Motortrend is reporting that the EPA and GM are at odds over the method to be used to measure MPG in the upcoming electric/hybrid car the Chevrolet Volt.

Since the Volt can run 40+ miles on battery power with NO gas, it does very well on the standard EPA city cycle, scoring a rating of over 100 mpg.  So what’s the problem?  The EPA wants to change the test, so that an electric car is required to finish the test with a full battery.    That means the test would become ONLY a measure of how fuel efficient an electric/hybrid car is while running ONLY on the gas engine.    It would NOT reflect the city MPG the Volt will ACTUALLY get once it is on the road.

Why do I care?  Because people shop and compare vehicles based on the EPA’s published MPG.  They TRUST that the EPA MPG is predictive of what they would actually get in mpg while driving the car.  I feel that it is important for the EPA to test hybrid/electric cars on the same standard they use for gas cars.  If the electric/hybrid can finish the whole city cycle while using NO gas then it should receive an appropriate rating that indicates this fuel economy.

www.gminsidenews.com has an update on the SRX here but the really juicy rumor part of the short article is this:

Aside from being rumored to have FlexRide, we also have heard that one of the powertrains in the new SRX will be GM’s 3.6L direct-injected High-Feature V6. This, to us, is a no-brainer considering that particular engine has been the V6 of choice for most higher-end products at Cadillac. In the CTS, that powertrain is rated at 304 HP, so we assume the SRX will wear the same. GMI has not heard what low-end engine will be offered on the SRX. We have been told that a 3.0L direct-injected High-Feature V6 is in development and that it would be good for about 270 HP. Possibly it will show its face for the first time in the SRX??? If not, one has to assume the SRX will use the same 3.6 base engine that the CTS uses.

A 3L DI V6 making 270hp would certainly be an interesting addition to the menu!

Sproutbuilder is a very interesting online application which provides a visual editor to enable the easy creation of flash-compatible graphic objects.  I was able to quickly and easily use sproutbuilder to make a flash gadget that grabs the RSS feed from here on the blog and posts it to the caddyinfo website page at http://www.caddyinfo.com .  Very cool and easy to use and helpful.

The resulting SWF file is hosted on the sproutbuilder server, which I guess is great for most usages, but I will have to research to see if there is a simple way to grab it and selfhost the swf file.