2012 Chevrolet Volt - Is it a Real Car? Trivia

A little bit of Volt trivia, in light of it's green car mission.  Specifically CO2 Emissions.

For my commute - I'm seeing about 50 miles of driving (actually a bit more, but let's be conservative here) on 10kWh of electricity, approximately 12kWh to recharge, taking into account losses in the charging system.

The numbers I was able to find shows that Colorado's electricity averages 1.93 lb /kWh of CO2 emitted.  This is actually worse than the national average which is about 1.3-ish.

I had to do some digging to get CO2 emissions for gasoline powered cars.  I found you are getting 20lbs of CO2 per gallon, 2 gallons for a 50 mile drive in my 25mpg car, so 40 lbs for the same distance. (data and explanation of how you end up with more than the weight of a gallon of gasoline from http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/co2.shtml )

So, figuring 12kWh is getting me about 50 miles - that maps to 23.16 lb of CO2 for that 50 miles (12kWH * 1.93 lb/kWH)

So, for _me_ (my drive, in my state) it appears CO2 emissions would be cut almost in half.

Also note, this does _not_ take into account things like emissions of any other pollutant, mainly from manufacturing the Volt (or any other new car).  I'm just presenting this as a data point, nothing more.

More tomorrow.