The Watermelons and their corporate cronies are fast gaining a reputation for a disregard for the truth that is so chronic it borders on pathological. These people lie about everything. There is hardly a statement they make that is not tainted by politically partisan hyperbole or is not a downright distortion of fact.
Take electric cars, currently the flavour of the decade for the Watermelons. All kinds of ridiculous claims are being made about the mileage these cars get as opposed to petrol or diesel cars. The Watermelons and their government, corporate and media cronies claim the Fisher Karma (developed and built with mainly taxpayer’s money) gets an EPA-certified 52MPGe. (MPGe is miles per gallon gasoline equivalent)
Naturally, the claims are wrong. The science is wrong. The claims are hyperbolic nonsense. The facts are misrepresented. The formula they use is faulty, fraudulent and contrived to make electric cars look far better on mileage than what they really are. Forbes Magazine did an excellent study that concluded that in order to get an accurate comparison, the claimed rate must be adjusted further by means of a factor of 0.365.
This figure allows a true comparison because it incorporates the costs involved in the production of the electricity. So we multiply the claimed mileage of the Fisher Karma (52 times 0.365) and that gives you a real mileage of 19 miles per gallon. (Thanks to Warren Meyer at Forbes Magazine)
Readers who are drivers need no further information to understand that this is an utterly hopeless MPG. My mate CR probably gets far better mileage than this in his nineties era 4 x 4 diesel Nissan Patrol.
Always look behind the Watermelon rhetoric. They’re always lying.
TrueblueNZ 
14 responses to “Watermelon Lies About Electric Cars (do they ever stop lying?)”
Well that’s still marginally better than my Beemer at 18.8mpg (15l/100km) around town, but not as good as its open road consumption of 10l/100km, or 28.2mpg. Interesting that some of the commenters reckoned that the upstream inefficiencies of petrol weren’t taken into account in the Forbes article, when in fact they were (by increasing the 30% efficiency factor of the electric vehicle to 36%). To be fair, in NZ the “renewable” component of electricity production (mainly hydro) is around 70% IIRC so that would change the numbers somewhat. Still, there’s no substitute for cubic inches (sorry, litres). And I won’t mention the environmental impact of battery production.
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Yes, its true that NZ electricity is generated from clean sources, but how about when everybody starts driving electric cars? It just won’t work. They can hardly keep up supply now. Hydrothermal develops pressure problems and dams develop storage problems. We should be mining and burning clean coal as the only means to a reliable supply and it is a crime that we are not.
BTW, I could never get my beamer (728i) down to 10L/100K.
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RB, you’re right about the electricity supply system, although it’s not so much energy as peak load. There’s a real concern in the UK where the average load (ADMD) per household is currently around 1.5kW (closer to 2.5kW here), but where the local infrastructure couldn’t cope with recharging electric vehicles at around 7kW all at dinner time, even just in a single street. The potential problem is the “me too” factor – in certain suburbs, when the Jones’s buy an electric car the Smiths next door will want one too, and so on.
Oh, and the secret with the 730i is to set the cruise control at 108km/h and enjoy. With a 90l tank this gets me from Auckland to Wellington and nearly halfway back. But I hate it when the dashboard message says “Range 0 km”.
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Electric cars are useful as a bicycle substitute, minus the power and the range.
Just toys for the kiddies.
So where’s the ideologically correct battery powered joke that’s going to replace my workhorse 95 Landcruiser diesel that tows (sorry I don’t use metrics) a 2500 lb boat trailer, 2 ton logs on a chain, carries 40′ ladders, pulls machinery trailers up a 3000′ climb on dirt, has the capacity to carry 2 month’s worth of gear up the Cape…….at 16 mpg.
Note how the comrades assume the world is living in their image….ie. close to shops, galleries and victim support groups.
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it may also be worth pointing out to these watermelons that the much vaunted cutting edge technology of the Chevy Volt, achieves the same mileage per charge as the 1896 Roberts Electric Car.
http://www.qando.net/?p=11786
http://technabob.com/blog/2011/10/20/115-year-old-electric-car/
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“Note how the comrades assume the world is living in their image….ie. close to shops, galleries and victim support groups.”
Yep, its the urban liberals again…
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“..ie. close to shops, galleries and victim support groups.”
LOL!
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dang….wrong nick
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Hahahahaha, jeez KG, quelle faux pas LOL!!
OT, have you checked barking spiders post on photos of dead Saddam and Qaddafi? and the hidden Osama bin Ladens death pics? he makes a good point.
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Nobody’s perfect, Medusa..;)
And nobody’s mentioning the eye-watering depreciation figures for electric cars, either.
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Straight corruption surrounding loans to the Fisher Karma company:
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/car-company-us-loan-builds-cars-finland/story?id=14770875
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Electric cars are not very good in the snow.
That might not be an issue on Oz or much of NZ, but it is in the UK.
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“upstream inefficiencies … weren’t taken into account”
Greenie nutters always reckon that hydroelectric is clean and efficient. Not one ounce of consideration in their loony calculations about the upstream costs in carbon to produce all that cement for the concrete used in their precious dams. Dams that will need replacing every 200 or so years. And these days, no doubt the planet wrecking rare earth magnets in the highly efficient generators. Not to mention the cost of flooding vast irreplaceable ecological areas.
Till all upstream costs are exposed, the true mileage of the new eCarts will be found wanting.
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Electric cars are great for getting fatties around golf courses.
Which is this technological dead end’s only forte.
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