Random Thoughts of Chris Tilley

I was reading an article today on the new Chevrolet Volt concept car. GM is looking to have it in production by 2010. It will go 40 miles on a charge, city driving. One point that was missing is what its top speed is on electric. For me that can be an issue as I need to do highway speeds to get to work and some of the ones I looked have the engine come on over 40 mph.

In my research I came across EV World. I was trying to work out the cost and the carbon footprint and they had done all the work already. Basically a 60 mile commute works out to $0.72 electric versus $4.40 for gas. The carbon works out to 40 lbs for the gas. I corrected the carbon number based on this website. I was trying to figure out how one gallon of gas could result in 20 lbs of CO2. They explain it very well. The electric works out to 10lbs. They used 20 lbs of carbon per gallon of gas and 1.4 lbs per kWh. That differs from my 1.6 but it would depend on how they are generating the electricity. Where I am it is almost all hydro and would be zero lbs.

There are a number of competitors to the Volt particularly Toyota although the Volt seem to be ahead of the curve on this one. Good going glad to see a US automaker taking the lead.