Will the Chevrolet Volt be a failure or a success?

And yet, I'm sure if I page back on this thread, I can find a million posts lambasting GM for developing a solution to avoid all those loses.

 

That is not totally true. Many posts where only referring that GM should have done that change in design much earlier, also that GM should never stubbornly call it a AER (errm EREV) type design, nor their proposed solution (too complex and prone to wear).

 

I think the problem for GM with how it pitched the EREV concept is that so few people even understand how a normal hybrid works and they needed to make clear they were trying to do something completely different.

As I said previously their target market is EV enthusiasts who want significant all electric driving, not just efficient hybrid driving. SO GM had good reason to keep the ICE off in demand situations where a more rounded hybrid, like a prius, would have used it because it is more efficient to do so.

GM wants the public to see the car as an EV to stake out its niche in the market place, so they felt a need to distance themselves as much as possible from hybrids that were currently available that don't offer the same EV experience. I don't think it was the best design choice for efficiency purposes, but I understand why they did it.

I have no doubt the PHV Prius will better integrate the available power systems and be more efficient. I don't think it will deliver as high a quality EV experience with the engine coming on during the AER, even though I know it is smarter for it to do so. One reason is, as I have mentioned previously I would only want it to come on if I knew I was going to exceed AER range, that won't be an issue in the PHV as most drivers will generally exceed the AER.

What I really want is a better integrated more optimized ICE like in the HSD, and a switch that lets me choose whether I want it to operate like an EV or a hybrid. For my personal tastes and driving style, I would always have that switch set to EV, unless I knew I'd be exceeding AER, in which case I'd set it to hybrid right away not once the battery is depleted. Drivers like some of the other posters that are more concerned with emissions and total efficiency than with all electric driving would tend to have it set to hybrid.

 

Perhaps you are correct ... that is the best explanation heard thus far. There are many "Ev enthusiast who want significant all electric driving" .... but not so many as to make the Volt a sales success. Then reduce the number of "EV enthusiast" that simply cannot afford the vehicle. Personally, I am a Lexus enthusiast, and would love the luxury experience. But, that is not within my means either.

OTOH, who worries about cost and profits when the government will not let companies that are too big to fail .... fail.

 

I think most prius drivers still have no idea how their cars work. There are a bunch of complainers about the explanation and it is not a good one, but I doubt very much it will affect sales. The biggest complainers have been against the car for longer than it has been in prototype.

GM was trying to erase the bad pr of the ev1 crushings. Don't read more into it than that. They did get forbes to say it is a better ev than the ev1
A lot of the reasons for the car are R&D and PR. Don't believe the straw man argument that the volt needs to sell as well as the prius to be successful, that is just crazy talk.

I think you have been listening to Toyota apologists if you think the phv prius is better integrated. It is a prius with a bigger battery. The battery is not powerful enough to provide full power, and it must spin the ice at highway speeds. The Gen 4 prius may be better integrated. The volt could be better designed when the engine is on. For this hsd is a superior design, and since the volt is not a pure series hybrid that wrinkle might be nice to add. The big difference in efficiency though is the volt has an inferior engine, and we will see if this is corrected in the second generation. Software could also be added so that the driver had more horsepower and earlier use of the engine like the Porsche 918 software.

This is all about what is a sales success. If it sells as many in each generation as the prius is it a success, or does it have to sell 4x more than the Honda hybrids, or does it have to beat the prius. I don't think it will sell in the hundreds of thousands a year, but there is a good chance that it will sell a hundred thousand a year after things are ramped up in 2013. Is that a success? Or they could really cheapen it and drop back to 2011 production and be a failure.

I think this is where a lot of people are coming from, but $350/month is within the means of many of these enthusiasts for both the volt and the leaf. I hope in 5 years these early cars help make other bevs and phevs both better and more affordable to the masses. We need the adopters to help pave the way if we are going to reduce gas consumption.

The bail out happened, I think it was wrong, but it was for the unions and jobs not the volt. If gm had not killed the ev1 it might not have needed to be bailed out. Bad management caused the bankruptcy. I doubt the volt will be the reason for a second one.

 

I found this as a thread over on the PHV Prius page of this forum:

"This is what I found.

Part Detail

The high voltage lithium battery is listed as $8722.56.

Check out the prices of the other PHV components. Looks very expensive.

