IBxAnders, Author at Electric Vehicle Forums - Page 11 of 21

Battle of the Titans it ain’t.

But for the third month in a row, Chevrolet sold more Volt range-extended electric cars than Nissan delivered Leaf plug-ins.

During February, Nissan delivered 67 Leaf battery electric hatchbacks, bringing its two-month total to 154.

Adding in the 19 delivered in December since the first one went to Olivier Chaloub, there are now 174 Nissan Leafs quietly humming around the States.

Chevrolet delivered 281 Volts in February, for a 2011 total of 602. It also delivered 326 in December, so right now, Volts outnumber Leafs on the streets of the U.S. by more than five to one.

The February results roughly continue the ratio from January, when the Volt outsold the Leaf 321 to 87.

Nissan has admitted that its Leaf deliveries have fallen behind schedule, but attributes the delays to ensuring the quality of the earliest Leaf models remained as high as the company expected.

Higher volumes of the Leaf should start to arrive this spring, although February didn’t produce the flood of deliveries that some owners had expected.

The first 2011 Nissan Leaf was delivered in San Francisco on December 12, and the first 2011 Chevrolet Volt followed just three days later in New Jersey.

[Chevrolet, Nissan]

This story originally appeared at Green Car Repor

Sweden has, for several years, led the world in per-capita green-car ownership. And it’s managed to strengthen economically without increasing industrial carbon emissions.

But it’s emitting more from its tailpipes. Swedes are driving more—enough to wipe away any the gains from greener cars—and overall vehicle emissions have risen in this land of sustainability and forward thinking.

Thanks to greener new cars—a combination of clean-diesel, bi-fuel (E85), and biogas (mostly compressed natural gas) vehicles—along with an aggressive program to scrap older guzzlers, the country has cut carbon dioxide emissions by 165,000 tons.

Cars have become greener…and overall emissions rose?

But while per-car carbon-dioxide emissions decreased from 164 to 151 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilometer driven, and biofuels made up a record 5.6 percent of Sweden’s vehicle fuels in 2010, people drove more and overall motor-vehicle emissions actually rose by about 110,000 tons, according to recent data from the Swedish Transportation Agency, Trafikverket.

Green cars, such as these, are exempt from the congestion tax in Stockholm, Sweden’s capital and largest city, and given other perks—which might be among the reasons why clean diesels have gone from 40 percent of new-car sales there in 2009 up to 49 percent in 2010.

The same has been happening here in the U.S., where motorists drove more in 2010—about 0.7 percent more, or 20.5 billion additional vehicle miles in all—versus 2009, according to new data released by the Department of Transportation this week. Considering the greening of the fleet through the federal government’s Cash for Clunkers program in 2009, it’s likely we’ll see slight improvement in U.S. motor-vehicle carbon-dioxide emissions (the numbers aren’t yet out).

The Swedish agency points to public transport, cycling, and train travel, and emphasizes that societal and infrastructural changes are needed.

If one of the most socially conscious nations in the world isn’t succeeding at that, we have quite the global hurdle, considering that car ownership continues to soar in China, India, and other emerging markets.

Do hybrids and other green cars let owners rationalize more driving?

In all fairness, without seeing a deeper level of data, we can’t say that those who are buying greener cars in Sweden are driving them more.

But the trend goes along with what has been observed in the U.S.—for example, from San Francisco-based Quality Planning, which observed in a large-scale study from 2009 that hybrid owners drive up to 25 percent more than non-hybrid owners, largely offsetting any gasoline savings.

There’s been a longtime debate in green circles, though, as to whether those who intend to drive more are attracted to hybrids, or whether hybrid ownership allows them to rationalize driving longer distances.

And it leads to an interesting question: If you green the fleet quite dramatically, or provide special perks to those who drive green cars, does it invite people to drive more?

Tell us what you think in the Comments below.

[Trafikverket, via TreeHugger]

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This story originally appeared at Green Car Repor

Power, efficiency, luxury–you can have it all, and the entry price is just $53,700. That’s the price of the 2012 Infiniti M35 Hybrid, announced today ahead of the start of retail sales March 16.

Infiniti bills the M Hybrid as the only car in America to offer 350 horsepower in combination with a 30-plus highway mpg rating, and it looks secure in that title for the present. Only Porsche’s brand-new Panamera S Hybrid looks poised to challenge it in the near future, and it costs about $40,000 more than the M.

