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

To be fair, 22,000 miles at about 75 miles / charge is worst case about full 300 cycles - if you assume the LEAFs batteries are similar to the LG ones in the DoD study, that would result in a couple percent of capacity loss at most. But most probably most of those charges were partial cycles so actual capacity loss would be less.

Reasonable guesses before one might expect the pack to reach 80% capacity. Time will tell!

 

I would certaintly be happy with 150,000 miles.. Even 100,000 for such a new technology would be acceptable in my mind. Granted more is always better, but I try to be as realistic as I can with my expectations..

22,000 miles in 7 months is a lot! Would seem to me he is almost going a full cycle on the battery unless he is managing to recharge at work/mid point. Most of the time I only use 50% of the useable portion of my battery, but a couple times a month I do wind up going full cycle on it.

 

i *might* be happy with it too. at current gas prices i am saving 5 cents a mile in gas costs alone over the Prius. so if a batt pack replacement is say...umm.... $7500 ok, that is break even and difference in maintenance i pocket (remember this is assuming gas prices are still $3.75 a gallon...?)

either way; before i jumped on the Leaf, i figured i could make do with 50 miles of range. i am a long long way from that

My Nissan Leaf Forum • View topic - Maximum Winter Time Range without recharging

plus its a lot different to simply pay out an extra $150-200 a month verses a one time payment of $7500. but i honestly think that i will make out financially much better than gas on the long run. mind you i sold a paid off car to get the Leaf. adding the cost of the Leaf after the sales price i am making up $15,000 after incentives. that is 300,000 miles of EV over gas to make that up...but once again, i think we will see higher prices in gas before i have to shop for batteries

 

Yeah. I am hoping that an EV battery replacement will be the larger size equivelent of buying a 12V battery in the future. The problem will be in that the Leaf, Volt, Tesla, and other EV's all use different shaped packs. Maybe we will be able to just get the cells recondioned/replaced would be my hope instead of being chained to say Nissan or GM.

Right now GM dealers are charging people that destroy their batteries about $3500 for a new pack, and the installation. The couple people that were charged though have managed to get a refund from GM as the company decided to cover it under warranty at a later date. For me $7500 for the replacement would be steep even on the Leaf. If paying more money got me more range though I would consider it. We certaintly are saving money vs going to the pump. Depending on how much further gas prices go down though the tables may turn in that aspect (at least for me with the Volt, the Leaf may still be better off).

 

going to batteries that are more recyclable is a long time coming. lead acid is recyclable but so dangerous we dont hardly do it here anymore. as always we ship our problems elsewhere where the problem is not handled correctly and it comes back to haunt us.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/09/s...-danger.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

 

Maybe I misunderstand the way these batteries are constructed. It is unfortunate that we are exporting these problems to other countries. It sure seems like in the US we export a lot of problems to foreign nations. I know there are processes through which you can freeze the lithium batteries and cut them up to recycle them. I was under the impression there are individual modules inside the larger battery pack, and that is what I was referring to changing out. Similar to how people fix old Prius batteries by changing out the affected cells on the bus bar? Looks like we need to get on the ball figuring out how to recycle or otherwise dispose of these things before it starts to become a bigger problem..

 

Yes the Volt batteries are individual 3.6v cells (288 of them) organized as 36 submodules with 4 of each of these in the nine modules of the Volt’s T-shaped battery Plastic frames hold pairs of lithium-ion cells that sandwich an aluminum cooling fin. The design and construction of that aluminum plate is critical to ensuring an even temperature distribution with no hot or cool spots across the flat, rectangular cell. the cooling will make individual cell replacement more difficult than in say a tesla.

There are some DOE sponsored groups looking at making lithium recycling cost effective. Its technologically doable in a safe manner (and yes freesing with liquid nitrogen is part of that), but its not yet cost effective. The cost to recover the lithium is more than the raw ore. (The other recovered materials, copper and such, make it a bit closer but still its not cost effective).

 

From that article, the vast majority of lead acid batteries are still recycled here in the US (80%), though the perentage has been going down. I sure would prefer they be properly recycled here than being dumped into polluting recycling plants outsie the country.

 

I agree with you.

I find it scary how they could reach that conclusion from the test data (the lack of).

 

That's why, when I was living on a very modest income (most of my life) I set aside money every month toward the eventual purchase of a new car without having to borrow, and also an amount every month for car and house repairs.