[edit]
some examples of prices.
Charger - $9971.72
Converter - $6201.67
Battery voltage sensor - $4865.54 each. Has 2.



Thats a new regular Prius just in those components."

 

What is a converter vs charger? and battery voltage sensor, those prices seem crazy. The PHV will be a POS if it costs $15-20k more than the current Prius. I am still hopeful it will be sub 30k, at which point I sure wouldn't want one but I can see others would. Although $30k with a sizable tax credit could make it very attractive.

Is not the lithium battery replacing the current one? In which case it should be $8722 minus cost of current traction? The current one has no converter? I think the price increase will be in the vicinity of about $7-8k pre tax credit.

 

Those are retail hobbyist prices.

 

My understanding from the other thread is those are the part prices in the low production volume test models currently on the road. I am sure the prices will come down on the production models.

But I think it is reasonable to assume that a PHV prius may be substantially more than $3000 more expensive than a standard prius.

 

The test mules had the NiMh plus 2 separate Li packs, but as with the range Toyota said that the arrangement hasn't been finalized.

In terms of current pricing there isn't any reason the Prius couldn't be only $3k more. Different, larger battery and some other beefed up components, but to a significant extent the car's the same. However, given the additional development costs you'd expect a further bump above the current manufacturing cost. The battery's also new, but if they split up the packs as they did in the mules, it'd keep the warranty issues down due to modularity and low utilitization.

A Prius PHV owner will have the same fundamental home charging issues as a LEAF owner so there will be a lot of market crossover. (There's also the upcoming Focus BEV to consider but I don't think Ford will price theirs as low as the LEAF.) However, currently, the lower tax credit on the Prius PHV means it's difficult to compete purely on price with the LEAF.

But, they obviously can't go too high or it'll get close to Volt pricing. Even though the Volt's less efficient and more expensive on the gas, it'd still be cheaper to run for those between the PHV and Volt AERs on their commutes and the Volt has driving and comfort (at least in the front) characteristics more acceptable to the average driver.

I wouldn't be surprised to see it initially as a Four plus a $4k to $6 plug-in premium, followed by a cheaper Three+plug-in later.

 

PHV is not intended to be a full EV. It's purpose is to significantly boost MPG. Enough with the purist spin already. Prius is a hybrid.

As for highway speeds, that's disingenuous at best. Many only have speed limits of 55 & 60 mph anyway. And when you do travel at 65 or 70 mph, the resulting MPG is well over 100. Why is that bad?

Whatever the case, it all boils down to sales.

The minimum for mainstream is 5,000 per month. To be the game-changer hyped, it must be among the top-10 sellers.
.

 

Not bad at all, but I was responding the the idea that it is the best implementation. It is a less expensive implementation, but from a technical point of view I would say worse. Even at that battery capacity (5.3kwh) we have Limh capable of supplying 53kw but the pack configuration and software retards this as might the choice of motor in mg2. The battery pack weight is out of line with the designs in other cars. I did get an electrical engineering degree before my mba and have looked at electric cars since I was a kid. Having a bigger battery capacity seems like a good engineering trade off given the tax structure and battery costs from common suppliers LG and JCI-Saft. Motor trend also thought a clutch in electric mode made sense, and despite the ramblings of some non-mechanical types these electrically actuated clutches are highly dependable. This would allow the car to keep its hsd, but not turn the engine or mg1 when not needed, again to share parts with the higher volume car though the lack of clutch makes sense. It is rumored that the phv prius battery pack and software is being redesigned and this is needed. Car reviewers have also noted the phv prius may need a little work to its suspension and this may also make it into the commercial car.

Fair enough for 5k/month to be a success. I do think the prius was a game changer at well less than top 10 status. I would not call the volt a game changer though.

 

GM had load sharing Volt powertrains in testing in 2007, the same year the concept debuted. How much earlier could they have gone? They didn't "change the design", they just finally described it to the public.

 

Well into 2010 GM was claiming they were not driving the wheels with the engine. This is software not hardware design, but it apparently changed very late, or GM's PR was kept in the dark, as they put out strong statements. I believe that both performance and efficiency did not come out as the engineers had hoped. It is likely if they had made the decision sooner, they might have dropped the turbo version of the engine in and a larger generator motor with software to take care of it. I was surprised when gm decided not to use DI on the engine. The cruze could meet its goals, but this was not good for the volt.

