DETROIT — The Chevrolet Volt, General Motors’ first foray into electric vehicles, is expected to get the equivalent of 93 miles per gallon of gasoline in combined city and highway driving while powered by its batteries.
The compact car, which can go about 35 miles on battery power before a gasoline engine kicks in to generate electricity, will get 37 mpg when running on the generator alone, GM said. In a driving cycle that combines battery and generator power, the car will get 60 mpg, GM said.
The figures, all estimates from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, will appear on the Volt’s window sticker when the car goes on sale sometime next month. It’s the EPA’s best effort to come up with a realistic measure of gas mileage for electric cars just as GM and Nissan Motor Co. introduce them to the masses in a few weeks.
GM last year said the Volt should get the equivalent of 230 miles per gallon in city driving under draft EPA guidelines for calculating electric car mileage, bragging that it could be the first car to break triple digits in gas mileage. But Doug Parks, the Volt’s vehicle line executive for GM, said Wednesday that 230 mpg calculation was based on an early set of assumptions that tried to equate the energy used to recharge the car with gasoline use.
Under the final calculation, the EPA determined the gas mileage for the Volt when it’s on battery power by coming up with a gas mileage equivalent to the amount of electricity it takes to recharge the car. With the Volt, it takes 12.9 kilowatt-hours of electricity to recharge the car at 240 volts. The calculation is based on a formula that equates 33.7 kilowatt-hours to use of a gallon of gasoline.
Mileage for the Volt will vary dramatically depending on how much a driver uses the gasoline generator, Parks said. The longer the car is driven, the closer it will get to the 37 mpg figure. But if it’s driven less than 35 or 40 miles per day and is recharged at night, the car would essentially use no gas, he said.
In full-electric mode, the Volt is expected to get the equivalent of 95 mpg in the city and 90 on the highway, according to EPA estimates, GM said.
Running on only the gas generator, the Volt is expected to get 35 mpg in the city and 40 on the highway, GM said.
GM said the Volt’s total range on a tank of gas is 379 miles, including the miles traveled on battery power.
GM has been building Volts at a factory that straddles the border of Detroit and the small enclave of Hamtramck, Mich., but hasn’t been able to put them on sale without the EPA mileage sticker. Parks would not say how many had been produced, but said he expects sales to start next month.
“Our expectation, to be based on all of our final checks so to speak, and everything being green, we would ship here in the near future, with our first customers getting vehicles here in December,” he said.
The Volt will compete with Nissan’s Leaf. Nissan said earlier in the week that the EPA estimate for its car would be 106 mpg in city driving and 92 mpg on the highway.
The EPA’s tests estimate the Leaf can travel 73 miles on a fully charged battery and will cost $561 a year in electricity. Nissan has said the Leaf can travel 100 miles on a full charge, based on tests used by California regulators.
Nissan will start selling the Leaf in California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona and Tennessee in December with a sticker price of $32,780. The Leaf will go on sale in other markets through 2011 and be available nationwide by the end of next year.
The Volt will have a sticker price of $41,000 and GM will sell it first in California, then make it available in New York; New Jersey; Connecticut; Washington, D.C.; Michigan and Texas. The car will be sold nationwide in 12 to 18 months.
Both vehicles qualify for a $7,500 federal tax credit. Some states and communities are offering additional tax breaks that will lower the price further.
The EPA calculated the Leaf’s fuel economy based on a charging time of seven hours on a 240-volt charge. Cost estimates were based on 15,000 miles per year at 12 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Business, Pages 22 on 11/29/2010