2009/AURA XR 2.4L Power to Weight Ratio 1:20.4
2008/ASTRA XR 3dr 1.8L Power to Weight Ratio 1:20.8
2008/ASTRA XR 5dr 1.8L Power to Weight Ratio 1:20.7
2002/SL2 1.9L Power to Weight Ratio 1:19.6
2002/SC2 1.9L Power to Weight Ratio 1:19.9
2007/ION-3 coupe 2.2L Power to Weight Ratio 1:19.8
2007/ION-3 sedan 2.2L Power to Weight Ratio 1:19.6
2007/ION-3 coupe 2.4L Power to Weight Ratio 1:16.5
2007/ION-3 sedan 2.4L Power:Weight Ratio is 1:16.4
Sky 2.4L Power to Weight Ratio is 1:16.8

HP and weight from published GM marketing literature.

Just for the heck of it is the
Chevy Cruze 1.8L Power:Weight Ratio is 1:22.5

 

This makes me wonder what the power to weight factor is with some of the highbreds with weenie little motors and lbs and lbs of batteries.

 

Guess that would be something to look into ... I do know the EV1 was faster then many cars on the road during it's test run. I drove them for more then a year and it took people by surprise.

 

Actually I just did check into that as it happens, I believe it was the Kia Solstus or something of that nature. It's advertised weight vs the same model with out the battery powered version and it added I think another about 500# to the car. And then if you took fuel mileage and I think I did it using advertised highway mileage of 1 car vs the 2nd and a 13,000 miles a year avearage miles driven at the end of 5 years the savings in fuel costs still did not pay for the base price difference between the 2 cars. I could not directly calculate power to weight as they have some form of cutesy way of calculating total HP which to me does not make sense in how they do it. Total power being that of the Electric + that of the gasoline engine. And I am not sure that they even run that way more than a few moments and then only under extreme need such as hard acceleration and low speed.
Being a hybred also added about 50% to the base price of he car.
The more I read and try to understand hybreds the less I like them.
When I was running deliveries I ran accorss some one who had borrowed his mothers Honda for the job. Honda Hybred and he was saying it was geting 18 mpg running deliveres.
Being at the time I was getting 13 mpg with my Chrysler Town and Country on the same type of work and I was carrying about 1000# of product I was not too impressed by the Honda which was hard pressed carrying a driver and what ever fit into the thing which was not that much.
As to the EV1, quite a car. As an execution of a concept I think it was an engineering marvel. However at an advertised range of something around 90 miles and a price that went through the roof for a car that carried only 2 people and not much more it was not cost effective. There was a reason it was test marketed in Phoenix. A big infrastructure in Freeways and mostly flat and level places to drive it on. Hill killed the thing. Looking at my driving habits a 90 mile range would not make a round trip from my house to Mesa and back. There was not a town out side of the vally of the sun that I could get to and back same day with in the range of the car. As to hills, Phoenix is at about 800 ft above sea level, in order to go to Sonora, you had to climb about 4000 ft up and there is no way the EV1 would be able to make that trip and actually arive same day. Much less be able to make it home.
It is way too bad that all of them had to be scrapped for tax reasons. Practical or not it was quite a car. Controls of an all electric have come a long way due to technology. Performance, of which there is very little in the way of range among other things is not that much better than a Studebaker Electric of back in th day. There was a reason Electric cars did not beome popular. They could not compete with the gasoline engine and ----still can't. No matter how cleverly they are packaged. Yes in certain restrictedly defined environmens they would be nice to have, but not cost effective at all.

 

To me Hybrid cars are a joke. They do nothing well, they only export pollution to where the power is being made. They only give do gooders a false sence of doing good. At best they are a stop gap by car manufacutres to meet cafe numbers till a real solution (hydrogen) can be made safe and cheap. I have yet to see a Prius or any other with a plates from 3 western states away on a road trip. Why?

 

To pursue the all electric for a moment. In my opinion there is a place for it providing the cost would approach something that is cost effective.
Short runs, low speed, city traffic, something that is fun yet practical.
I can see an appeal for one.
But eliminate the fun quotient and concentrate on only practical? What a boring miss-fit creature it would be.
Weight on an Electric is it’s nemesis. Doing what is required to make weight go away leaves you with something that moves but does not leave much of a reason to want to move along with it.
I have had some experience with electric transportation and battery life is a killer. Weight and rolling resistance are huge factors.
It must have been a lot of fun to drive the EV1 on a regular basis. I am sure that while the batteries were up it was quite a package. But the problem is the batteries do not stay up long and I drive enough miles when driving to run past the useful life of a charge.
Here A/C is needed. I don’t remember now whether the EV1 had A/C or not but if it did, it was a power drain and if it didn’t, well in 110 degree weather it would make taking an Air Conditioned bus a viable option.
I had an Electric lawn tractor at one time with an advertised range of 4 acres. I could mow almost all of my ½ acre lawn on a hill before the thing went dead. But if I managed to get it up to a road with asphalt I could drive a couple of miles with it as the rolling resistance was so much better.
I have some data on Electric transportation and I was scanning it looking for tidbits. I found formula’s for calculating the amount of power needed to climb a hill over time at given speeds knowing weight of vehicle and incline of hill.
But I also ran across test data, dated it was but representative.
A vehicle climbing an 11% grade while maintaining speed with in 10% of flat and level on asphalt used about 19 times more power climbing the hill than it did on flat and level.
Taking that information as a function of distance, that would mean that over a given time frame something draining the batteries at the rate of 18 times faster would go 1/18th as far. So assuming a trip to Flag Staff from my driveway at 135 miles, an EV1 with a rated 90 miles of travel would take two days. But as it is up hill from 900 feet to almost 8000 feet and assuming a 6% grade on average for the sake of discussion, and power consumption going up hill as only 10 times more power than flat and level it would drain the batteries at a rate of 10 times faster. That would equate to 1/10th the distance traveled before the batteries went dead.. At a trip rate of 10% of 90 miles that would give a cruising range of 9+ miles up hill to Flag or 15 days to make the trip. A distance that I would cover by Chrysler with in about 3 hours.
Yes a guesstimate and a bit silly, but face it. Up hill with an Electric Vehicle? Considering the lack of charging stations and 12 hour to full charge, charge times? Not that unrealistic. Of course, coming back? It’s down hill! Probably all in one day with enough juice left to go to the grocery store.
Nope. Don’t see much use for one. Nor steam either.