATTENTION: There is an additional cost for the EV owner: the tesla $22,000 battery is used up, worn out in 100,000 miles. this works out to $22.00 per 100 miles it is costing you for the battery. So the EV owner has to pay another $22.00 per 100 miles to pay for the battery, the diesel car owner doesn’t have that extra cost.
So if you add the battery cost to the electricity cost $5.55 plus $22.00 = $27.55, so it really cost the EV owner $27.55 to go 100 miles,
the diesel owner only paid $6.00 to go 100 miles. the diesel owner wins……
NOTE: Thermal efficiency of power plants using coal, petroleum, natural gas or nuclear fuel and converting it to electricity are around 33% efficiency, natural gas is around 40%. Then there is average 6% loss in transmission, then there is a 5% loss in the charger, another 5% loss in the inverter, the electric motor is 90% efficient so another 10% loss before turning the electricity into mechanical power at the wheels.
33% – 6% – 5% – 5% – 10% = 25% efficiency for EV’s.
(under not ideal conditions it might be 12% efficient).
An Ev is 25% efficient in turning original source of energy, petroleum in this example into mechanical energy to push the car down the road.
Chevrolet Spark EV batteries no longer available
The Spark EV started life with a battery pack provided by China’s A123 Systems. Buyers suffered a spate of issues, so GM tied up with LG Chem to bring pack manufacture in-house from 2014 to 2016. GM provided an eight-year, 100,000-mile warranty on the battery, but that doesn’t matter anymore if there are no packs to replace broken units with. And there’s no third-party support for a comparatively inexpensive but complex model that sold in such tiny numbers.
scrapping cars every 8 years = huge waste and only 5% of the batteries are recycled….
https://autos.yahoo.com/chevrolet-spark-ev-batteries-no-135000875.html
I haven’t been keeping up with the electric vehicle discussions, … however; I have been following the financial bits everywhere online. I’m not sure how this Zerohedge take has legs to stand on. Easy money, I guess?:
“America’s electric vehicle (EV) market has surged over the last decade, and it’s only expected to grow further…”
My son got his Audi e-tron beginning of April. Took me for a spin, hit the sport mode and that thing took off like a rocket. I don’t remember being pushed back in the seat like a plane taking off. I’m like do it again with a big dumb grin.
Here in the soviet state of st nicola, Scotland, you pay 20 sqiddlies for a card for the charge point, for a year, you don’t pay for the charge time on point, YET!!! He doesn’t charge it at home cause leccy bills are through the roof.
Because he works mostly from home and only visits site a couple of times a week it suits him, he’s a building surveyour.
This car costs £69000, don’t know what the lease is monthly but it comes of salary before tax deductions.
Me, I’ll stick to my 3 cylinder 1.0 litre gas guzzler that cost 10% of the Audi, lmao.
BTW said gas hog gets 52 miles per imperial gallon.
Society is catastrophically wrong about CO2 warming – and carbon dioxide as some sort of existential threat. The simple geological fact is that CO2 has never warmed the planet. This is proven science from ice core data. Current CO2 levels are near all time lows for earth’s history, at current 410 ppm CO2 is hardly a threat when most of earth’s history CO2 has been above 3,000 ppm.
During previous ice age epochs – which last tens of millions of years – CO2 levels were as high as 5,000 ppm. Obviously such “high” CO2 did not cause runaway warming as claimed by the mainstream media and bought and paid for scientists at the IPCC.
Governments are fighting a non-existent threat – giving hundreds of billions of subsidies to companies like Tesla – which produce cars that 95% can not afford and 90% do not want. What is worse and extremely offensive to me is some dumb sticker on the new car window about the vehicles carbon emissions – but the zero carbon car doesn’t include how much carbon was produced during manufacturing or the disposal cost in carbon.
Think about it – the cheapest car to produce also is the lowest in carbon generation. And it doesn’t matter because the real threat is low CO2. What 99.99% of the world does not know is that in the last two ice age cycles – CO2 got so low plants stopped growing and trees even dies from low CO2. This is a major contender for megafauna dieoff – the plant dieoff in the ice age causes a megafauna dieoff.
