market this.

[acroyear]

The Chevy Volt Gets 230 mpg? Only if you use bad math. : Good Math, Bad Math:

Here's a quick bit of obnoxious bad math. I saw this myself in a link to an AP article via Salon.com, and a reader sent me a link to the same story via CNN. It's yet another example of what I call a metric error: that is, the use of a measurement in a way that makes it appear to mean something very different than what it really means.

Here's the story. Chevy is coming out with a very cool new car, the Volt. It's a hybrid with massive batteries. It plugs in to your household electricity when you're home to charge its batteries. It operates as an electric car until its batteries start to get low, and then it starts running a small gas motor to power a generator. It's a very cool idea. I'm honestly excited about cars like the volt - and Google helped develop the technology behind it, which biases me even more in its favor. So you'd expect me to be very supportive of the hype around it, right? I wish I could. But GM has decided that the best way to promote it is to use bad math to tell lies to make it look even better than it really is.

Comments

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

it also seems to mean that you'd spend almost nothing for fuel. But the electricity is not free! (and the car itself is supposed to be in the range of $40,000)
So for now, it's an oddity, a novelty, and hopefully just a precursor of more practical transportation to come.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

it's been pointed out elsewhere that in general, the electric engines aren't (yet) more energy-efficient than pure gas (or diesel if you actually have clean fuel and a well-tuned engine, unlike most trucks these days). they only reduce the carbon footprint if the electricity that powers it is coming from nuclear, wind, solar, or water power. if it is coming from coal, its worse than coming from a gas engine.

[javasaurus.livejournal.com]

you raise good points!

I think there is generally confusion among the throngs about what we need in our cars. There are three factors used to push alternative car technologies on people: good for the environment, alternative fuel source, and cheaper to drive. These don't always overlap, but I think most consumers don't "get" this. E85 fuel will greatly extend the time that we have oil, but is not great for the environment. Electric cars (as you noted) have to get their electric from somewhere. Pure hydrogen doesn't grow on trees either. Maybe the Flintstones actually had the more advanced way to live!

[dawntreader]

"they only reduce the carbon footprint if the electricity that powers it is coming from nuclear, wind, solar, or water power. if it is coming from coal, its worse than coming from a gas engine."

i wonder how many people will think about that.

[thelongshot.livejournal.com]

I also read that it requires a 70A 220V circuit to charge the car. Not exactly something that people have lying around the house.

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

oh they do: it's usually connected to their clothes dryer. :)

[uncle-possum.livejournal.com]

From a different perspective. Encyclopedia Britannica, generally agreed to be among the best general encyclopedias, possibly the best in English, was routinely caught using unethical and even illegal sales tactics, including not only lies but implied intimidation (hiring school teachers to sell using the pitch that "your kid will do poorly in school unless you have one of these"). It may be a genetic trait in marketers that they can't just tell the truth.

(They seem to have cleaned up their act in the late 1980s, about the time when door to door sales just didn't work anymore)

[xpioti.livejournal.com]

A Chevy VP was (roasted) on Steve Colbert's show several months ago, and he talked about the Chevy Volt. One thing he focused on was that you can "pimp it up" (his words) by having a solar panel built into the roof. The expectation is that if you leave your car parked in a sunny parking lot all day, you won't need to worry about fuel. The reality? I'm skeptical.