Is it fair to say GM will eat a lot of money on battery warranty work?

I can imagine this being true, but it is not a foregone conclusion. My car goes through perhaps 7500 ft of elevation change a week, but I tend to drive with an eye towards stable ICE loads rather than stable speeds, so I do not anticipate an early battery demise.

Cruise control on hilly roads does indeed sound like a bad idea if done a lot.

 

In addition, I never charge or drive in Performance mode, which allows greater current draw. In Performance mode, the Roadster will maintain a higher battery temperature and allow greater current draw, at a cost of reduced battery life. Tesla warns that both Range and Performance modes will shorten battery life. I don't need Range mode, and I have all the acceleration I want or need with Standard mode.

 

I see it with people that work at LANL, where they are at 1 bar at 599/285, 8 bars at the Rio Grande, and 1 bar at the Lab. 1.5 complete cycles in 30 minutes, with the reverse on the way home. I just did an '05 at 153K -- two modules with dead cells, and two other modules were weak/discards.

 

GM is a source. Lyle is/was a guy who had good contacts within GM. He did not reference anyone in that article, the only one I'm aware of that makes the claim that the battery usage expands.

Again, it may very well do that (I would prefer it does), but one line in a Lyle blog is not a definitive source.

Back to capacity, let me reiterate that GM warrants it, and seems to be the only manufacturer currently doing so:

 

I know that route well. I always filled up the battery going down, but could usually avoid purple on the way up by taking the truck route

 

That's interesting data. 3 cycles/day. 5 days/wk. Call it 750/yr. The batteries lasted 6 years, or potentially 4500 cycles.

That's pretty damn good.

 

That is a warranty, GM style. They do not even bother to say if capacity is measured from 16 kwh nominal or 10.6 kwh useable.

You have a worthless scrap of paper.

 

All things through your lens of GM hate, huh?

Perhaps you'll prefer Nissan's battery (non)warranty (italics/bold mine):

Awesome. You have to put on your tinfoil hat to come up with something to bash GM on when Nissan positively begs for it. I can only imagine the vitriol I'd see here if GM had taken Nissan's lame approach.

 

My mistake. You did post about the pathetic Nissan battery warranty.

GM basher, Nissan apologist. Got it.

PS: they can't warranty the battery for "driving extremes" because they cheaped out on thermal management plus pushed the SOC envelope for EPA glory. As posted earlier, one only needs to let the car sit plugged in at 100% charge in high temps to hurt it.

 

I have not seen the full warranty. But the above quote does not say anything about replacing the battery. It describes how it will be tested, says what GM expects, and then says that the dealer service technician will determine if it's within the proper limit.

It never says that GM will replace a battery that the service tech determines to be outside the proper limit, and it never says that GM's stated "expectation" is the "proper limit."

The passage quoted above is not a warranty.

As much as I hate Nissan, after the way they treated me like dirt, they are straightforward in informing the buyer that there is no warranty on the battery other than for manufacturing defects. GM seems to be all obfuscation. I'd like to see a clear-cut, written warranty, stating that if the battery capacity (not just range) falls below X kWh or percent within Y years or Z miles, they'll replace it.

I searched on Chevrolet-dot-com and could not find the actual text of the warranty. Just multiple references to "8 years, 100,000 miles." Nothing about what was actually covered. Other, more general warranty statements mention parts and labor, and exclude damage due to accidents, misuse, etc.

 

Nissan was smart not to mix the liquid coolant with the battery. Volt fire was caused by the leaking coolant.

I thought Leaf's battery is cooled by air with a fan. So it is an active cooling using different medium.

Both Leaf and Volt battery packs are not warranted for the life (10 years / 150k miles) of the cars. Their battery end of life does not follow the industry standard (80% of the original). Tesla Model S may follow this.

Having said that, I think it is a good enough solution to get the electrons flowing. Because Nissan does not cover the capacity loss, they would not be eating a lot of money with the warranty work. However, GM would.

 

Just out of curiosity, on what basis are you measuring "industry standard" when the current PHEV industry is a single manufacturer that has a different warranty?

 

Tinfoil hats do not work in New Mexico due to high levels of static electricity and greater incidence of cosmic rays. Crystals must be used instead.

:focus:

Mike, if you could locate the procedure for the warranty battery test in the Volt factory service manual and/or a service bulletin, I'd love to see it.

 

The PHEV industry does not define end of life for the entire lithium chemistry industry. Lithium batteries are used in everything and the battery manufacturers themselves along with volume consumers and "the industry" leaders have all agreed that 80% of original capacity is "end of life".

http://liionbms.com/pdf/shandong/100ah.pdf

Cycle Life Test:
Temperature 20±2℃, Charge with constant charge current 1I3 to charge cut-off voltage, Then charge with constant voltage to the current ≤ 0.01C, Then, stop charge. 10 min later, discharge with discharge current 0.5C to 100% of the capacity DOD. 10 min later, repeat the cycle, till the capacity of lasting 24times ≤ 80% of the Nominal Capacity, Then consider the life of battery end.。

http://www.europa-batteries.com/documentations/fr/LiFePO4 EU1217FJ.pdf
4.8. Cycle Life: Capacity≥80% Nominal Capacity after 1000 cycles

 

My opinions of GM do not change the facts -- you have a worthless scrap of paper.

As for my opinion that this is typical GM SOP, use your search aptitude in lieu of memory or removing your blinders to remind yourself of GM's decision a few months ago to tell car owners with accelerated wear (on their tyres, IIRC) that the suspension causing the effect was not warranted, since it was a 'design decision.'

LOL

 

Having the car picked up and turned upside to check for leaks has no bearing on the odds in real life?

Liquids have a much better capacity at transferring heat. Besides, the advantage of GM's and Ford's active thermal management systems is that they heat battery as needed. I, and others, had wished for a way of heating up the Prius battery during the winter.

 

Yes, they do. They also leak.

This can be viewed as a question of engineering trade-offs -- performance, reliability and safety. If (and that is a big IF) Nissan has figured out battery reliability with air instead of liquid they are far ahead in the game.

 

Thats fine, I'll accept that 80% of original capacity is end of life for lithium batteries. But what connection does that have to usb's assertion that the industry standard is 150,000 miles and 10 years? How many MILES do you get out of a laptop?

 

CARB requires the battery to have warranty through out it's useful life (10 years / 150k miles) to ensure the emission is at acceptable level till the end.

The regular Prius and PiP were designed to meet (even exceed) both end of life goals. Volt short changed both of those requirements. Even worse, the emission does not meet SULEV.