Plants stop growing around 200 -240 ppm CO2. During the last ice age CO2 got down to 140 to 180 ppm for extended periods of time. And get this – farming is not possible when CO2 is that low. Current industrial CO2 levels are a boon to farming as yields have doubled when CO2 went from 280 to 410 ppm. Anyone who grows marijuana knows that pumping CO2 into their greenhouse vastly increases yield. What that means is plants are optimized to grow at much higher CO2 levels than in the atmosphere today.
I laugh at Prius and Tesla – the simple fact is both have greatly discounted resale values as the main battery approached replacement. I tell my friends I will still be driving my Geo Metro econobox after all Prius have gone to the crusher. Go look on Craigslist for used Prius over 15 years old – nobody wants them yet they are Toyotas and everyone wants a Toyota – but not the hybrid Toyota.
Tesla is worse – just watch the video of a Tesla making a street jump – it explodes into a barrel of parts. $50,000 for extremely low quality virtual signalling hypemobile. Car companies come and go on a regular basis, and my bet is Tesla will soon be defunct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Car_manufacturers_of_the_United_States
The Prius can’t be driven on the gas engine only when the battery is completely worn out, dead, finished, the BMW i3 and Volt can be driven (with less power) with their batteries completely worn out, dead, finished, …..people figured it out…..
the tesla battery is dead in 9 yr, 100,000 miles it costs $22,000, the used value of the car is about the same, but the battery has to be replaced…… so actual value is $22,000 minus $22,000 = zero…haha
Hybrids could make more sense if the crash “standards” didn’t force cars to be so heavy today. Most modern cars weight about 500 pounds more than a similar vehicle from the 1980’s. No matter how its propelled, its going to be less efficient due to hauling around a lot of extra weight you really could do without. If you had the choice of a lighter, less “protective” car, which you don’t get anymore.
You also could try hybrid drivetrains without the heavy batteries as well to reduce weight (and replacement cost) as well. If the electric motor is very efficient and the car weights a lot less you could probably use a tiny diesel or gas engine to drive a generator. You could also save the weight of not needing a transmission between the wheels and engine. Basically it would be a tiny version of a train locomotive.
Alas, the problem with that kind of hybrid setup is that the gas (or diesel) engine would always be running, since there aren’t batteries. It would also mean no ludicrous mode for the electric motor either. So this type of setup seems unlikely.
already had it…..
VW made a lightweight diesel hybrid that got almost 300 mpg, that was a better solution then EV’s.
A Mk4 VW Jetta diesel could get over 50 mpg on the Highway, with a huge range.
A Mk 1 VW 1800 lb., was fitted with a Mk 4 turbo diesel, it was fast, 0 to 60 in about 6 seconds and got 65 mpg highway. That is better then an EV in lots of ways.
The VW 4 cyl 1.9 lt. diesel was so good it was swapped into lots of small trucks, etc., more then 450 lb ft torque possible, great fuel economy, can last 500,000 miles.
Gasoline engines produce around 40 percent more carbon dioxide (CO2) than diesel engines, catalytic converters cannot reduce the CO2 produced by the engine.
Diesel engines emit more N2O and CH4 then gas engines but there are measures that can be taken to reduce diesel emissions. Diesel fuel catalysts, catalytic converters, and particle filters can reduce emissions greatly.
The air coming out of the tailpipe on a modern diesel is cleaner then the air in a big city.
The GAIA religion/green/globalist/ one world government killed the diesel over N2O and the gas engine soon over CO2, they say zero emissions is the law soon, the exhaust coming out of an ICE engine is something like .00001% pollutants but that is higher then 0%, so they will be banned, this is insanity.
.0000001% emissions and they are worried about it, that isn’t science, it is political now.
EV’s aren’t zero emissions either, they are remote emissions and have a dozen other far bigger issues, including pollution (production and recyling), safety, cost, charging time, weight, battery life, not enough chargers, grid can’t supply the electricity = insanity, etc. .
The odds are over 0% that there is a huge agenda that has nothing to do with global warming.
