Volt Battery fire(s)

Actually there was only one battery fire, the other two Volts involved in fires were victims not the cause of the fire. The only issue was the fire at the NHTSB facility 3 weeks after the battery was compromised in a crash test. A new protocol is being introduced that will drain the pack after it is compromised in an accident.

With a car there is always a risk of fire. If a car catches fire and burns a house to the ground it gets a short blurb on page 23 of the local rag. If a Volt is involved in a fire then it get front page treatment, it's all part of being the new kid on the block.

The NHTSB has stated that they don't consider the Volt to be anymore of a fire risk than a standard ICE car.

 

Volt also has a 360V battery heater that runs off the high voltage battery. That is supposed to heat up the coolant to warm up the battery. That needs to be looked at as well.

For PiP, the battery is air-warmed from the cabin. If it is very cold, the cabin gets the heat from the gas engine combined with the heat recycled from the exhaust.

 

It's a conspiracy to allow GM to take back the Volts like they did the EV1 a decade earlier.

 

How is the pip battery cooled, fan from cabin air temp? If so then maybe Gm should have learned from toyota. More damage control for the volt with gas prices down how are they selling ??

 

^^ Let's just say the fan expectation of msrp for years has been a couple years too optimistic.

 

I don't think it is possible to cool Volt battery pack with air. It has to provide 150 hp to propel the SUV weight compact car. It has to work so hard because the gas engine was not design to assist/blend.

Why? GM wanted to call it an electric car and avoid calling it a hybrid. Yes, it is just semantic but they thought it is a huge bragging right for marketing reasons. The engineers added a lot of complexity to realize it.

 

Thanks USBSEAWOLF2000 that explains the battery cooling and i did not realize the big weight of the volt. Looks like sometimes things get so complex from an engineering standpoint problems are caused them the media takes off with it like toyota faced with acceleration and brakes on the Prius. Wait till the pip comes out any little glitch and the press will be all over it, but the smart members on Prius chat will short out the truth like always. That you all for the great and smart input.

 

Basically engineering problems were created and then solved when they could have been avoided by simplifying.

Another example is the gasoline going stale from not using it.

 

Apparently the NHTSB has been able to duplicate the problem. It occurs when the battery pack has been compromised at the same time as the coolant line gets cut and there is significant charge in the batteries. The protocol for dealing with the Volts batteries when they have been compromised will the to drain the pack. It has been likened to draining the fuel tank on a car when it has been ruptured in a crash,

 

Forgot to mention that there also needs to be a significant time elapsed after the crash (In the original case it was 3 weeks).

 

I think GM might have come out ahead if they had just swallowed their pride and basically copied the regular Prius. Just a matter of time and Prius will be copied nearly verbatim (Insight does not count). Hopefully they can stay on course with Volt.

 

The PiP uses a blended electric/gas design because it has to given its small battery size.

There is a market for customers that don't want the gas engine revving up while they have battery charge available. This is why GM markets the Volt as EREV and will also market a Cruze as a blended plugin hybrid like a PiP but with a larger battery pack.

I personally want the engine to shut up and not burn gasoline unless I'm driving on a longer trip when I must burn gas because of range limitations. I want an EV experience with long range without paying $30,000+ just for the larger battery pack itself. That's the design center for the Volt and that's what I want. When 300+ mile battery packs drop under $10,000 with 45 minute quick charging then I'll ditch the gasoline engine and go EV-only.

 

Jeff N That is what most people are waiting for and which company is first ,will have people in line for miles, wanting one or two.

 

300 mile packs with 45 minute charging? I'm sure as long as you have access to your own power plant, should not be a problem. for the rest of us, using some common assumptions:

300 mile range @ 250 Watt hours/mile, equates to a 75KWH battery pack (in fact this is about the size Tesla is using in the Model S 300 mile pack), charging that in 45 minutes would require over 100KW of power delivered to it, after loss's, your not likely to find that many places, and if you do, there will be heavy demand charges, especially in California. Not to mention the tremendous heat from charging that pack... basiclly we can't do it with current technology.

Even the Nissan 50KW DC fast chargers, which they are GIVING away 400 of them in Europe, would not find homes in the US, because of the heavy demand charges.

I think you will be waiting a long long time (reality: forever), for that. We don't and won't need 300 mile packs, if DC fast charging infrastructure is deployed as well, more like 100 miles (24-30KW packs) would be plenty, with 20 minute stops to recharge it.

 

I was implicitly using the Model S with the 300 mile battery pack as my example.

I'd be happy with a Model S except that it's a little too large for my garage and it costs $77K+ before rebates and credits. Tesla claims they will be installing 90 kW fast chargers along major interstate highways so apparently it really is possible.

The LEAF and it's 24 kWh pack is nice but I personally think it is impractical for the longer driving that I sometimes want to do and I'm willing to pay a few thousand extra for a car that doesn't require me to get a rental when I want to go on a longer trip. I did a fast charge on a rental LEAF recently in Portland during a business trip and it took around 45 minutes at a starting power of 35 kW. Then add in the overhead of exiting and re-entering the highway, waiting for another car to finish charging before you can start, not being able to use all of your battery capacity between charging because of the limited geographic availability of fast charging stations, etc....

I don't want to drive an hour, charge an hour, drive an hour, .... I would be happy to drive four hours, charge an hour, and drive four hours since that is a closer match to my inherent biological needs to eat, excrete, and stretch my legs.

Counterintuitively, a larger battery pack would also save me the $1-2K expense and hassle of buying and installing a 240V EVSE. With the larger range, I could just charge on 120V adding 25-35 miles of charge every night which would match my long-term average driving needs even if I drove a couple of 100 mile trips on back-to-back days. On the rare exception where I would run short I could just do a local fast charge or fill the gap with some 240V opportunity charging at local businesses.

Maybe a 300 mile range will be possible in a $10,000 battery pack in 10 years when I'm ready to give up my Volt. If not, I'll probably buy another EREV.

 

If there where even %25 as many DC fast chargers as gas stations, and they could charge your 25-50KW pack in 15-20 minutes, that would be "good enough" for most people. We may never get to the point of battery equivalency to gasoline, and frankly it isn't needed to have widespread EV adoption.

 

Like Google copying the iPhone...

(I love my iPhone and Prius and looked forward to my PiP)

 

Seems to me the volt fire issues aren't greater than conventional fires in gasoline vehicles. Afterall the fire doesn't occurr until well after the collision and the passengers would likely already be removed.

As far as my prefect vehicle. It would be a car like the PIP, except with about 100 mile battery and an engine that doesn't start until the battery is depleted, then turning into a 50mpg hybrid. That would cover my day to day needs with a single charging at night, plus I'd have gas engine range with great fuel economy. I'd also likely use a tank of gas a month and avoid stale gasoline. Of course I'd like it less then $30k.