General Motors has unveiled its plug-in hybrid electric car, the Chevy Volt, which runs on a battery charged at an outlet for about 40 miles, and then it runs on a regular petroleum-powered internal combustion engine.
The official fuel efficiency as determined by the Environmental Protection Agency: 230 miles per gallon.
How did they get this number? It’s totally made up. If a Volt owner drives only to and from work each day, and it’s a 10 mile commute each way, the car basically gets infinite MPG, because he would recharge the battery every night (probably burning coal, but that’s a different story). But if someone looking at that 230 MPG number thought he could make this his only car, for use on vacations, longer commutes, heavy use during the day, he would be pretty upset when he learned that after 40 miles it was getting worse mileage than a Prius.
But the EPA, somehow (you can find a good guess here at the Green Sheet blog), came to the 230 mpg number, which is very impressive sounding, even if completely misleading.
The problem: the EPA is a sister company, in effect, of Chevrolet. The federal government is the majority owner of GM, the parent company of Chevy.
We’ve learned to be skeptical when a Merrill Lynch analyst gives a “buy” rating to a company in which Merrill has invested — shouldn’t we do the same when Uncle Sam gives the buy rating to a car Uncle Sam is selling?