You will own nothing, gates will still drive his 959 Porsche.
https://peakoil.com/consumption/volkswagens-new-300-mpg-car-not-allowed-in-america-because-it-is-too-efficient
Anyone notice the Dow Jones lost 981 points on Friday? The liquidity is being challenged heavily.
Saw a new Nissan Frontier, Nissan keeps on trucking.
I am beginning to think that Nissan is going to rise from the dead, a dead-ringer come back to life. It is not a foolish bet. Don’t have any, not at this time.
Berkshire Hathaway closed down 9000 USD on Friday, settled at 472,500 USD per share.
Warren doesn’t want you in the club, you can’t afford one share of BRKa, not at 472,500 USD per share. Kind of putting all of your eggs in one basket there.
When you own an entire railroad lock, stock. and barrel, all the tracks and equipment in place, you will be shipping anything and everything. The BNSF has weekly reports of how much is being hauled, it is online to see what’s happening.
Warren knows all about tie spacers and sleds to maintain railroad tracks, Bill Gates is changing oil on his tractors today, ready for field work next week. Hillary was a cattle rancher at one time herself. They all know the business of everything.
10,000 vehicles fueling up with 15 gallons of gas or diesel, 150,000 gallons. 10,000 times more, 100,000,000 vehicles, gobbling up 15 gallons of fuel for a 450 mile drive is 15,000,000,000 gallons of fuels each day, or 357 million barrels of oil, about 3 and 1/2 days of world supply. Far too much demand, gotta be a lot less. You’re just being a pig to want to drive your car anywhere you want. Shame on you.
10,000 gallons of fuels will weigh in at 62,000 pounds, 31 ton. There’ll be thirty trucks hauling tankers on the road stopping at your gas station and delivering the go power.
Klaus and the rest of the motley crew of bums out there are outraged.
You have to sacrifice your yearly ration of gasoline/diesel so the elites can fill the wing tanks of their private jets 20,000 gallons at a time. You won’t have to be some clueless hypocrite.
It’s your fault for not saving the planet, just have to stop driving your ICE vehicle.
The Big Guy has to fly somewhere on Air Force One, takes 54,000 gallons of jet fuel and the usual US Marine jet escort to fly above at 35,000 feet.
Don’t be surprised if Joe is piloting Air Force One, he was a truck driver, you can believe he is a jet pilot too.
Surely you can sacrifice your own personal transportation so the elites can burn jet fuel night and day. It’s only fair for you to be compelled to do your part. You’ll eliminate your cognitive dissonance. You will have a set of rules to follow, not yours, theirs.
If they can’t consume all the jet fuel they want, there’ll be something seriously wrong and it’ll be all your fault. Rule number one: It’s your fault.
Shake those chains, wear the mask, you’ll be safe and sound. Go get jabbed, you’ll be happy you did. You’ll thank Pfizer for nothing.
The math is wrong, so sotty. 100,000,000 vehicles fueling 15 gallons equals 1,500,000,000 gallons or 35.7 million barrels of fuels. Off by a factor of 10, everybody makes mistakes.
Easily has to be 250,000,000 vehicles fueling 35 million barrels of fuels each day.
More like it anyhow.
hi Drumphish
crashing again today…haha
https://finviz.com/futures_charts.ashx?p=d1&t=ES
The Chevy Volt just solves the problems of range anxiety, fuel consumption and pollution, cost, efficiency, and flexibility too well.
Too well, that is, if your goals are NOT to reduce pollution and fuel consumption…if you know what I mean!
“It doesn’t matter that it’s hardly any. Nor that hardly anything objectively harmful is “emitted.”
And yet, when the same argument is applied to windmills and solar panels, we’re told that having gas turbines as a backup is OK because at least it’s a reduction in emmissions for electricity.