Competition from Lexus’ GS450h hybrid, which is $5,000 dearer, 10 horsepower weaker, and considerably less attractive to our eyes, should post little threat to the Infiniti–especially since the GS hybrid scores just 22/25 mpg according to the EPA.

We’ll have to get behind the wheel of one before we can render final judgment on the car’s capabilities in the real world, but considering TheCarConnection‘s 8.8/10 overall rating and strong scores in features, styling, and performance, we’re expecting good things.

This story originally appeared at Motor Authori

Hyundai is no friend to cheating spouses, that’s for sure. Of course, neither is Congress (despite the recent Craigslist antics of former Representative Chris Lee).

But perhaps we should start at the beginning.

‘Vast defect’ ?!?!?

We’ve gotten several notes over the past few weeks from Colorado reader Bob A, saying:

Hyundai Sonata HYBRID again delays release of HYBRID cars in U.S. – vast defect suspected – Hyundai has NO hybrid Sonata cars at U.S. dealers – what’s going on?

We are usually skeptical of “vast defects,” but our suspicions grew when Hyundai refused to give Sonata Hybrid sales for January. It said only that it had sold 4,792 vehicles with EPA highway ratings of 40 mpg or better, which includes the high-volume new 2011 Elantra as well as the Sonata Hybrid.

Growing suspicions

Sales of the car have begun, but Hyundai won’t say how many? Even Nissan copped to selling a mere 19 of its 2011 Leaf electric cars in December, and 87 in January. Hmmmmmm.

As it turns out, there was indeed a last-minute delay, although Hyundai Motors America CEO John Krafcik says the first 2011 Sonata Hybrid was delivered by Hardin Hyundai in Anaheim, California, in January.

But a last-minute specification change made “amazingly late in the process,” in November–with production scheduled to start in December–meant that Hyundai “ended up losing a couple of weeks of production timing,” Krafcik said.

So what was this all-important change?

Making silent electric cars noisier

It was the removal of a function that allowed drivers to disable the “virtual engine sound” that the Sonata Hybrid automatically broadcasts when it switches off the actual engine in all-electric mode below roughly 12 miles per hour.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), in its wisdom–and at the behest of politically powerful pressure group the National Federation for the Blind–is writing rules that will require all hybrid and electric cars to make noise at low speeds.

There appears to be little or no actual data that quiet hybrid or electric cars have caused additional injuries to blind or sight-impaired pedestrians. Nonetheless, the rules are coming.

Changes to wiring harness, software, manuals

Knowing that, and not wanting a few early Sonata Hybrids to behave differently than later models, Krafcik said the company “made the difficult choice” in November to remove the noise-disabling ability. That was a function that had been designed into the car since the beginning of the program.

This required changes to the wiring harness, the user-interface software, and even the Owner’s Manual, which had already been finalized. Those changes were made in November and December.

So, all production versions of the 2011 Hyundai Sonata Hybrid will make engine noises even when their engines switch off. So much for sneaking home quietly late at night.

Europeans, who called the electric-vehicle-only mode on Toyota Prius hybrids the “cheating husband button,” must be laughing their heads off.

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This story originally appeared at Green Car Repor

Our reader Jonathan P asks:

I have a 1997 Saturn that, remarkably, is still running. It probably has the book value of a large watermelon, so if anything major goes wrong with it, that’s the end of that.

If that Saturn were a hybrid, I’m guessing the battery pack would have died about four years ago, give or take. But replacing a battery pack would be a huge expense, no? And the older the car gets, the less incentive there is to incur this huge expense.

So it seems to me that hybrids have a significant built-in obsolescence factor–while at the same time their higher up-front cost means you need to hold on to them longer to recoup the cost.

What, then, is the logic behind buying a hybrid…or an electric, for that matter…over an efficient gasoline or diesel vehicle?

Good question, Jonathan.

It’s not about payback, necessarily

First, many of the people who have bought hybrids like the Toyota Prius didn’t do so for the “payback,” or the money they’ll save on gasoline. Instead, they wanted the car to make a public statement about their values. Just like buying a HUMMER, only, ummmm, different.

The broader universe of car buyers who say they want a green car really want to save money. So they may or may not buy a hybrid, since retail buyers routinely overweight the importance of purchase price and ignore the impact of total cost of ownership (maintenance, repairs, gasoline cost) over the lifetime of the car.

