Will the Chevrolet Volt be a failure or a success?

Mountain mode, Engine maintenance and Fuel maintenance are other cases where gas engine would run without the battery charge getting low.

 

I thought it said 'Once the battery is depleted'.

 

Good point. I frankly find it all confusing and I think many of us do (including a couple of Volt owners!), so many variables.

 

Your point is well taken, and I agree efficiency needs to be improved and is an important goal to progress towards. For me it does not make the present model a failure however (thread is will it be a failure or success). It succeeds in bringing electric personal transport to market at a price far more affordable than any other electric vehicle with a reasonable range.

Now the Volt is not a "car for the masses" compared to a civic or camry, but compared to a Tesla or Fisker it certainly is, and in my opinion it is much more practical for the masses than the Leaf.

There is a segment of the population that really wants an electric car (and not all of them are early adopters), and they can't afford a roadster and need more range than a Leaf can provide. The Volt will be a success in that segment until a lower cost longer range electric vehicle is available, which will be a few years in my opinion.

 

You're conflating cat warm up (which is what the engineer mentioned was an issue because the Volt starts/stops more than the other cars during the emissions test protocol) with coolant warm up. Since a typical cat needs to be 850F, I'm not convinced that the coolant warming up more quickly to something in the low 100s materially affects it.

Regardless, 5-10 minutes? No way. I noticed it took less than 2 minutes to get to 150F a few weeks ago on a 40F day. When charging (as opposed to popping the hood to make it start and idle), it runs at full throttle as much as possible to reduce pumping losses, generating a lot of heat.

I have my car with me, my wife forgot to turn it off last night so it's in ICE mode (CS? whatever), and my co-worker just returned my scanner. I may even be able to figure out how to record with the thing.

30-60 seconds to what? How many coolant degrees am I looking for?

 

Actually, there are two goals. One is efficiency and the second is sustainability. You could get 100mpg in all cars but the local petroleum would still run out.

 

Not true. The smart fourtwo coupe/convertible are EPA rated at 39kwh/100miles vs 36 for the Volt, despite the Volt weighing ~1600lbs more.

The EPA has only rated 3 vehicles: the Leaf, Volt, and Smart fourtwo pairs. I'm very curious to see the Karma Fisker numbers.

 

Smart Fortwo ED is a new one. Wow, 39 kWh/100 miles with 30kW electric motor.

Both Tesla Roadster and Mini E have lower electricity consumption than the Volt. For some reason, I don't see them on EPA website.

 

I can't understand that either.

Excepting the Smarts, it's essentially a proxy for weight. I expect both the Tesla S and Karma to come in worse than the Volt in proportion to their relative weights.

 

T(sec)=0, temp = 86F (first really warm spring day).
At T=85.0, temp=150F.
At T=85.9, I was stuck behind slow moving traffic and the engine shut down.

 

All you will ever really need is 64K.

I'm not sure how you determined when it is "best to do so" for turning on the ice, but as the volt owner said he keeps his off, and that appears to be the way he likes it. I was pointing out unless someone thinks they won't go over 40 that ice is going to come on. Now what is your point again?

Is it goldilocks time?

 

The Prius uses EGR, which means in startup, some of the unburnt gas and NOx, CO, etc. will be rerouted to the intake once again and mixed with clean air, to be combusted with fuel again. This more fully completes combustion, plus recycles a lot of the heat instead of letting it out the tailpipe. This is why even with a cold cat, the Prius achieves low emissions, and still warms up quickly.

I'm just conjecturing, but in the Volt, the unburnt byproducts are converted in the cat, which is what heats it up. The Volt could simply use BMW's system of having electric coils to heat up the cold cat to 800 degrees or so.

A cat would take about 5 minutes to heat up otherwise.

 

EGR reduces NOx because the engine runs cooler, it does not break down when heated again. EGR does help with combustion of some unburnt hydrocarbons, but these are not a problem with most new engines.

Exhaust heat recovery allows the cold engine to heat up faster and thus produce less emissions more quickly.

From looking at these technologies the prius will likely heat up its cat slower, not quicker than the volt. The technologies do help make the output cleaner whether the cat is off or on.


