Here’s Brian the Guess Blogger embarking on another embarrassment:

Huckabee and Cavuto Get It Wrong Promoting The Faux Fisker Finland Controversy...Mike Huckabee seriously misrepresented the mileage of the Karma in order to sneer that it’s no better than a Ford Explorer.…”The ultimate mileage comes out to be 19 MPG. A Ford Explorer SUV gets better gas mileage than does this Fisker karma.”...Not really. According to AutoBlog, the Karma’s total MPG is 52MPGE.

Not really. Brian guessed that Mike Huckabee was quoting an EPA mileage estimate, but there’s no mention whatsoever of the EPA in the quote from Huck. So it appears Brain...err, Brian, guessed wrong again. You see, there’s more than one way to measure mileage. We’re happy to introduce the Guess Blogger to the ‘well to wheel’ standard:

Electric vehicle makers want to pretend that the electricity to charge the car comes from magic sparkle ponies sprinkling pixie dust rather than burning fossil fuels. [This] glosses over the fact that someone is still pouring fossil fuels into a tank somewhere to make that electricity.

Since the goal is to reduce fossil fuel use, the Department of Energy developed a standard that also took into account the fuels burned to produce the energy [electricity or fuel] that goes into the car. This made estimates between fuel-powered vehicles and hybrid or electric cars truly comparable:

An apples to apples comparison, then, would compare the traditional car’s MPG with the Leaf’s miles per gallon of gasoline (or gasoline equivalent) that would have to be burned to generate the electricity it uses.

Now what do you suppose happens when you apply the DoE ‘well to wheel’ analysis to the Fisker Karma? Brian won’t tell you, but we will:

In the Clinton administration, the Department of Energy (DOE) created a far superior well to wheels MPGe metric that honestly compares the typical fossil fuel use of an electric vs. gasoline car.... In the case of the Fisker Karma, we get a true MPGe of 19. This makes it worse than even the city rating of a Ford Explorer SUV.

What’s this? 19 MPG, the exact figure cited by Huckabee, which our Guess Blogger dismissed as ‘wrong’! It seems Brian couldn’t be bothered to do the research, but that’s nothing new. The Guess Blogger wraps it all up with:

Cavuto did not correct the falsehood.

Mainly because it wasn’t false! But that raises another question: will the Guess Blogger correct his falsehood?

Tags: newshounds