Of course the real reason is because the “wise overlords” and oligarcs don’t believe you’ll actually remember to plug in your hybrid. Why they even conducted a survey and found out just that sort of thing!
https://www.fleetevolution.com/are-people-charging-their-hybrid-car/
If you read the link, you’ll see that once again The Science™ is cherry picking data to suit Uncle’s needs. But then if you read the orignal story (link in my self-reply to avoid the spam filter) past the first paragraph you’ll notice that the study was on fleet and rental vehciles, not purchased by individuals. Well, I drive a fleet vehicle and unless my employer is going to pay me to charge at home, it ain’t gonna happen. In fact the price of fuel barely registers when I fill up the work truck. But you better believe I shop around for fuel for my personal vehicle, and if I went to all the trouble of buying a plug-in hybrid, having the charging port installed, etc I’d be sure to use it! And who the hell would ever plug in a rental car anyway? How many charging stations are there at hotels, two maybe? Heck, I’d be surprised if under half the rentals don’t come back with piss and washer fluid in the tank anyway.
Here’s the link to the BBC article:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-46152853
Your government is pushing EV’s? Why?
China has infiltrated all levels of governments, taken control, (check out the leftist/communist takeover), your politicians bought off, paid to push the EV agenda.
Anybody pushing EV’s is a paid ccp shill.
Who benefits the most from the EV vehicle conversion? china does.
All the most important components in the new EV’s are all made in china. Then you are dependent on china for replacement parts, etc., in effect they take over the whole vehicle supply chain. Vehicle production then centralized in China.
BMW i3 is quicker then the volt, BMW i3 0 to 60 mph = 7.4 secs., volt 0 to 60 mph = 8.4 secs
BMW i3 has higher top speed, is 500 lb. lighter, more fun to drive.
BMW fuel economy 134 mpg, Volt fuel economy 118 mpg
BMW i3 range electricity only 97 miles, another reason to buy it compared to volt..
Volt range electricity only 53 miles (probably the the reason they quit making them) , will be using gas engine more often = higher cost to run.
When the battery charge is used up the gas engine drives a generator that sends power to the electric motor, just keep filling the gas tank…… but……to charge the battery back up it must be plugged in……. the gas engine/generator can’t charge up the battery.
In the Volt on the highway only there was also a direct link between the engine and the transmission also, so it is a hybrid.
mx30 about the same range electric only as the i3
The BMW i3 and the Volt can still be driven just on the gas engine, when the battery is dead, worn out, finished, but with reduced performance,
a Prius will not run just on the gas engine when the battery is completely dead, finished, end of life, completely worn out.
The Volt was the best hybrid ever made, in my opinion. It’s gas engine wasn’t just a generator, it drove the wheels on the highway. The reason is that it’s more efficient to turn wheels via the engine than to turn a generator which powers an electric motor. So, whenever it could get away with it while running on gasoline, the Volt would actually drive the wheels with the combustion engine, it makes sense.
Toyota’s planetary hybrid transmission which blends two electric motors/generators and the gasoline engine is freaking brilliant as well.
So, I don’t think that Mazda can get away with a Wankel engine to spin just a generator.
BMW i3 had no connection between gas engine and transmission, the Volt did on the highway, they both had range extender gas engine/generator connected to the electric motor design, so they could continue on with a depleted battery, with an EV you phone as tow truck when the battery dies, haha..
Wonder what the reasoning was behind choosing a rotary engine? (Other trhan may Mazda having a surplus of them). Rotaries are notoriously inefficient- They get crappy MPGs compared to a normal injun. Seems kinda strange that they would pair a notoriously inefficient gas engine with a greenie-weenie virtue-signaler’s delight.
42MPG? (“Your mileage may vary” -always less in the real world, of course) isn’t too impressive considering that the cheap low-technology small Jap cars of 45 years ago could get that. So why do we need the addition of electric motors, electronics, a generator and a ginormous battery, again? (Well, because Soy-Boy would be embarrassed to drive that little old simple Toyota or Datsun, since it isn’t “state of the art” and has little credo with the virtue-signalers)
The rotary engine is very small and very light, and smooth, a piston engine is bigger and heavier, so the rotary is perfect for space management.
Rotary engines are physically small and light weight with less parts.
Those old light weights are illegal to sell as new cars. They would never pass modern crash safety regs.
VW made a lightweight diesel hybrid that got almost 300 mpg, that was a better solution then EV’s.