I do not trust the emissions tests for hybrids or phevs, as they do give an additional penalty at start up compared to conventional engines. This needs to be addressed in testing. PHEV tail pipe emissions should be scaled by the miles driven in each mode. Without this the phv prius figures look worse than the prius figures from initial testing. Even with proper scaling if the volt will have greater tail pipe emissions than a prius of CO and NOx.

 

The Volt ICE uses EGR. It's been common since the 1970s.

You are not fully understanding the purpose of EGR. EGR is not related to start-up. It is typically not active during warm-up (I want to say "never"). Rerouting exhaust into the intake causes it to displace some of the incoming fuel-air charge. This lowers the temperature of combustion during cruise, reducing formation of NOx, an agent in smog.

 

Even the highway merge (40-55 mph) seemed effortless. Prius PHV was able to keep up.

When the driver request more power than the electric powertrain, it is best to use the full hybrid powertrain.

The gas engine in both the Prius and Volt were downsized (right-sized) to optimize MPG. Electric powertrain in the Prius (and PHV) were right-sized to save weight as well, resulting in more MPG or longer EV range. That isn't the case with the Volt.

Volt's electric motor was sized to handle maximum power. The battery pack was sized to provide maximum power the motor can consume. The battery pack even has to carry the weight of the gas powertrain. The best thing to do (from efficiency POV) during heavy acceleration is to turn on the gas engine so that you can downsize the electric powertrain (and battery pack).

In summary, Volt's electric powertrain was unnecessarily super-sized to cover peak power demands, in order to prevent the gas engine from turning on. The compromise caused by that is not worth the "bragging right", in my opinion. It is natural for hybrid to use both hybrid engines for the peak power demand. Otherwise, we are getting into the wasteful mindset of Hummer.

 

Here is a piece from HSW.

Note that Prius retards the ignition timing to get more heat during the warmup cycle.

 

I can see that. If you must use two power sources, best to use and combine the strengths of both.

One Volt owner said there's been some range anxiety to avoid gas engine coming on. At 37 MPG is CS, I could see that.

Oh would it stink driving a Volt to from SF to LA. Get 35 miles out of town, and boom, you're on 37 ish MPG for the next 400 miles, like a Civic, except on premium gas.

Prius has been the darling for SF / LA trips - 1 tank of gas, about $30 or so.

 

I'm not necessarily calling you a lier, but that is objectively false in multiple ways.

You seem to have quite strong opinions with what is best. All I can say is I disagree with your value judgement, and I believe that most people interested in phevs disagree with your opinion.

Rightsizing is a euphamism for laying off people. I don't think you acutually understand the connontations of your statement. Normally we mean to reduce it to cut cost, with it being implied that this may not be good for the people or product.

I think 500 hp is full power. Could you down size the car for me

I disagree with your opinions, and that is what they are simple opinions. There is no expertise just made up notions to support a conclusion built without any real evaluation. Go drive both and then tell me about right sizing.

 

I was in the car with a camera and that video is on youtube.

I am not going to go off-topic from Volt to job. Don't agree with my opinion? Just look at the facts.

$41k, 12.9 kWh per charge, 37 MPG with premium, ULEV (not AT-PZEV), 3,800 lbs for a compact car. Volt is heavier than the Avalon full size! Volt is like a mini Hummer plugin hybrid.

BTW, that last part is my opinion.

 

While I don't agree with all of USBseawolf2000's views on the value of fuller electrification, I believe he does have a point about using the most efficient power source available, and when that happens to be the ICE you are using energy to tote around anyway, you shouldn't ignore it. To a point.

If I am going on a short trip, that I know will not exceed my all electric range, I want the ICE to stay off and I am grateful the electric motors are sized to handle the load. However, when I know I am looking at a 100-200 mile trip I would like the option of a "hybrid" setting that will use the ICE when it is best to do so and the same with the EV power train.

In my volt I come close to simulating that with "mountain mode", it sets a higher state of charge as the trigger point for CS mode, and then under high loads (70 mph+) the ICE comes on to help, then when I get off the freeway I can pop it back to normal mode and have about 15 miles of EV range to use on slower speed "surface" roads where it is more efficient.