That's another face of globalization: Companies save on labor by exporting jobs, and they save on waste disposal by exporting waste, and when industrial processes compromise health, they export those to avoid domestic health and environmental regulations.

We could pass laws requiring American corporations to observe U.S. health and environmental standards in their foreign operations, but we don't because the lobbyists argue that we'd lose business. I'd like to see laws that would forbid the importation of any product whose manufacture does not meet U.S. standards, and forbid the export of waste or recyclables to facilities that do not meet U.S. standards. Of course this will never happen because the people who fund our legislators profit by the status quo.

 

What is missing is that more cars are being built in mexico, and more batteries are being recycled in mexico.

Johnson Controls Inc. | Battery Recycling

EPA rules have moved a small portion across the border, and it needs to look at net effects. Lead Acid batteries are heavy, and rust belt batteries will continue to be recycled in the rust belt where transport of lead to battery factories to auto manufacturers and after market.

This will just make it so japanese or chinese companies start making batteries to supply the Mexican car plants. This would likely increase pollution since JCI, the leading supplier to these plants has higher environmental standards. If your goal is to reduce repatrioting profits to the US and to increase pollution your law makes sense. An extreme is Haliburton that simply creates other companies to violate US laws.

 

Yeah I know I'm bring up old stuff, but just catching up on this thread.

I've send mail to verify (get the thesis or the answer) but I'm expecting the 2500 was obtained by taking the warranty /miles = cycles. Since they used 40mile for the Volt range, 100,000 / 40miles = 2500 cycles.
Thus it provides no added information on the actual estimated life of the likelihood of the warranty costing GM money.

Warranty computations are based on a mix of expected failure rates at different times/miles, cost to repair and number of units sold. In general the MTBF is much greater than warranty but how much more depends on the shape of the failure curve vs repair costs. And since time is a critical factor, and much harder to simulate/evaluate, none of us will know for years how it really goes. Number of cycles in the sweetspot range is rarely what is measured in comparing battery chemistry and really what matters most for the Volt. The Prius Batteries have done way way better than many people predicted because the car takes care of them way better than most batteries.

Personally I do hope GM eventually expanding the usable range, but not until the particular car's battery really needs it, and hopefully well beyond 10y and 150Kmiles. Better to get all we can from that battery before we put it to pasture than to keep us using only 65% and limiting our miles and making us burn gas.

And if a volt range is diminished than just like a PiP, we'll still be able to get where we are going, just not quite as efficiently. (Ice engines too lose efficiency with time).

 

The Chevy Volt Will Get 50 MPG When the Battery is Drained, According to GM : TreeHugger
Rather than fish back through gobs of nissanLeaf threads, it was easier to just google Volt and 50mpg. That said, I recall the mocking at the notion there was ever a waiting list for the EV1. GM not only denied it, but stated that when they called prospective buyers (sounds like a list to me), GM reported that no one really wanted EV1's except for about 50 people. Yet now, as December 2011 winds down, the VIN count stands in the 20,000 units range world wide, for the Nissan Volt. I do the best I can, to read the different articles, and try to filter to determine what's what. Maybe you tell me where the truth is.

As for 'liking' a company or 'not liking' a company - what does that have to do with anything? One does not invalidate reality by claiming, "oh, you simply don't don't like them". That said, tell me what's to like about a company that dumps hundreds of acres of abandoned toxic manufacturing sites onto the shoulders of the federal taxpayers, even as their executives fly in to congress (in private jets) to beg for more money?
http://www.hybridcars.com/environme...y-toxic-dumps-and-mercury-disposal-26044.html
I actually like (or dislike) people - based on their behavior. A company is just a place where people work. If my likes or dislikes are way out there on Neptune, please let me know.

.

 

Think people are mixing up different issues. The orginal volt concept had 1L generator (see GM CEO Confirms 4-Cylinder 1.4 L Engine Being Considered For the Volt’s Range Extender) but GM never formally stated 50mpg, that was rumors.

And the treehugger article above is long after the 1.4L was fixed in the design. However even the 1.4L could get better MPG if they were more agressive on the engine (but that is noisy and may cause increased emissions especially when cold as it would be running at 3500-3800 RPM). See
Where does the Volt go from here?
Where they discuss it. That may be what is the root source of the 50mpg in the tree-hugger article.

