Remember the big media circus that General Motors made out of the Chevy Volt getting 230 miles to the gallon and being near-zero emissions?  It was a big part of the early marketing bonanza that GM made out of the Volt before they

Image ruthlessly stolen from Edmunds, who took it from GM.

became Government Motors and released that horrid Volt Dancers video.

Myself and a lot of other reporters were pretty leary of the Volt.  I called it “vaporware” more than once and when they finally produced some prototypes, I still called it vaporware.  Let’s face it, until the car actually hits the streets and has some kind of decent sales volume, it’s just a lot of marketing hype from GM.  Still is, as far as I’m concerned.

In fact, I rank other range-extended electrics like the Fisker Karma and the Aptera 2 to be more realistic than the General Motors greenfest extravaganza machine.

According to Edmunds Auto Observer, none of the engineers at Chevrolet thought that it was a good idea to tout that 230mpg number.  Of course, what do engineers know?  That’s like asking the FDA to listen to scientists before approving a pharmaceutical.  Like science enters into this crap.  It’s marketing, you egghead dolts.

So the marketing machine at GM went into overdrive and burned as much rubber as they could touting the wonders of the new, green, one-flop-wonder Chevrolet Volt that would save the the nation’s automotive industry and the planet and D.C. and Wall Street and UAW and everything else.

Here’s the deal.  The Volt can go about 40 miles all-electric before the gasoline engine kicks in.  Using some fuzzy math, some marketing gurus at GM translated that into 230 miles per gallon.

Of course, as it gets down to the wire and the public numbers get closer to release now that the EPA has finalized how MPG standards are set, GM is no longer touting that gigantic fuel efficiency.  Given the size, weight, and so forth of the Volt, it’s MPG is likely to be closer to the Prius’ numbers than it is to that 230mpg.

My prediction is that the final EPA number for the Volt will be in the low-40s.  41mpg, give or take.  Those will be city miles, of course.  Highway will be lower by about 6.  Similar to the Prius.  The difference is that the Chevy is a much larger vehicle than the Prius and has a longer EV range (by about 40%, the Prius is around 27 miles per charge).

I personally think that parallel hybrid systems like the Prius and Volt are a great example of over-engineering.  Why not just make it range-extended electric instead?  Sure would save on a lot of drive train components and tricky transmission clutching.

Hang on… OK, I’ve got to go.  Aptera put out another press release and it doesn’t look like it says “insolvency” or “going out of business.”

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