A Mk4 VW Jetta diesel could get over 50 mpg on the Highway, with a huge range.
A Mk 1 VW 1800 lb., was fitted with a Mk 4 turbo diesel, it was fast, 0 to 60 in about 6 seconds and got 65 mpg highway. That is better then an EV in lots of ways.
The VW 4 cyl 1.9 lt. diesel was so good it was swapped into lots of small trucks, etc., more then 450 lb ft torque possible, great fuel economy, can last 500,000 miles.
Gasoline engines produce around 40 percent more carbon dioxide (CO2) than diesel engines, catalytic converters cannot reduce the CO2 produced by the engine.
Diesel engines emit more N2O and CH4 then gas engines but there are measures that can be taken to reduce diesel emissions. Diesel fuel catalysts, catalytic converters, and particle filters can reduce emissions greatly.
The air coming out of the tailpipe on a modern diesel is cleaner then the air in a big city.
The GAIA religion/green/globalist/ one world government killed the diesel over N2O and the gas engine soon over CO2, they say zero emissions is the law soon, the exhaust coming out of an ICE engine is something like .00001% pollutants but that is higher then 0%, so they will be banned, this is insanity.
.0000001% emissions and they are worried about it, that isn’t science, it is political now.
EV’s aren’t zero emissions either, they are remote emissions and have a dozen other far bigger issues, including pollution (production and recyling), safety, cost, charging time, weight, battery life, not enough chargers, grid can’t supply the electricity = insanity, etc. .
The odds are over 0% that there is a huge agenda that has nothing to do with global warming.
You will own nothing, gates will still drive his 959 Porsche.
https://peakoil.com/consumption/volkswagens-new-300-mpg-car-not-allowed-in-america-because-it-is-too-efficient
Hi Anon,
If more people knew about the VW diesel hybrid – that was capable of 300 MPG (or even 100 MPG) the whole EV shibboleth would have crashed before it got under way. And that’s why the “dieselgate scandal” happened.
hi Eric
Yes that VW hybrid was a great idea but the government won’t allow it
check this out
Cost comparison Diesel vs EV…..
A Mk 1 VW Golf 1800 lb., was fitted with a Mk 4 turbo diesel, it was fast, 0 to 60 in about 6 seconds and got 65 mpg highway. That is better then an EV in lots of ways.
65 mpg = 1.5 gallons to go 100 miles @ $4.00 a gallon = $6.00
travelling 100 miles in an average EV uses 1.03 gallons equivalent of fuel = 34.7 kwh of electricity @ $0.16 per kwh = $5.55, that is the net amount,
1 gallon at the car = 4 gallons burnt back at the power plant…tax payers pay for the other 3 gallons burnt to produce the electricity…..3 gallons @ $4.00 gallon = $12.00
The diesel used 1.5 gallons to go 100 miles = $6.00, the EV in reality (fuel burnt at power plant), used 4 gallons of fuel = $16.00, The EV used 160% more fuel to go 100 miles, this is 160% more waste and pollution……
(under not ideal conditions this can easily double = $11.10, the cost to charge the EV).
under ideal conditions but at top speed a mercedes EV used 90 kwh of electricity in 100 miles which = 3 gallons of gas ………90 kwh of electricity is $14.40
3 gallons at the car = 12 gallons burnt back at the power plant…tax payers pay for the other 9 gallons burnt to produce the electricity….. 9 gallons @ $4.00 gallon = $36.00
BUT ATTENTION: There is an additional cost for the EV owner: the tesla $22,000 battery is used up, worn out in 100,000 miles. this works out to $22.00 per 100 miles it is costing you for the battery. So the EV owner has to pay another $22.00 per 100 miles to pay for the battery, the diesel car owner doesn’t have that extra cost.