Whether a hybrid really save you money depends on your duty cycle: whether you spend a lot of time in stop-and-go urban traffic, where its engine switches off frequently and it can move under electric power alone for short distances, or whether you do hundreds of miles a day on freeways, in which case a clean diesel is a better bet.

Designed to last a lifetime

Second, a hybrid’s high-voltage battery pack generally doesn’t need to be replaced over the lifetime of the car–or at least the first decade.

The nickel-metal-hydride (and now lithium-ion) battery packs in hybrids are very different to 12-Volt lead-acid starter batteries. They’re considered part of the vehicle’s pollution control system by regulators, so they must be warrantied for either 8 years//100,000 miles or 10 years/150,000 miles (depending on your state).

Beyond that, automakers know very well that replacing a pack (a Gen II Prius pack costs about $2,500) would be a huge customer dissatisfaction issue. The packs are built with plenty spare energy capacity, and they control them to operate within a very narrow state-of-charge range, usually between 40 and 60 percent.

This reduces stress on the pack, prolonging its life. While there’s little public data so far on how long packs last, hundreds of hybrids have been used as taxis for 300,000 miles or more, and they still run fine.

The packs may not have 100 percent of their original energy capacity, but they still function as hybrids.

Battery chemistry is key

A technical note: The battery chemistries used by most manufacturers degrade only with duty cycles (usage) and NOT with time alone. Electric-car maker Tesla is one of the few exceptions: It uses consumer-grade lithium-ion cells, which lose energy capacity over time, even if you never use them.

So, while a hybrid car owner may theoretically need to replace the pack at some point, it most likely won’t be required until around the same time the car itself becomes uneconomical: 12 to 15 years or more.

As you point out, if your Saturn loses its engine, or even its transmission, there’s no sense in repairing it. The hybrid battery pack falls into that same group of components: the ones that usually last the life of the car, and whose failure determines when the car gets scrapped.

Toyota, incidentally, has said that the hybrid battery pack is one of its least-replaced items. The bulk of them are sold to repair accident damage, not because they failed.

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This story originally appeared at Green Car Repor

Gas prices got you all nervous? Figuring the days of cheap gas are over? Thinking about a new car with much better gas mileage?

Well, just because the EPA rates a specific car at the magic 40-mpg mark doesn’t mean you’ll actually get 40 mpg.

But the ratings are a good indicator of where cars stand relative to one another.

New: 2012 Ford Focus SFE

The latest entry to cross the 40-mpg threshold is the 2012 Ford Focus SFE, one specific model of the all-new Focus compact that’s now shipping to Ford dealers.

The 2012 Focus fitted with that “Super Fuel Economy” package and a six-speed automatic transmissionis rated at 28 mpg city, 40 mpg highway.

“Our customers tell us that fuel economy is the top reason for purchasing a Focus,” said Ford’s VP of global product development, Derrick Kuzak. “The all-new Focus meets that demand with great fuel economy, class-leading technologies … and driving dynamics typically reserved for larger, more expensive vehicles.”

Many 40-mpg choices

The 2012 Focus SFE joins an expanding list of cars–encompassing hybrids, clean diesels, and conventional gasoline vehicles–with EPA-rated gas mileage of at least 40 mpg on either the city or highway cycle.

That’s the crucial criterion that lets them blare “40 MPG !!!” in big letters on their ads.

We haven’t included battery electric or plug-in hybrids, e.g. the 2011 Nissan Leaf or 2011 Chevy Volt, in this list. Also, we’ve listed a specific transmission only if ratings differ among the transmission options.

2011 TOYOTA PRIUS: 51 mpg city, 48 mpg highway – 50 mpg combined

The world’s best-known hybrid vehicle, the Toyota Prius, is the undisputed fuel-efficiency champ in the U.S. market.

Toyota has sold more than 2 million hybrids, and this is their crowning achievement. You really will get mileage somewhere in the 40s, no matter how you drive it.

2011 LEXUS CT 200h: 43 mpg city, 41 mpg highway – 42 mpg combined

The newest, smallest Lexus, a compact five-door hatchback, is actually the second best rated car on the EPA’s list of gasoline vehicles.

It’s a car class down from the Prius, but it’s also more luxurious inside, and reviewers say it’s far more fun to drive.

But we’re still puzzled by the strange “Darker Side of Green” marketing campaign.

