The Volt will get you Laid according to Lutz

Volt will not get you laid because the back seats do not have enough room. :-p

 

Yep,....That's exactly what we need, another mid-life crisismobile for those that need to feel like they need to do their part for global warming...way to go Lutz....

 

I still like the Prius concept. Why bother having to recharge batteries in your garage? Charge them with kinetic energy on the road. Sure, you are still using gas in a Prius, but at 50 mpg, the Prius cuts the cost of gas effectively in half. That should be enough for awhile.

As for pickup, around town the Prius is about as fast as the rest of them.
That's because of that high electric torque at low rpm. To get the benefit of faster ICE cars, you have to get up to 4000 or more rpms where the torque is, which eats gas and often isn't possible in traffic around town.
Those 0-60 in 5 sec numbers are more for track than anything else.

 

I wonder how long it will take Tesla to get their sedan on the road? It's projected at $60,000. So for a little more, you can get all electric instead of the Volt's sorta semi electric.

 

I can barely wait to see what the aftermarket tuners will do to electric cars!
The thing that's totally cool about electric cars, unlike gasoline engines, where you either have a 1.8 liter engine ALL THE TIME or a 6.0 liter engine ALL THE TIME, is that whether you have a bigger motor or a smaller motor, you still use the same amount of electricity.

What do you think would happen if Bob Lutz was the
sex object in the commercials. Do you think people would run away?

And if you cover the roof of your house with solar panels, then the electricity is free.
(excluding one-time purchase of solar panels - which hopefully will last the rest of your life)

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I live in Canada.
Will we have to garage our Volt in the winter, or just put up with much shorter distance on battery only? No mention of cold climate effects in any discussion I've found.

 

The generator on the Volt's ICE is only rated for 53 kW or about 72 hp. The electric motor is rated for 150 hp. See a problem? Sure It's in all electric mode, but with battery discharged it can only pull the max that the ICE generator can supply and that is less than half its electric drive motor power.

When the battery is discharged (trips over about 40 miles) all the power on tap will be 72 hp. This is due to the serial nature of the drive as opposed to the Prius parallel system. Think about the Prius threads where the traction battery becomes discharged on long mountain climbs. This is a similar situation , because in that case the Prius is stuck relying only on the ICE in a high load condition.

Now maybe they have some workaround to avoid this (maybe even a "reserve" that can be tapped), but I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

Well if the ICE kicked in way before the electric batteries lost their charge, then maybe it would be better. Otherwise, yes, you will only get that amount of power out of the electric motor. That is a stupid design. And people complain the Prius is pointless, how about a 50k car that is only really meant to be driven 40 miles round trip. Thanks for looking to the future, GM! It's like once again they are trying their best to show that nobody will want one, and kill the concept.

 

They can't use the gas engine and battery power at the same time because it will make it a hybrid. Remember, they want to call it an electric car with gas generator.

I think in Volt's design, you have both power sources and they are mutually exclusive. You can use "either or" but not both at the same time. So you one power source carrying the other's weight and there is no synergy between the two.

In EV mode, Volt will carry about 300 lbs dead weight as a backup power source:
- 1.4L gas engine (~200 lbs)
- 10 gallon gasoline (~65 lbs)
- Generator (~50 lbs)

In extended range mode, Volt will carry 400 lbs battery pack as a dead weight -- waiting to get home to recharge.

 

What you just described is a PHEV Prius

The magic of the Prius design IMHO is that it can function as either a serial hybrid or a parallel hybrid (or a blend of both) depending on which is more efficient under the current driving conditions. And it does it with a very minimal amount of moving parts. As an engineer I am in awe of the beauty of Toyota's solution.

Rob

 

The reason you are mistaken is that (1) the generator will indeed charge the battery while the car is driving on electric power. And (2) you are confusing peak power with average power. The gas generator cannot put out as much power as the electric motor can produce, but you never run at peak power for more than a few seconds, during acceleration. Once the battery gets low, the generator turns on and pumps its small current into the batteries all the time it's running, until the batteries are full. But the car is demanding peak power only a few seconds at a time, and the rest of the time it takes relatively little power to propel the car, and during that long period of time, the generator is pumping up the batteries.