So if you add the battery cost to the electricity cost $5.55 plus $22.00 = $27.55, so it really cost the EV owner $27.55 to go 100 miles,
the diesel owner only paid $6.00 to go 100 miles. the diesel owner wins……
NOTE: Thermal efficiency of power plants using coal, petroleum, natural gas or nuclear fuel and converting it to electricity are around 33% efficiency, natural gas is around 40%. Then there is average 6% loss in transmission, then there is a 5% loss in the charger, another 5% loss in the inverter, the electric motor is 90% efficient so another 10% loss before turning the electricity into mechanical power at the wheels.
33% – 6% – 5% – 5% – 10% = 25% efficiency for EV’s.
(under not ideal conditions it might be 12% efficient).
An Ev is 25% efficient in turning original source of energy, petroleum in this example into mechanical energy to push the car down the road.
Eric,
I just went to Mazda’s website, and they bill the MX-30 as a total EV. When I looked at the specs, it only talked about its electric motor and battery; there was no mention of a rotary engine powering a generator. Were you talking about a previous edition MX-30?
Belay my last. If Mazda produces this, I just might BUY one! The vast majority of my driving is local, mainly to feed the stray cats and run errands. The big thing I worry about is depleting my 12V battery, because I’m seldom running for more than 5-10 minutes at a time. Something like this would be PERFECT! Of course, I’d have to figure out which fuel stabilizer to use… 🙂
I agree, Mark –
I also like the crossover layout – in this context – and the suicide door, too. Very useful use of space, etc.
Hi Mark,
No, this is a pending iteration of the vehicle; it’s not yet available – though the electric only iteration of the MX-30 is.
The MX-30 with the rotary engine ‘range extender’ hasn’t officially launched in the USA. Release date is ‘first half 2022’ so they have until the end of June generally by that meaning.
I hope you continue to shine the light of truth Eric. Recently had to stay in a hotel for a few days while on the road. I left the Tee Vee on for back ground noise while getting ready in the AM. Nearly every Nuuwz show was touting the wonder of EVs. Some dumb broad who worked for the ministry of propaganda was taking her teen age kid on a cross country trip. Weeee. How fun, how wonderful. Just plug the little do-hicky in and go.
Also saw the VP of Nissan electric, some faggoty looking android character named Alfonso something or other. Telling the reporteresssse how the maintenance costs on these vehicles is almost non existent for ten years or more. According to the man in the mirror, the expense you pay up front for EVs, despite being more than an ICE vehicle is the only cost.
The reporteressse lapped it up like a kitten before a warm bowl of milk. I guess no one ever told her about the correlation between tits, wheels, and trouble.
Hope the woman taking her kid on the cross country trip keeps her sail fawn charged, she’s going to need it to call for a tow truck when the battery dies on a long stretch of empty road.
Funny thing Mike, the kid looked to be 15 or 16 and was sitting in the back seat, probably for safety. If I had to guess I’d say she probably just recently learned to wipe her own ass.
Yeah, no maintenance for ten years until the battery fucks off and the car becomes a worthless brick. No thanks to buying a disposable roadgoing sail fawnn
‘Nearly every Nuuwz show was touting the wonder of EVs.’ — Norman Franklin
Likewise the dead-tree liberal Gannett ‘papers,’ such as the Arizona HillaRepublic [it endorsed Clinton in 2016]. They endlessly review new EVs in glowing terms, including one this morning, as they slang evil Republicans and evil tax cuts.
Meanwhile the robust TWT correlation you cite — backed by mountains of empirical evidence — has yet to be featured in any academic journal. Go figure …
The TWT correlation is like an ancient algorithm. When they showed her plugging in, the only thing I could think of was the Geiko commercial circa 2022. ‘So easy a modern woman can do it.’
EV vs ICE cost comparison:
travelling 100 miles in an EV uses 1.03 gallons equivalent of fuel = 34.7 kwh of electricity @ $0.16 per kwh = $5.55, that is the net amount, at the power plant 4 gallons of fuel were burnt to get a net 1 gallon of fuel equivalant 34.7 kwh used by the EV. If they paid the full cost it would = $22.20
(under not ideal conditions this can easily double = $11.10).
