Chevy Spark EV

-0.325 coefficient of drag

-"a more than 20-kWh lithium ion battery is expected to provide among the best EV range performance in its segment."

-560lbs battery pack


I may have missed it, but there's no mention of estimated range.. sure is a lot of talk about its acceleration and interior tech though.

 

OP might want to edit the title to avoid confusion w/the gasoline powered Spark.

 

Look at the big dumb shifter between the seats! What, are you going to bang through simulated gear shifts? Can I get a fake clutch for a dream manual trans? I do applaud what GM is doing in the EV game and I hope them the best. I get a kick out of the old school garbage that shows up on "fresh new designs".

 

If Tesla gets 160 miles out of 40kWh then my rough guess is the Chevy is good for ~80 miles. How much does the car weigh? Looks like it is going after the Leaf.

$25000 after incentives means it starts at $32500.

Someone's not watching the Hybrid Games. Shifter Size is almost an event. Ford says the bigger the shifter the better the car.

 

Yep that's what NYT guessed
L.A. Auto Show: 2014 Chevrolet Spark EV - NYTimes.com

This is going after the same market as the imev, iq ev, fiat 500 ev, etc.

chevy will sell many volts for every spark ev

 

The EV market just got very interesting. GM is making a big play. Fiat announced a eV also

 

This Chevy appears to have half the weight of a Tesla S.
But battery pack size does not tell us range; usable kWh tells us. We don't know what percentage of that 20 kWh pack will be usable.

 

2014 Chevrolet Spark EV Prototype Quick Drive - Motor Trend

Its probably about 2800lbs not that much less than a leaf.

Leaf gets 73@99 mpge on 24kwh
GM says this will get more, but really how much more efficient can it be than a leaf?

80 on a 20kwh pack if they have similar charging losses to the leaf would be 130 mpge. I doubt it is much higher than that. Motor trend seemed to like it. One factor that will be interesting is frankenplug

 

The thing is, per Compare Side-by-Side, the ICE Spark is a subcompact vs. the midsized '12 Leaf and '12 Prius.

The ICE Spark also did very poorly in Consumer Reports' subcompact car review. The score was way too low to recommend and the only (of 34). Lowest score of a recommended subcompact they listed was the Scion xD w/60. Some of the lows they noted w/ICE Spark like acceleration, automatic transmission behavior and the engine part of the noise will likely be solved by the EV version.

And, the '13 Leaf I'm sure will gain some cargo space because from Nissan Officially Announces 2013 LEAF In Japan. More Range, Less Money, New Functionality, they moved the charger that was under a hump in the back (and ate up cargo space) to under the hood.

With the Spark EV's battery thermal management, they really ought to sell it in AZ and TX, where the Leaf has issues w/early battery degradation due to complete lack of any battery TMS. Unfortunately, AZ and TX aren't listed as part of their rollout market.

 

It's what the iMiEV has, and the Prius c for that matter.
Mitsubishi i Electric Car Features & Specs / Mitsubishi Motors

Whether buttons or some type of lever, they are all just switches under the plastic that do the same thing. Push buttons for transmissions appeared decades ago. They disappeared from the market because most people preferred the lever. While using shifters used in the ICE cars in the EV can save a couple bucks, it is mostly about getting people to actually buy the car. The flying bridge in the gen3 moves the shifter to a spot where most people feel it should be for that reason, and why the c has a clunky old shifter.

 

DC L2 charger can be up to 500 Volts at 200 Amps. It calls for charging from 20% -> 80% in 20 minutes for BEV.

How much will the DC Combo L2 charger cost?

 

From a human factors point of view the prius shifter - non stationary joy stick is worse. There is not a position maintained to give feed back and there is a secondary button for park. Someone driving different cars is forced to change behavior. It is also non-intuitive.

IMHO the prius c changed not to save money, but to segment the market. A clunky shifter is preferable to many versus a clunky flying bridge. It is minor though. I would guess if toyota did usability studies the clunky shifter would win. That doesn't mean the column shifter or other type would not catch on.

All this is quite off topic, and has been talked about before. Since I have worked a great deal on user interfaces in the past, it is interesting to me. I recently have driven the 2008 TCH and a new one with entune. IMHO there is much work to be done in interface and usability, and entune may have been a small step backward.

 

The DC is what we typically call L3. I expect the SAE combo plug (Frankenplug) to cost about as much as chademo, and only be installed in public places. Cost of the dc fast chargers seems to range from $10K-$50K. Most homeowners would need an upgraded electrical panel to feed one of these beasts. Hopefully NRG and other QC providers will add the combo plug to their plans and allow combo plug and chademo to their promised chargers. In the future if combo plug catches on chademo may die in this country.

At home I would expect people to continue installing AC L2. The spark appears to only have a 3.3KW charger as does the 2012 leaf. The focus EV and 2013 leaf use a 6.6kw charger, and the tesla can have 1 or 2 J1772 9.9 kw chargers attached.

 

DC has L1 and L2. DC L1 is 200-500V at 80 Amps. DC L2 is 200 Amp.

DC L3 has not finalized.

 

What SAE is calling L2 DC on the combo plug is what people have been callling L3. You can easily find information on costs of L3 from older articles. Itsa a change in terminology, that seemed to be added because of european naming conventions. Its just a confusing change.

Quick Charge -> DC fast Charging used to be L3 charging
Now SAE is calling it L2 DC
On Chademo and Tesla people still call these plugs L3. Costs should be similar to implement any of the 3 plugs. IMHO the tesla plug is technically superior along with J1772 compatibility with the adapter. The worst plug is Chademo, but the good thing is now we have a standard.

Welcome to 2009, SAE Officially Approves New Fast-Charging Combo: Coupler Standard (SAE J1772) for Plug-In EVs

Tesla's 2012 Model S Charging Equipment. Redesign For Redesign's Sake?

 

Theres a bunch of pictures posted at Engadget (here).. but here's one of the dash.. its showing 5.5 mi/kWh average over 1027.8 miles on the Trip Odometer.. granted, it may not be an actual number or indicative of real world performance.. but it is an interestingly high number they chose to show

 

Yea, interesting. The big 25 MPH is the current speed, I assume. We don't know if it was being driven on a flat road or not.

The battery is half empty with the Max 30 miles Min 20 miles and Mid 25(?) miles. If that is the case, a full battery should get about 50 miles?

 

I agree, I'm very disappointed in Tesla for going proprietary. Very bad move, Tesla!

 

I'm amazed by how poor aerodynamics this car has. A cw of 0.325 after a massive amount of aerodynamic tweeks makes it sound like the ICE version has never seen a wind tunnel.

For comparison:
Toyota Aygo: 0.28, (older construction, same shape)
Toyota iQ: 0.29.

and my favorite:
Prius: 0.25