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Consumers Confused Over Electric Vehicle MPG Claims

Posted on: Monday, 17 August 2009, 12:20 CDT

Many American consumers are citing confusing claims about the energy efficiency of electric cars heading for showrooms, Reuters reported.

Last week, General Motors said its upcoming Chevy Volt would get an unprecedented 230 miles per gallon in city driving, but critics jumped on GM's claim for the Volt as an example of brash marketing and fuzzy math.

Felix Kramer, head of California-based CalCars.org, a nonprofit advocacy group for plug-in electric vehicles, acknowledged that the sticker problem has not been solved yet.

The Toyota hybrid Prius has been the mass-market fuel-efficiency leader under the current rules. The current standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency give it a combined city and highway fuel economy rating of 50 miles per gallon.

But GM and other rivals are already making claims for their own would-be Prius killers -- rechargeable electric vehicles they say will get the equivalent of over 100 miles per gallon under still-evolving federal standards.

However, those claims rely on how typical drivers will behave and other unfamiliar concepts for most consumers, such as kilowatt-hours of electricity.

GM's Volt is being designed to run 40 miles on a fully charged battery before a small gas-powered engine kicks in as a generator to keep its battery from running out.

These celebrated claims about the Volt may have succeeded in distracting attention away from GM’s recent bankruptcy filing and the current financial crisis that caused it.

Meanwhile, the EPA said it could not verify the 230 mile-per-gallon claim since it has not yet tested the Volt. GM executives are planning a preliminary mileage estimate based on the draft standards that will govern the Volt and other electric cars.

And while the Volt is expected to lose money for GM, it remains the centerpiece of the automaker's effort to reinvent itself for skeptical U.S. consumers after the company’s bankruptcy.

GM product chief Tom Stephens said they have a commitment to being transparent for the Volt’s mileage claim.

The claim could confuse consumers about the costs of operating a car that will need to be both refueled at the pump and recharged overnight in a garage, according to Jonathan Linkov, who directs auto coverage for Consumer Reports.

He said misleading announcements like this aren't helping anyone and they create risks when real-world tests are eventually performed.

"What if the Volt doesn't live up to the hype?" Linkov wrote.

Nissan is now claiming its all-electric compact Leaf will get a whopping 367 miles per gallon in combined highway and city driving.

Part of the problem is that American consumers are only accustomed to thinking about fuel economy in miles per gallon of gasoline, according to most experts.

Michael Duoba, a research engineer at the Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, who heads a committee helping to craft the new U.S. standards to measure the performance of electric cars, said Americans are stuck with miles per gallon, but suggested we should be using fuel consumption, not fuel economy.

Some regulators hope the industry moves toward a more comprehensive measure of the total cost of operating battery-powered cars and the environmental cost of generating electricity for them.

Kramer believes the consumer wants a meaningful number of how much a mile of driving for them will cost, which is what he hopes the Environmental Protection Agency comes up with.

Duoba said he expected that the Volt would get mileage in the range of a conventional hybrid like the Prius in longer-range highway driving.

He said the 230-mile-per-gallon figure is based on a survey of typical driving habits conducted by the U.S. Department of Energy in 2001. It is based on the government finding that 75 percent of U.S. drivers travel less than 40 miles a day.

Duoba said it is critical that the public not get turned off because the numbers confuse them.

"The goal is to find an honest description of new technology performance," he said.

Source: redOrbit Staff & Wire Reports

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