Anyone waiting for PIP getting the "itch" to consider a Chevy Volt instead?

How about for an extra $2,500 after tax credit?

 

someone said $2500. difference.

 

Somebody mentioned electricity prices in Calfornia at 40 cents per KWH. I have SCE, and the rate depends on how the metering plan selected (on one or separate, time of day charging, etc) but runs from 10 to 13 cents. Where is it 40 cents, does anyone know?

 

How is Volt different?

That implication is misleading. It gives the impression a redesign is needed. When in reality, power-carrier size & ratios along with voltage increase would expand EV ability. There isn't a need to introduce new clutches. What do you want to optimize for?

Remember, the PHV we get isn't the full implementation. Even more power can be delivered from the existing system. The "EV City" button demonstrates that.
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It gets up to the 40 cent marginal rate if you use lots of electricity and end up at the top tier. As you know, CA uses a tiered rate scheme that charges more for higher levels of energy use in order to encourage conservation. When you throw in TOU rates it gets even more complicated....

I'm billed by PG&E in Northern California at the E9a Time of Use rates. I charge at night using 120V when the rates are low and end up using about 1/3 of my 3rd tier. I also do laundry and run the dishwasher during low-rate periods at night or over the weekend. Because E9a applies to my entire household use, I compare my electric bills with the same period in the two previous years before I started charging my Volt.

The bottom line is that, on an annualized basis, I pay about $15-20 more per month now for an extra 150-200 kWh used to charge the car. So while the marginal 3rd tier is "high" I am effectively paying about 8-10 cents per kWh for the extra power I am using now. On an annualized basis I get about 3.3 miles per kWh so that works out to about 2.5-3.0 cents per mile. If I charged at 240V it would be around 7% more efficient and cheaper but then I would have the initial expense and hassle of installing it in my garage. Driving EV is actually a bit cheaper per mile since I end up getting several free opportunity charges during the month while shopping and dining in nearby cities on my way to various events.

 

It isn't. My point was that most of the complexity concern about the Volt applies to the PiP (and therefore mostly to the non-plug Prius as well).

I'm not an armchair transmission designer. I'm less sure about that than you are. Some of the same GM engineers who designed the Volt transmission also designed the 2-mode heavy duty hybrid transmission which includes input-split powerflow as a subset of its design. One them also filed the 1995 GM patent which describes the clutch-free input-split transmission design used in the Prius. They understand the various engineering trade offs far better than we do. In any case, I never said Toyota would add clutches. I speculated that Toyota would stop doing "blended EV" when they no longer had to because of battery limitations.

Have you driven the production PiP with the "EV City" button (with a scan gauge attached)? I'm doubting that it actually uses more battery kW than the 27 kW or 38 kW that have been variously reported for the PiP. I think it is more likely that it just remaps the accelerator pedal in a way that makes it less likely for the gas engine to start unintentionally. In any case, that button doesn't prevent the gas engine from starting when needed and it wouldn't necessarily imply high continuous output even if it allowed a momentary higher kW pulse.

 

Thanks for the explanation. I hadn't considered the ramifications of going into the higher tiers, but just looked at what SCE indicated the difference would be between one and two meters, with the extra one being for ev charging only.

 

If you have a commute where most of the time you're driving at 65mph, you might ask yourself what's the point of paying over $4,000 to get a plug-in facility you can't take full advantage of.

If you live somewhere where most other trips will put you on the highway driving at 65mph you might ask yourself what's the point of paying over $4,000 to get a plug-in facility you can't take full advantage of.

If you live in a northern state with a long freezing winter, you might ask yourself what's the point of paying over $4,000 to get a plug-in facility you can't take full advantage of.

If you haven't heard requests for EV purity it's because this is an Internet forum with text so you've only read. Or if you mean it metaphorically it's because you have your finger in your ears saying lalalalala. I'd have thought that DaveInOlyWA's posts and purchase of a LEAF made it pretty clear that he really didn't want to burn gasoline and he'd very much have liked to be able to buy a Prius BEV.

Oh, and add me to the list for EV purity. It's not a matter of it being an absolute, it's that I'd like the choice. For example, I'd really like to be able to pick EV if we hurry the 3 miles across the city at 65mph on the Interstate. (Not that it matter that much for 4 or 5 months of the year since the gas engine would be on for heat.)

 

i thought you could pick ev on the pip?

 

I know. I could also not hurry across the city. The point is that I'd have more than enough capacity to do it but the car wouldn't let me. It means yet another compromise or diminished value of an expensive car.

 

thanks P, i was getting concerned. miss the thanks button already! i can live with 55mph, we have very few 65mph in the greater boston area.

 

Do you honestly think that the owners of the volt are GM enthusiasts? I highly doubt they were classified as such prior to the Volt. The Volt appeals to EV enthusiasts. It certainly greatly appeals to me from a drive train standpoint, they vehicle just doesn't happen to I was certainly not a GM enthusiast prior to this either. The last GM I wanted to get in before a Volt was a Nova to strip off some parts for my corolla

 

If you hurry, meaning putting the pedal to the metal or close to it, the ICE will start!

 

If you are going somewhere 3 miles away and you need to constantly floor the pedal, it'll hard on any car. Volt's battery will take a lot of abuse.

 

one concern i have about the volt is long term reliability. at this point, with 8 years of no issues on my two pri, two camry's and a hycam, i trust toyota to do it right. gm is gonna have to prove it to me before i lay down 32 smackers. my last gm was an olds intrigue in the late 90's and they canned olds within months after i bought it. the dealership disappeared in the middle of the night.