2011 HONDA CIVIC HYBRID: 40 mpg city, 43 mpg highway – 41 mpg combined

The all-new 2012 Honda Civic Hybrid will arrive this spring.

It’s expected to achieve a combined mileage rating of 45 mpg–which would boost it above the CT 200h into second place after the Prius.

There will also be a gasoline Civic HF model that is projected to hit the magic 40-mpg highway rating.

2011 HONDA INSIGHT: 40 mpg city, 43 mpg highway – 41 mpg combined

Honda’s subcompact hybrid hatchback has been a sales disappointment.

That may be, in part, because it competes with the superb 2011 Honda Fit five-door subcompact that gets decent mileage in the id-30s for almost $5,000 less.

This was one of Honda’s pair of new dedicated hybrids, but the other one, the 2011 CR-Z hybrid sports coupe, didn’t break the 40-mpg barrier.

2011 FORD FUSION HYBRID and LINCOLN MKZ HYBRID: 41 mpg city, 26 mpg highway – 39 mpg combined

Ford’s large midsize hybrid sedan was widely lauded on its introduction two years ago.

The Lincoln MKZ Hybrid model, new this year but largely the same under the skin, is the first car to price the V-6 gasoline and four-cylinder hybrid versions identically.

2011 HYUNDAI SONATA HYBRID: 35 mpg city, 40 mpg highway – 37 mpg combined

Despite some last-minute delays in getting Hyundai’s first hybrid to dealers, the 2011 Sonata Hybrid delivers superb fuel economy and a visually distinct appearance from the standard Sonata.

And its mileage is biased toward highway speeds, where Hyundai notes most U.S. drivers spend more than half their time.

2011 SMART FORTWO: 33 mpg city, 41 mpg highway – 36 mpg combined

They’re small, they’re not all that pleasant to drive, and their sales have plummeted.

Yes, they get decent gas mileage. But you can get much bigger and better cars that give you the same gas mileage.

Honestly, the automatic manual transmission shifts so abruptly, pitching the car
back and forth on its short wheelbase, that you really won’t enjoy the journey that much. ‘Nuff said.

2011 AUDI A3 TDI: 30 mpg city, 42 mpg highway – 34 mpg combined

Audi’s A3 TDI clean-diesel won the 2009 Green Car of the Year Award.

It’s a thrifty five-door compact hatchback that’s fun to drive, even if it’s getting a little long in the tooth now.

2011 VOLKSWAGEN GOLF TDI, JETTA TDI, and JETTA SPORTWAGEN TDI (6-spd manual): 30 mpg city, 42 mpg highway – 34 mpg combined

The 2011 VW Jetta is all new this year, though the Jetta Sportwagen model is carried over from the last few years.

Either way, they are offered with VW’s durable and high-mileage clean diesel TDI engine.

2011 FORD FIESTA SFE (6-spd automatic): 29 mpg city, 40 mpg highway – 33 mpg combined

This high-mileage option package on the subcompact Fiesta gets it to the magic 40-mpg mark.

The 2011 Fiesta is the first of Ford’s line of stylish, high-content European models to be brought to the States, and it’s a cut above the aging Toyota Yaris and some other contenders.

2011 HYUNDAI ELANTRA: 29 mpg city, 40 mpg highway – 33 mpg combined

Hyundai has aggressively promoted the 40-mpg ratings on all models of its all-new 2011 Elantra, even challenging other manufacturers to report monthly sales of their own 40-mpg models.

The Elantra’s room, styling, features, and fuel economy have all won it high marks from reviewers.

2011 CHEVROLET CRUZE ECO (6-spd manual): 28 mpg city, 42 mpg highway – 33 mpg combined

Chevy’s own Eco package on the new 2011 Cruze compact surpasses the 40-mpg mark, but only with the exceptionally high gearing of the six-speed manual model.

The automatic model is rated at just 26 mpg city, 37 mpg highway.

2012 FORD FOCUS SFE (6-spd automatic): 28 mpg city, 40 mpg highway – 32 mpg combined

And here it is, the latest of the growing list of 40-mpg models.

Yes, this too is a special-order package, but as Ford rather sniffily points out, at least it comes with an automatic, the type of transmission specified by 90 percent of all new-car buyers in the U.S.

[Ford, FuelEconomy.gov]

This story originally appeared at Green Car Repor