Team EV World

This cartoon completely mischaracterizes the emissions of the Chevrolet Volt. While 50% of the electric power in the US comes from dirty coal, the rest comes from far cleaner sources. It also misses the point that the power is generated from American energy sources with huge economic benefits, as well as national security.

A comparable cartoon would have to depict oil tankers and petroleum refiners being pulled behind a gasoline-powered automobile.

With respect to the emissions of the electric power that charges the Volt’s batter pack, CO2 emissions will be at least half that of a gasoline-powered car of comparable size. The National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) studied this issue last year and concluded that NOx, CO2 and SO2 emissions will be reduced by the deployment of electric-drive vehicles like the Volt.

As the Chevy Volt and Nissan LEAF electric cars approach their formal launches this fall, carmakers are looking at new ways to reach people with their messages. The newest one is Apple’s new iAd service, which has demonstrated in a video available on EV World.com

The Power Systems Engineering Research Center did a study last year that indicates the more grid-connected, plug-in electric cars that start to appear in neighborhoods, the more rapidly the power transformers in the community will age. Most transformers will last 17-20 years, but just three Chevy Volts or Nissan LEAF electric cars can reduce this to less than 10 years.

No, I am not referring to British Petroleum. I am referring to Matthew Simmons, the founder of the energy investment banking firm of Simmons Co. International, who died unexpectedly Monday, August 9, 2010. Matt wrote ‘Twilight in the Desert,’ his book on the status of Saudi Arabia’s oil fields, a tome that garnered him huge respect among the advocates of Peak Oil, as well as the distant of those who dismiss the idea.

You can read my brief tribute to Matt at ‘The Twilight of Matt Simmons.’

Admittedly, GM’s Volt program is a huge gamble for the struggling corporation that some are suggesting is on the verge of bankruptcy, including most recently Merrill Lynch.

So, it should not come as a surprise that someone would come along and question the wisdom of developing a plug-in electric car. One of those louder voices is Holman Jenkins, Jr. who wrote in the Wall Street Journal that pouring “hundreds of millions into a race to launch an electric car, the Chevy Volt, guaranteed to lose money on every unit sold, begins to seem a peculiar strategy for a company in dire liquidity straits.”

Jenkins thinks, “At best, the Volt will be an affluent family’s third car” largely because of its supposed sticker price of $45,000. He makes a number of other “interesting” claims such as thinking the car “will be lucky to get 15 mpg under gasoline power,” despite GMs not unreasonable projection of 50 mpg in engine-on mode.

In the end, he considers — not unlike a number of other skeptics — that the Volt is just a one big public relations gimmick intended to make an eventual government bailout of General Motors more “politically acceptable.”

His comments didn’t go unremarked by EV World readers — and elsewhere on the internet — most not all that kind to Mr. Jenkins or the once-respected-now-Rupert-Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal. One commentator noting, “This ranting scribble is so poorly researched it wouldn’t make it into the NY Post.”

What Mr. Jenkins seems to want to ignore are two salient facts of life in the 21st century: oil is dear and becoming increasingly so, and cars will have to become increasingly electrified. GM, Mr. Jenkins, has no choice in the matter. They do this or they perish….which probably means getting bought up by Mahindra & Mahindra in India or SAIC in China. The Volt is a very big gamble, we all understand and recognize this. We live in a new era where gas guzzlers like big bore engines and tail fins are “so last century.”

GM realizes they made a serious miscalculation when they killed the EV1 program, now they are trying to rectify that mistake. The only real question is the Volt too little, too late? Let’s hope not.