Electricity is so much cheaper than gasoline, that even the Prius costs far more to drive than a grid-charged EV does. I get around 45 mpg in my Prius and 3 miles per kWh in my Xebra. At $3.50/gal for gas, it costs me over 7 cents a mile to run my Prius, and even at 60 mpg it would cost almost 6 cents. At 6 cents per kWh (my rate) it costs me 2 cents per mile to run my Xebra. And even at 10 cents/kWh it would cost only 3 1/3 cents per mile.

Another very important factor is the environment: Even a coal-fired power plant puts out less carbon than a Prius (per mile driven) and if you use wind or solar or hydro, there's no carbon footprint to your electricity.

Plug-in makes sense, whether it's a PHEV Prius, a Volt, or an EV.

Lithium batteries are far less affected by cold than are lead batteries. Xebras with lead batteries driven at zero Celsius have half the range compared to the 20 to 30 degree Celsius range. But my Xebra, with lithium batteries, gets the same range at zero that it does at 25. It's one of the big advantages of lithium battery chemistry.

Again, you are operating under the mistaken impression that the car runs on battery power until the batteries are dead, and then only on generator power, with no help from the batteries.

What actually happens is that when the batteries get low, the generator begins to recharge them, so you always have access to battery power when a spurt of power is needed, so the generator only has to provide the car's average power demand, not its peak demand. No car needs peak power for more than very short bursts.

The Volt concept is brilliant. The problem is they have no intention of ever actually marketing it.

 

That's true for a series hybrid. It sounds like Volt will operate like a series hybrid after all. Do you have the source of this operation about the Volt?

 

I'd mostly agree with your observation. I'd say the Volt concept is competent, brilliant might be a bit of a stretch. Not sure a competent $40k+ car is going to cut it though. IMHO the HSD is brilliant. All the advantages of serial hybrid and parallel hybrid in a remarkably simple mechanical package. With a slightly larger electric motor, beefier inverter, and bigger battery with higher power output (not just capacity) the HSD can run full electric at any speed/acceleration if it makes sense. It can also run full off the ICE in situations where its more efficient (like charge sustain) It can also operate in both modes at the same time, which more often than not seems to be the most efficient case. Brilliant.

I think you are right about peak vs. average power, but keep in mind the ICE is not necessarily going to be at peak efficiency at peak power either. Just as the Prius has to shift to less efficient high rpm operation when peak ICE power is required. This quote seems to put the truth somewhere in between. I think some extra power will be captured in the battery, and available for short bursts, but long high power runs like a hill climb will run fully depleted and have less power available.

Rob

 

The Volt and the Prius both have a similar problem they can deplete their battery packs and have less then 80hp on tap. Long hills do the same thing to both vehicles <once the majority of the volts pack is used> but the average person will not see this problem. If you live in the hills of PA or somewhere else like it and having a old VW Beatle like HP/Weight ratio these cars are not for you. City drving you will not see this problem.

 

The Volt has always been a series hybrid concept. Regardless of what GM calls it a hybrid or a range extended electric vehicle it is a series hybrid.

 

Where do you guys come up with this stuff

You're presuming that the engineers working on the car a completely stupid... here's a hint, they're not.

The car is a PHEV, Lutz just wants to really push the electric part. The gasoline engine produces 72 horses. In a small car, you can't use that much power non stop save for climbing Pike's Peak. When you're using less than 72 horses, the extra can go into the battery bank. When you go down hill, that goes into the battery too.

You can read about it here: GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site Blog Archive The Pike’s Peak Question: Chevy Volt and the Infinite Hill

 

Nope, I'm not mistaken as best I can tell. You are making some large assumptions that are counter to GM's claims. If the generator is stuck at ~1/2 motor power MAX during acceleration then it will be a dog in comparison to the Prius. Good luck with on-ramps and hill climbs once the PHEV capacity is depleted.

