GM boss reveals Chevy Volt good for 230 mpg

After much scratching of America's collective head over the growing presence of this logo through US advertising space, Americans have found out what it's about.

At the New GM's media briefing yesterday, Fritz Henderson, CEO of "the new GM" revealed it as the expected fuel economy of its upcoming Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid: 230 miles per gallon.

When we tried to parlay that figure into L/100km, our online converter declared 230 US mpg was 'invalid data' -- it can only calculate up to 150. But manual calculation puts it at about 1.0L/100km.

In recent months the federal EPA has been drafting new fuel efficiency calculation method for plug-in vehicles like the Volt. It was under this new methodology that GM calculated the 230 figure.

That 230 is city cycle -- the conditions under which most of the Volt's driving would be all-electric. Even under combined cycle conditions, however, it's expected to achieve triple figures, making it the first mass produced vehicle of its kind to do so.

Using the same methodology, it's expected to achieve an electrical efficiency of around 25 kilowatt hours per 160km. (What does that mean? The kilowatt hour is the unit of measurement used to gauge the energy consumption of electrical appliances. One kWh equals 1000W consumed in an hour. A 2400W domestic heater running full bore will consume 2.4kWh in an hour. So perhaps not surprisingly given its size, weight and cargo capacity, it takes a fair bit of electrical energy to carry the Volt 160 km.)

But it's still much cheaper to run a car on electricity than directly on fossil fuels, as Henderson told live and web audiences. The Volt will be good for more than 60km zero-emissions (electric only) driving, with the flexfuel generator engine kicks in to extend the car's range by another 480km. "And you can charge the Volt off-peak for about five cents per kilowatt hour. That means a full [60km] charge will cost about 40 cents.

"Since 75 per cent of Americans drive less than [60km] a day, most Volt drivers will get through the average day without using a single drop of gas."

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