 

It really is between EV and HV experience. ICE anxiety vs. efficiency. Emotional preference vs. Logic.

Switching between EV and HV (blending) is a good thing. Volt does it too which is why there is the Mountain Mode and Charge Sustain Mode. Prius PHV blends more often so the gas engine and fuel tank won't require extra maintenance due to regular usage. Volt has mandatory intervals when the ICE will come on regardless.

Battery power at highway speed does not make sense. More than half the energy is wasted pushing the car through the air. The energy drained is 3x faster than a normal plug can charge the battery. Battery powered air pusher with expensive automotive battery is a no no in my book.

PHV Prius' battery would be drained in about 12 minutes at high speed (~65 mph). Volt's battery will be drained in about 32 minutes. It is better to use the gas engine on the highway, in term of cost (not just electricity but also battery cycle cost), convenience (time to recharge), and efficiency point of view.

Volt will have higher EV experience quality but Prius PHV will have higher HV experience (lower consumption and emission on regular gas).

 

It was more than "not describing fully" the design. They flat out denied that the gas engine will not turn the wheels.

It was reported like this and then became like this.

 

That's what marketing was saying but not what was happening behind the scenes. Whether they were ignorant, deliberately deceiving their competition (or customers), or thought they were playing cute semantic games is known only to them. EDIT: Certainly some of the people quoted knew the real situation. Load sharing was an integral part of the design.

You make it sound like "it's just SW" when, in fact, making it all work together seamlessly was the bulk of the task for the powertrain people. Tons of new, in-house code was developed and refined over a period of three years. The end result is very, very good. In EV mode (CD?), it's juggling two electric motors. In ICE mode, it's juggling them plus the ICE. I can promise you that it's not possible to feel what's going on. I simply can't tell if the engine is clutched in or not on the highway. I'm often not sure if it's running or not (unless driving hard, it's raucous at higher rpm). I keep the graphic up if I'm curious.

I'm not sure how a more powerful version of the engine would have helped efficiency but surely DI lost in the budget/schedule battle (it's not off-the-shelf for the 1.4L). I think everyone agrees the car is quite expensive enough.

As it happens, one of the engineers responsible for doing the fuel calibration on the car posts in a forum I read. He's written books and is paid to lecture on the topic of ECU calibration. Objectively, I find it hard to fault the fuel economy results, especially given that gas operation is supposed to be the exceptional condition, not the norm, otherwise you would simply buy a more appropriate car. 35/40mpg dragging around a 435lb battery pack (plus motors and electronics) in a 3750lb car? The Prius crushes in MPG but it also weighs 750lbs less. In its class size, only the Lexus CT200h, Honda Civic Hybrid, and Honda Insight best it and they weigh 600-1000lbs less.

It's entirely reasonable to disagree with the approach - I can't see how having two complete drive sources could ever be cost effective myself - but I struggle to find fault with the results.

 

We were so close to agreeing I thought there was hope for the middle east, but you had to get a dig in didn't you?

The one that is more logical will depend on your criteria and your personal driving styles and preferences. If your goal is to reduce emissions, there are things you can do to make your use of the Volt emission free, there is nothing you can do to operate your cordless prius emission free. If your goal is to promote geopolitical stability and not fund terrorism, the prius does a good job of reducing consumption, but the Volt is capable of ending consumption.

Before you point out the obvious, let me concede, my local coal burning power plant pollutes more than your tailpipe (my nuclear plant does not), I have inquired into putting solar on my house but haven't done anything about it yet, and I routinely exceed the AER and have to buy gas, but others might not, and thats the point, the Volt opens up new possibilities.

 

Can you two agree on which cars you are comparing first?

Usbseawolf is talking about a Plug-in Prius.
Gwmort is talking about a NON Plug-in Prius. (cordless Prius)

Thank You Kindly.

 

Sorry last time we discussed emissions he used stats from a cordless Prius. The points are almost the same for the PHV, you could possibly never burn gas if you never go further than 13 miles or faster than 60 mph or accelerate with more than 2/3 throttle, but that seems pretty unrealistic.

The bottom line is, as usbseawolf stated, Volt will have the better EV experience and PHV Prius the better HV experience. We disagree in that his generalizations presuppose that there is never a logical reason to prefer the EV, when in reality the true answer is "it depends".