under ideal conditions but at top speed this mercedes EV used 90 kwh of electricity in 100 miles which = 3 gallons of gas
Under not ideal conditions the EV efficiency drops a lot, might use twice as much energy to go 100 miles. Using the electric heater and the rear defroster and wipers in an EV reduces range. In very cold conditions the battery range can drop 50%. If the range drops 50% it costs twice as much to go 100 miles
travelling 100 miles in a 50 mpg diesel powered car uses 2 gallons of fuel
Thermal efficiency of power plants using coal, petroleum, natural gas or nuclear fuel and converting it to electricity are around 33% efficiency, natural gas is around 40%. Then there is average 6% loss in transmission, then there is a 5% loss in the charger, another 5% loss in the inverter, the electric motor is 90% efficient so another 10% loss before turning the electricity into mechanical power at the wheels.
33% – 6% – 5% – 5% – 10% = 25% efficiency for EV’s.
(under not ideal conditions it might be 12% efficient).
An Ev is 25% efficient in turning original source of energy, petroleum in this example into mechanical energy to push the car down the road.
So to end up with 34.7 kwh of electricity which is equivalent to 1.02 gallons of gas to push the EV 100 miles down the road 4.08 gallons of fuel were burnt to generate the electricity in the power station, remember net 25% efficiency.
The mercedes EV used 90 kwh of electricity to go 100 miles = 3 gallons of gas, but to get that 90 kwh of energy 12 gallons of petroleum were burnt at the power plant.
90 kwh@ $0.16 per kwh = $14.40 12 gallons of fuel were burnt at the power plant for $14.40 = $1.20 per gallon
travelling 100 miles in a 50 mpg diesel uses 2 gallons of fuel @ $4.00 per gallon = $8.00
So it cost $14.40 for the Mercedes EV to go 100 miles. It cost the diesel car owner $8.00 to go 100 miles.
There is an additional cost for the EV owner: the tesla $22,000 battery is used up, worn out in 100,000 miles. this works out to $22.00 per 100 miles it is costing you for the battery. So the EV owner has to pay another $22.00 per 100 miles to pay for the battery, the diesel car owner doesn’t have that extra cost.
The Mercedes EV owner paid $1.20 per gallon for fuel. The diesel owner paid $4.00 per gallon. One reason is the diesel owner is paying up to 50% tax in the fuel cost, partly to pay for the roads, the EV owner paid no tax in the fuel and uses the roads for free. The tax payers are subsidizing the cost of the electricity the EV owner is using. The EV owner is a freeloader.
Ice car owners should ask EV owners for money to use their roads they paid for.
Green pumpers say burning 4 gallons or 12 gallons of fuel to go 100 miles is cleaner, safer, less wasteful then burning 2 gallons of fuel…..hahaha
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BSdq-MpPdg&t=113s
Depreciation is the biggest cost in a car (unless it is a collectable car like an old air cooled 911)
this is the big hidden cost in Ev’s and hybrids, the deal killer, that depreciation would buy you a lot of fuel in your ice vehicle.
Electric cars depreciate over two times faster than their internal combustion engine counterparts, a serious black mark when it comes to tallying up your actual yearly cost to run your vehicle!
https://crestlineautotransport.com/blog/electric-vehicle-depreciation/
Study: EVs Cost More to Repair, Less to Maintain
Service Advantage Goes to Gas
Service visits – those that involve diagnosing and repairing a problem – were a different story.
During the first three months of ownership, EVs were 2.3 times as expensive to service as gasoline-powered cars. At the 12-month mark, repair costs were about 1.6 times what owners of gas-powered cars paid.
It’s Not Parts. It’s Labor
Why the extra expense?
Because EV problems took longer to diagnose and repair. Technicians spent 1.5 times as many hours working on EVs as they did on gasoline-powered cars. And those technicians cost more, to begin with. Working on EVs requires additional certifications most mechanics don’t have. Those that do charge about 1.3 times the average hourly rate.
https://www.kbb.com/car-news/study-evs-cost-more-to-repair-less-to-maintain/
Repairing Ev’s is a big problem now, nobody knows how to fix them, they are very dangerous to work on because of the very high voltage (lots of places won’t work on them for that reason), they are very complex compared to an internal combustion engine, they are new technology so people don’t understand them, so very difficult to diagnose. If you break down in L.A. there probably will be a repair place that can fix your EV, if you are in a small town somewhere good luck getting it fixed.