Does the Volt's ICE start running full tilt as soon as the battery is depleted? That is not something I've seen claimed in print. It will hurt fuel economy. They have claimed 30 mpg once the battery is depleted. If the ICE has to recharge the battery then it will likely be lower as there will be additional load on this heavy vehicle.

I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm saying what GM has said is counter to your assumptions.

I doubt that my impression is mistaken as it is based on what GM has disclosed so far. I've learned the hard way never to do as you have and read more into the capabilities than what has been stated in a vendor's most recent specs. I hope to be wrong on this, but my experience says otherwise. Figuring out what a vendor hasn't said is at least as important as what they have said.

If there is a reserve held for the conditions you speak of, GM has neglected to mention it. Such a reserve is unlikely to match or exceed what the Prius can already do. With a heavier car the Volt will have more trouble with this on trips, regardless. Physics is a female dog.

Hardly brilliant. A 2+2 rather than a true four or five seater, with series design that imposes considerable limitations. It will serve a niche, but that is unlikely to include many families. I'm not opposed to the concept, it is the direction revealed so far that I find lacking.

It might have made more sense to bring back the EV1 based on what they've revealed so far.

 

I've seen enough, done enough troubleshooting and design never to assume that an engineer is or is not stupid (or forget that the managers directing them are often to blame for poor implementation/design selections.)

Great, then explain the 30 mpg on ICE claims GM has made. Doesn't sound very efficient at all, certainly not anywhere close to Prius' or Civic Hybrid's league in the exact same situation. Sounds more like a 1.4 L pulling around a heavy car sans battery pack and regen.

I didn't drink the GM koolaid.

 

Where do you get the 30 mpg figure as being anything like what GM has claimed? Please provide a source, because Andrew Farah (the Volt's chief engineer) says you're full of doo-doo (http://gm-volt.com/2008/08/22/chevy...et-50-mpg-in-ice-mode-after-battery-depleted/). GM actually says its something more like 50mpg with the ICE running. You have some really, really whacky ideas about how the Volt works.

You do understand that the ICE never directly powers the wheels, don't you? The whole point of a series hybrid is that you can tune the ICE to run at its highest efficiency all the time. There's no need for variance to meet higher loads unless you get into the car, push the accelerator to the floor and leave it there the entire time. Otherwise, whatever excess generation is coming from the ICE gets stored in the battery (which, in most driving situations, will most of the time the ICE is running).

You also seem to think that the Volt's batteries will be totally discharged when the ICE kicks in. This is simply not the case, any more than it is the case that the Prius traction battery is ever at a 0% SOC, regardless of what the little meter on the display indicates. The Volt's ICE kicks in at something like 30% SOC and charges continuously up to whatever level GM engineers see fit. Again, unless you are placing the car under peak demand from the time you get in to the time you get out, the batteries will have a net increase in SOC until that point is reached. Under normal driving conditions there should ALWAYS be enough battery power in reserve to meet burst demands of peak (or near-peak) power.

You may not have drank the GM kool-aid, but you certainly seem to have drank the anti-GM kool-aid.

 

stumpy_c,

Nothing whacky, I got the figures straight from SEVERAL reports about what happens once the battery power is expended. "The Volt should cost less than 2 cents per mile to drive on electricity, GM said, compared to 12 cents a mile on gasoline at a price of $3.60 a gallon," came from CNN Money's most recent article on the car.

GM's own press release on 9/16/2008 read, "GM estimates that the Volt will cost about two cents per mile to drive while under battery power compared to 12 cents per mile using gasoline priced at $3.60 per gallon."

That works out to 30 mpg. Note that your article you quoted is BEFORE GM's own release. I find it humorous that you are relying on the SPECULATION of a fansite article over GM's later claims.

I you had actually read what I've already written on this you would know that I do understand about the ICE not directly powering the wheels. I'm also aware of the SOC plans as stated by GM.

Again, I'm going from what GM has said, not from what folks like you are hoping for.

Perhaps GM just put out a crappy press release for their unveiling? I don't know, but I'm going off what they are saying, not what supporters are hoping for. Got an issue with it? Take it to GM.