Consumers look at the miles per gallon ratings of vehicles when shopping for a new one. Okay, so how do you determine the MPG for cars like the Volt and Leaf? 

I own a Mini Cooper. Why? Well, it is fun as hell to drive. That being said, I would be lying if I didn’t admit that the miles per gallon rating was a huge factor in my buying it. I drive a lot, so getting 30 miles to the galloon saves me a lot of money. I once owned a Jaguar which got about 12. I got a great deal on the car at an auction, but nearly went bankruptcy keeping it fueled up! But I digress…

December 2010 will be a magical month. Why? We will see the first two mass produced electric cars come to market. They would be the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf. As the date comes closer, some interesting issues are starting to arise. One rather interesting one involves a conundrum at the EPA. 

The EPA is charged with setting the miles per galloon rating for vehicles. The agency has a problem with the Leaf and Volt. The Leaf has no gas engine, so there is not gas much less gallons of it, how do you tell customers how fuel efficient the car is? The Volt has a gas engine, but it doesn’t kick in till the batteries are dead after 40 miles or so. One can’t put “MPG = Infinity” on the cars because that simply isn’t true. They will, after all, run out of charges at some point!

So, what is the EPA to do? One idea is to do a miles per kilowatt rating. This is a bad idea. Consider your average American. How many are going to know what a kilowatt is? Do you? How many kilowatts does a car battery have? I don’t know and thus the measurement would not really help consumers evaluate the merits of the vehicle. 

What will the final result be? Nobody knows. Nissan has been saying the Leaf gets the equivalent of 50 plus miles to the gallon which seems like a reasonable number. GM, of course, tries to argue that the Volt gets about 230 miles to the gallon, which sounds like something dreamed up by the marketing department. The EPA has rejected both numbers and will come up with its own. One can hazard it will be a lot of information that will not be particularly clear!