With judicious use of MountainMode People do get close to 50mpg in CS mode in their volts, see this discussion
Holiday 100+ Mile Drive/Mountain Mode.......

It would be nice if the Volt had an ECO mode that allowed users to trade noise for mpg.

 

BSFC difference would be 5-10% difference. There is no way Volt can get 50 MPG. First, it runs on Otto cycle. Second, it has more conversion loss. Third, the car is as heavy as the Equinox SUV.

 

I tried looking for the thread you described for a minute or so but couldn't find it (but it certainly could exist). The article you linked to at treehugger.com is basically a gossip item. Andrew Farah, a senior GM engineer on the Volt project, has clearly said that 50 mpg was a target or goal. They clearly missed that target by a wide margin. I have not seen a detailed and well-sourced explanation of how they thought they would get 50 mpg late into the development cycle. I can believe they thought it was possible in the early days of computer simulations back in 2007. The concept car back then was supposed to have a 3 cylinder 1.0L engine that GM uses in Europe. Maybe if they had stayed with that engine they could have gotten 50 mpg? I don't know. They obviously dropped that plan and moved up to 4 cylinders and 1.4L which was their next largest existing engine. Did they change because the smaller engine would have been too noisy running at higher RPMs? Did it not generate enough power even at higher speeds? I don't know. Would a larger engine be more efficient as it was for the 3rd generation Prius? I don't know.

I think we do know or can usefully speculate about some things. Since the 1.4L engine seems to be tightly packed under the hood it seems likely that the next larger engine is not an option for the existing body design. Also, GM was taking substantial implementation (schedule) risks with the new battery pack and adapted FWD 2-mode hybrid transmission and the associated control software. It was an entirely reasonable engineering decision to stick with an existing engine.

I agree that GM did a poor job of setting realistic expectations for gasoline efficiency. Some writers likely had their own unrealistic expectations. That guy at treehugger.com thought that 50 mpg was "not bad" but also "not spectacular". In reality, the Prius 50 mpg achievement stands far above any other widely sold car and it got there through 15 years of continuous refinement.

GM's actual achievement of 35/40/37 (city/hwy/combined) for a 1st generation Volt is reasonable and adequate for the limited role that gasoline plays in overall driving efficiency for a typical Volt customer. It does better than several other 2011 hybrid cars -- better in all modes than the 2011 Toyota Camry HSD which was also used in the Lexus HS 250h and better in highway mileage than the Ford Fusion hybrid. It matches the Lexus CT 200h on highway mileage and is within 10% of the Honda hybrids.

The Volt's weak spot is city gasoline mileage where its start/stop serial hybrid mode control strategy is less efficient. This is relatively unimportant since most gasoline miles are on the highway given that the battery is large enough to cover typical daily commutes. Those who drive significant urban miles on gasoline can still achieve 42 mpg by using the "mountain mode" feature to build up 15 miles of battery reserve (or alternatively holding that much in reserve from a previous charging session) while driving on the highway during longer commutes and then reverting to normal mode when exiting the highway onto city streets. I do this in real world driving, when necessary, and get around 42/42/42 (city/hwy/combined) using only gasoline while driving typical speed limits of 35 mph city and 65 mph highway.

 

Wow, and they say Pulse & Glide is annoying...3500rpm is not?
When our Prii pulse, normally is about 2200-2500rpm and is almost inaudible...and 3Gen even lower.

 

Maybe not 50mpg consistently.. but his pic was not too far off

And that was mostly at highway speeds and cold.


With respect to the BSFC, in
VOLT MPG estimate using BSFC maps
George did an estimation showing 46.7MPG. And he did not push the RPM to WOT, but used a more realistic setting.


Not sure why you claim the Volt has more conversion loses, as when its in two-motor ER driving its power-split design is nearly the same as a Prius, and at higher revs is splitting its power between drive and generation. To see how the volt power-split works Check out
Solving the Volt



Yes an Atkinson Miller could probably do better, than Otto for the Volt, but that was not the question.

The mass is more of an issue for city driving than HWY and the discussion of approaching 50 was only for HWY.

 

Yep 3500 would probably be annoying, but I could crank some tunes.. (I do frequently anyhow).

The MM on the VOlt rarely gets above 2200 (unless you are going up mountains which is why its not quite as good as one might get.

 

where talking about replacing battery packs at around 10years... what is the cost of t he battery pack of the volt? its pretty big!