Stale gas

Read this article for a description of how the PHEV industry cooperated to deal with this issue, taking a big step beyond all previous gasoline-fueled cars:

How designing the Chevy Volt's sealed gas tank brought automakers, CARB together

"... but now we've got the scoop on the gas tank used to keep liquid fuel in the Volt from evaporating or going stale for up to a year. "

It isn't the first batch of air that is a meaningful problem. It is the continual exchange of fresh air into that space that creates the problem. PHEVs don't allow that continual exchange.

A Prime's fuel tank holds about 11.3 gallons, or 1.5 cubic feet. If the tank is almost completely drained of fuel and is holding almost entirely air, that is about 1.8 ounces of air at sea level, which is enough to fully oxidize only 1/8th of an ounce of gasoline. That isn't very much ruined gasoline when diluted by several gallons of good stuff.

 

Yes, it is. The owner's manual specifies up to 15% ethanol.

 

Interesting, thanks.

 

I really don't want to be snarky, but I doubt that many of us anticipated a pandemic shutting down travel for over a year. When I bought my Prime, I was consistently visiting my company HQ on a monthly basis for face-to-face time, burning at least a half tank each time. I haven't been there for over a year after they closed the buildings and told everyone to work from home.

 

Heck of a thing going from 20,000+ miles per year down to about 1,000.

 

Some where nearly at 100% EV, and a few thinking of keeping zero gas in the tank before the pandemic. The first stale gas threads started way before then.

 

Does that mean you aren't driving it at all? Or any other vehicle, for which your Prime could be used as a substitute for long enough to burn down some fuel?

 

I'm retired and still manage to drive about 10-12,000 miles a year, plandemic or not, but I don't live in a big city with mass transit or a lot of places I can walk to either. Even in locked down California, travel was never really shut down, if only for a short time. I could go a month without buying gas I think, not taking many long trips.

 

Hmmm. I still drive almost as much as before. Monday was only about 24 miles. Yesterday was 60 miles, mostly EV. Today should be about 45 miles all EV. Tomorrow will be the usual 19 miles. Friday will probably be about 40 miles, almost all EV.

 

Other than short trips within the Prime EV range, such as grocery store, no, we haven't been doing any driving the past year. My wife is retired, and I work from home, so there is no commute. Other activities pretty much were moved to zoom. Until recently, I really hadn't thought about the stale gas issue, or I could have set HV mode for the grocery trips, but those are only about 10 miles round trip every two weeks or so. Our gasoline usage had been pretty much only for my monthly trips to my company HQ, but those have been suspended for the past year. Our adult kids live locally, so even that didn't add any gasoline usage, even though we refrained from in-person visits for the most part this past year. So our total gasoline usage for the past year has been essentially zero. I had to regularly put a charger on my wife's SUV to keep the battery charged, since it wasn't being driven at all.

 

If I were you, I'd deal with the gasoline situation on both vehicles before it's too late. If it means taking a long drive in then country or whatever, using Sta-Bil and diluting the bad gas with fresh, etc. then so be it.


iPhone ? Pro