On Sun, 26 Feb 2012 19:18:48 +0700, John B.
wrote:
I got this in my e-mail today from one of the people I now who send
jokes rather then bothers to write.
I initially was going to delete it but after reading it I wondered.
Is there any accuracy in this ?
http://www.snopes.com/politics/business/chevyvolt.asp
No, not hardly. It's not as economically efficient as a regular car
when you figure in the added purchase price, but only by a little.
It's the huge government subsidies that aren't figured into the
operating costs that make it a stupid move.
------------------------
Cost to operate a Chevy Volt
Eric Bolling (Fox Business Channel's Follow the Money) test drove the
Chevy Volt at the invitation of General Motors.
According to General Motors, the Volt battery hold 16 kwh
of electricity. It takes a full 10 hours to charge a drained battery.
The cost for the electricity to charge the Volt is never mentioned so
I looked up what I pay for electricity.
I pay approximately (it varies with amount used and the seasons) $1.16
per kwh.
16 kwh x $1.16 per kwh = $18.56 to charge the battery.
That's the big whopper in the piece, I even balked at that one before
even seeing the Snopes link - they have their energy priced 10X too
high, and probably on purpose to make it sound worse.
Depending on the region and the transportation costs part of the power
price of course, it's more like $0.10 to $0.12 a KWH range from a
fossil-fuel fired plant, not $1.10 to $1.20.
Even less if it's generated with Hydro. Once you recover the costs
of building the dams the operation and maintenance is damned cheap,
and the fuel is essentially 'free'.
The only places you're going to find energy that expensive is on a
small barrier island or other isolated Off Grid location where you're
running and maintaining a local Diesel fired generator plant and
having the fuel shipped in. Or you have to lay a new undersea
transmission cable from the mainland every few years when it shorts
out and fails, and they fold all those costs into the billing rates.
But that's what the Rural Electrification Administration is for, to
subsidize those costs. Otherwise great swaths of the Midwest and
Rockies would still be lighting their houses with Kerosene lanterns.
-- Bruce --