In ice vehicles most places would do no diagnosis, tech’s won’t do it because they aren’t paid to do it, so why should they. They would use the parts cannon….just keep replacing parts hoping it fixes it, instead of doing diagnostics properly, the customer got robbed.
Using the parts cannon on an EV could get expensive in a hurry, like a $4000 non returnable circuit board, it would be hard to hide your screw up.
So they are ramming these very difficult and expensive to repair EV’s down our throat.
The notion of running electric motors with power generated from the engine is ancient tech. Trains have been doing so for many decades. If it didn’t work, they would have stopped even before the Interstate Highway system destroyed their market.
So it is a gas-electric like the trains are diesel-electrics. It is a lot easier to optimize an engine at a certain RPM than across the band. The Mazda engine does sound like a good idea, personally I’m still waiting for someone to run a sterling engine as a generator. Something like that could run off a variety of fuel sources- it isn’t plausible for the road but even off wood.
Mazda has the right idea with this one. A rotary is so small it shouldn’t impose a large space or weight penalty to an otherwise small batteried electric car. Rotaries are also the smoothest IC engines ever used in production cars due to their lack of reciprocating mass and self balancing design. The question remains though, has mazda minimized the rotaries drawbacks of high fuel and oil consumption, emissions and engine wear enough to make it viable for the idiot masses. People already fail to check their fluids when filling up so I fear even less will check when plugging in.
On a totally different topic, guy gets 41mpg from 70’s v8 shitbox using a “lawnmower” carb. Watch and take notes before its gone!
Pt1
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gmPtCmL-Ldw
Pt2
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RnvJjheatRw
Pt3
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1xHQWu2ZzPc
I have not studied the issue, but I seem to recall that Mazda has indeed addressed some of the failures of their rotary engine, or were at least engaged in trying to. There is no doubt that they solve any weight and space problem. The RX engines were smaller, and weighed less than their transmissions.
This is top shelf, AC – thanks for the links!
If this guy can get 41 MPG out of a 302 Maverick, I wonder what the same/similar set up could work on a four cylinder that already gets 41 MPG?
I had the same thoughts Eric. Unfortunately I only have an early honda ridgeline. I’ve tried introducing vaporized gas which makes the fuel injection back way off which got me 26 mpg highway compared to the normal 18 to 20 at best. The stock ECU’s are rigged though and on restart the brain defaults to a safe mode that uses preset fuel trims (causing a super rich condition with the vapor fuel) and shuts off the vtm4 making the ridgeline front wheel drive only. I feel this is the deliberate reason why cars were forced to electronic engine and transmission control, to burn more gas and keep those cats super hot.
I figured you’d like the videos since the firechicken is carbed, maybe in a pinch it could be your greatest depression daily driver.
I’m personally keeping my eyes out for any 70s or 80s econobox to tinker on… I’d even take a citation at this point!
Oh yeah, uhm… You’re an auto journalist, can you interview and document this mans achievement before it gets memory holed?
I keep saying it, if it were legal to build a late 70s early 80s lightweight with a modern engine or even a modern version of the computerized carburetor (that’s essentially what his gizmo is, a way of maintaining proper fuel air/mixture with electronic controls) it would hit 50mpg. But of course the government has made those lightweights illegal to sell new.
’79-’82 Fox Mustang with a 2022 ecoboost 4 cylinder engine and drivetrain would simply be amazing.
engine wear…..it is a range extender, wouldn’t be running a lot, if the owner remembers to plug …..
It’s almost as if low emissions isn’t the real issue
I do see the serial hybrid as the only solution to EV that has a real chance, but will the ability to keep traveling for long distances at a time be allowed?
Well it is a lot more practical of an electric vehicle than an all out electric only vehicle. Charging would be a bit easier from home as the battery would be smaller and as for the gas breaking down the website “pure-gas.org” lists stations selling ethanol free gasoline and with some stabilizer thrown in you should be good to go.