Chevy Volt is 99% Ready

The chassis will never be able to hold a very large battery without gobbling up cargo space.

 

I agree. I am in love with the fact that the Volt is a serial hybrid. Despite with GM's marketing division says, as technology improves the Voltec platform will be applicable to other larger and even smaller vehicles. The size of the electrics could be improved as time goes on and even electric mini vans and city delivery trucks (sized like the Ford transit connect) could be possible.

 

But the question itself was totally avoided. The physical size and design origin are red herrings.

Again, why couldn't the next generation Prius offer "all speeds" too?
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i think the volt is wonderful how well the volt has done so far. the fact that there havn't been any major issues and performance has been everything they claimed and more just makes it a real pleasure to drive! and the mpg have been a pleasant surprise.

 

In the press conference they referred to 50 mpg unadjusted. If that's like CAFE it would fit with about 38mpg real world.

But, the thing is that the gas mileage is far less significant than getting good use of the battery. If your electricity is expensive, you also really want to get good miles/kWh.

 

I think that both arguments revolve around the idea that the Prius is limited in its design around the ICE - at the moment. From the prior comment it appears the poster feels that the Prius has reached its technological limit. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

I hear this stated all the time on the GM boards, to the effect that the Prius is finished as soon as the Volt hits the streets. This is just wrong and dumb. It assumes that Toyota has closed shop in its R&D labs and nothing new will ever come out again.

The Gen4 Prius will also likely be built around the ICE and the Gen 5 may as well. But at some time when the infrastructure is ready and the public at large is ready the new Gen 'x' will be mostly PHVs or BEVs. Lots and lots of development will take place over the next 10 yrs.

In the meanwhile, and this is the key point, over the next 10 yrs Toyota will be selling 5+ million Prius' at a profit and generating a wealth of technical expertise. Only Ford at this point might approach half of that financial result. In the end it's about money; dirty filthy lucre; moolah; cash in the bank. The Prius and its HSD siblings are money machines now. Time to take advantage of the prior 10 yrs product development.

Selling 5 million ICE hybrid Prius' over the next 10 yrs - while contemporaneously preparing the vehicles of the 2020's - is far better than selling a few hundred thousand vehicles of the 20s ten years too early. 5,000,000 > 500,000

 

The Volt isn't going to kill the Prius. Hopefully, the Volt, Prius, Leaf etc. will contribute to the death of the conventional ICE gas guzzler eventually! By the way, when Volts start showing up on High school and College campuses, do you think kids will cram into it using a technique called "riding the hump"?

 

GM has a marteking error here. If Volt does recharge from braking/coasting (which I have read in a preview/contact just yesterday to its brother Opel Ampera), why not stating "the others solely rely on electric energy captured from..."?

So I here make a brief apology.

 

I partially agree. The series hybrid design has several advantages:
- Cost: the ICE switches from being an engine to being a generator (that is, it's moved out of the drive-train). By eliminating other components it should be simpler and cheaper to build, at least compared to other PHEVs that require powerful electric motors.
- Location: because it's not driving the wheels there's more freedom in positioning the ICE.
- ICE Efficiency: being a generator the ICE can be designed to run efficiently at one or two speeds.

However, because it's always performing two conversions, it's going to be less efficient than a design that uses the best balance of electric and ICE, particular at higher speeds.

So, it's not the AER that matters, it's proportion of miles in charge-sustain and the speed at which you travel.

 

My current car is 20 years old. I'll be replacing this car in the next 6 to 9 months. My next car I will keep for at least that long.

This is not unusual - the current average replacement age for cars now seems to be somewhere between 19-21 years.

For car buyers thinking ahead a little bit, the volt is a no-brainer (if chevy delivers a quality product).

Yeah, sure, the Gen-whatever Prius will be competitive, but for buyers shopping NOW, the Prius sure looks like a dead-end.

I have had some seat-time in the Tesla. If it were bigger and I could afford it, I would buy one today. Once the American public gets a taste of EV (especially ones with range-extenders), ICE-cars will be abruptly dumped. I'm confident this will happen far faster than what most in the industry think.

 

Maybe on the west coast.. around here it's rare to see a vehicle that is 20 years old. And to make the "average replacement age" 20 years, that means there is a significant number of vehicles going past 20 years. I don't think so.

But enough anecdotes and guessing.. DOT says it's 12-13 years, ~130k miles. (For some reason I can't get this directly on the DOT website, and some other sites have slightly different figures but they're all in the same ballpark)

How to make your car last a million miles - MSN Money

ETA: Some additional data.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_vehicles_in_the_United_States#Age_of_vehicles_in_operation

 

Some comment to your comments....

Cost: Cost is a disadvantage for series hybrid. Series hybrid need as big and powerful electric powertrain as an EV, including bigger batter to power it. Electric propulsion is very expensive due to the low level of mass production compared to ICE. Volt has 150hp electric powertrain. PHV Prius has 80hp (the same as HV Prius). PHV Prius actually has the cost advantage.

ICE Efficiency: Remember that Prius is 28% series hybrid and 72% parallel hybrid if we go with torque split from the ICE. Prius benefits from ICE efficiency you mentioned of series hybrid advantage. Prius will stay in electric when ICE is inefficient and uses ICE when it is efficient.

 

So I was pondering the whole 99% ready - 1% not ready. Now in weather forcasting, it doesn't matter what the per centage ratio is. If it's 1% or 50% or 99% ... if it rains or not, the weather forcaster is right ... because it simply means the other per centage hit. So it means nothing. For a hybrid's production, it'd best be interpreted as an easy way to keep prospective customers aware that eventually it will come to market, baring any more bankruptcy filings.

 

Really, kind of like EEStor (sp?) ultracapacitor that was 90% complete 3 years ago or so?

I don't doubt the Volt will hit the market, but that was really poor reasoning.

On the Volt vs Prius, the Volt does offer some advantages and we will probably buy one for our long distance vehicle once the plug in prius falls apart due to age.
However, it isn't the Volt vs the Prius, that would have been the case if the Volt came out 5 years ago, or even 3 or 2. It is Volt vs the Leaf, Model S, Th!nk, and other EVs that are the new generation of cars.

If GM wants to compete with the older technology, that is fine, about time they dip their toe into the 21st century. But it would be nice if they would build the best of the new tech cars.

 

Just a quick note to ensure that everyone knows that the Prius is a serial AND parallel hybrid. In fact, it uses a constantly variable mix of the twos through the PSD.

The design is interesting as it avoid caveats of both a serial design and of a parallel design.

 

+1

 

If EPA does not decide by November, GM can't sell the Volt without the EPA fuel economy label.

Does the "1% not ready" include that hurdle? To me, that's a big roadblock that's more than "1% not ready".

 

No. It is not a serial hybrid. Series hybrid's are only driven by electrical traction. The Prius has series like modes but does not make it a series hybrid. This especially shows on the highway where the current Prius can not go at highway speeds on pure electric without turning the ICE.

 

I'm not one to get into the conspiracy theories, but do you really think the government is going to allow EPA inaction to block the release of GM's 'savior' product? Not gonna happen.

 

More Volt FUD. The job of EPA testing is not done by the EPA anyhow, it is done through GM or its subcontractors.

From fueleconomy.gov:
"[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Fuel economy is measured under controlled conditions in a laboratory using a standardized test procedure specified by federal law. Manufacturers test their own vehicles—usually pre-production prototypes—and report the results to EPA. EPA reviews the results and confirms about 10-15 percent of them through their own tests at the National Vehicles and Fuel Emissions Laboratory."

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