Well, it looks like I finally got one right. Yesterday(LEAF or Volt), I predicted that the mysterious 230 number in GM’s ad campaign would turn out to be the MPG rating for the Volt, and it is.[1]

One site quoted a blog analysis that goes like this:

Mike Duoba from Argonne National Lab devised a method to determine the MPG of an EREV; first the car is driven from a full battery until it reaches charge-sustaining mode, then one more cycle is driven. If we use the highway schedule, the first 40 miles are electric. One more cycle is 11 more miles. If the Volt gets 50 MPG in charge sustaining mode, it will use .22 gallons of gas for that 11 miles. Thus 51 miles/.22 gallons = 231.8 MPG.

That seems perfectly reasonable to me. The fact is that once you get over about 30 miles/charge, the effective miles/gallon of liquid fuel calculation becomes pretty dicey, because you’re getting close to the average number of miles driven per day. That means you wind up with more and more days in the real-world mix where the total miles driven are less than the battery range, yielding an infinite MPG rating. Consider this yet another argument in favor of flipping the calculation to a European-style measurement of fuel consumer per distance traveled (they commonly use liters/kilometer).

Let me also follow up on something else I said yesterday in the same post, regarding the price for the Nissan LEAF. I mentioned a price of $20,000, which I got from statements like this one:

Nissan has promised that the Leaf, which goes into mass-production as a global model in 2012, will be about the same price as a gas-engine car such as the 1.5 million yen ($15,000) Tiida, which sells abroad as the Versa, starting at about $10,000.

But other sources are saying it will be in the $25,000 to $30,000 range. Nissan’s press release reverts to blatant crypticality in saying:

Pricing details will be announced closer to start of sales in late 2010; however, the company expects the car to be competitively priced in the range of a well-equipped C-segment vehicle.

(A “C segment” car is roughly a Toyota Corolla size vehicle.)

Given all the fudge factors sloshing about here, it’s probably safe to assume that by the time you glide out of the parking lot with a shiny new LEAF, the price, including the 100-mile battery pack, will be around $25,000, making my shorthand guesstimate of $20,000 about 20% low.

My view of the LEAF still holds, though. Even at $25,000 it will be such a perfect fit for many American consumers (multi-car households with easy, secure access to an overnight outlet) that I expect Nissan to be hard pressed to produce or buy batteries quickly enough to avoid long waiting lists.

[1] Thereby proving the old adage that even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while.


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