Will the Chevrolet Volt be a failure or a success?

So you are all combined saving almost as much as this guy uses by himself

 

Hybrid monster trucks. Heretofore a completely ignored segment of vehicles that have a huge potential for improvement in terms of absolute gasoline consumption.

 

Is this a road legal truck? If it is then this guy really IS making up for a small something in the bedroom department!

 

You wouldn't believe how many of them there are around here.

They seem to really get irritated when a Prius passes them too. :boom:

 

Well the army has made a couple hybrid tanks. Improvement from 2-3 gallons per mile to 1.5 to 1 gallon per mile last I heard. And what the public hears is usually a couple generations old.

Yep, road legal. And that is not the worst of them. That looks almost normal compared to what I see around here on a daily basis.

 

I'm sure that's road legal, though it shouldn't be. It even has a ramp to ensure it gets up on top of any vehicle it rear-ends. I saw a lifted truck the other day with the plastic testicles hanging on chains around its bumper hitch. The good thing is that with gas where it is these guys are seriously paying for that image the moment, huge amounts of money to keep these things going.

 

I saw a Volt today in the regular lane. I noticed it as I passed him on the HOV lane.

 

You'd just have to add back in a big sound system that SOUNDS like a monstrous gas engine. It just wouldn't be as fun to watch a giant monster truck quietly purring along.

 

Weekly reports for those who have been waiting anxiously :

252.2mi, 102 kWh. 40.4 kWh/100mi or 2.48 mi/kWh (+26 gas, 0.8gal)
175.5mi, 60.5 kWh. 34.5 kWh/100mi or 2.9mi/kWh
125.1mi, 42.9 kWh. 34.3 kWh/100mi or 2.91mi/Kwh (+20, 0.46gal)
127.8mi, 43.7kWh. 34.2 kWh/100mi or 2.92 mi/kWh
229.2mi, 71.7kWh. 31.3 kWh/100mi or 3.2 mi/kWh (+4.5, 0.13 gal)
241.6mi, no data. Power outage that week.

Avg over last 2500 EV miles: 33.4 kWh/100mi or 2.99 mi/kWh

Last week was brutally hot for NJ (readings of 102-104 by the car) and my wife took the Volt to the beach on Saturday. It showed in my worst recorded results. Very curious how much battery thermal management affected the results but there's no way to tease it out. The car is parked outside all the time which does not help one bit. It sounds like a jet when pre-cooling @ 102F indicated - every fan in the car spooled up to "11".


EDIT: Here are previous weeks, I'll do this until it becomes impractical if anyone is interested.:

128.0 mi, 43.49 kWh. 34.0 kWh/100mi or 2.94 mi/kWh (+2 gas, 0.05gal)
123.8 mi, 42.91 kWh. 34.7 kWh/100mior 2.89 mi/kWh
264.3 mi, 79.03 kWh. 29.9 kWh/100mi or 3.34 mi/kWh (+12 gas, 0.37gal)
172.9 miles, 54.25 kWh*. 31.4 kWh/100mi or 3.19 miles/kWh.
227 mi, 81.3 kWh -- 35.8 kWh/100mi or 2.79 mi/kWh
223.6 mi , 75.71 kWh -- 33.85 kWh/100mi or 2.95 mi/kWh
249.7 mi, 73.1 kWh -- 29.27 kWh/100mi or 3.41 mi/kWh (+7 gas, 0.2gal)
191.1 mi, 62.25 kWh -- 32.6 kWh/100mi or 3.07 mi/kWh (+12 gas, 0.36gal)

 

In the power outage week, do you have data for the gas consumption?

 

I didn't use any gasoline that week.

 

Nice. I'd encourage you to start a new thread on this - so we can chat about this. I keep track of my Leaf carefully - I'm getting about 4.3m/kwh at the wall this month. The 2.48 mpkwh you are getting - is that excluding gas miles ? Also is it at the plug ?

 

When Toyota came out with the Prius, GM and Lutz derided the car as foolish because they thought it too expensive for Toyota to make money on sales. A couple of years later they continued to say that the Prius was a money loser, but they admitted that the Prius was already a winner for Toyota, because it had 'green-washed' the Toyota brand, and more importantly (to GM at least) moved the Toyota brand into a 'leading tech' perception in the country.

I don't know if any of GM's opinions are correct, but GM believes them, and GM spends *huge* amounts of money on branding. You just have to read GM blogs for a couple of hours to realize that the company and many of its consumers are more interested in image than the product itself. So all that said, I do not find the Volt as a PR exercise at all unlikely. In fact, I think the only reason the car made it off the drawing boards was in pursuit of the federal bailout.

Does the Volt explain Cruze sales ? That is less obvious to me, but I do not dismiss the idea out of hand. You would probably have to survey Cruze owners for an answer. Here is one tidbit for you though: Chevy dealers throughout the country, including states that are not part of the current roll-out, buy one Volt and stick it in the showroom. Obviously the dealers think their money is well spent. Do you have much doubt that the Chevy Corvette draws people into the dealership who eventually buy something pseudo-sporty but cheaper from Chevrolet ?

An important factor in Chevrolets decline these past two decades was growing numbers of people who did not even bother to check out GM products when they went car shopping. If the Volt has added the local dealership to the list of places to visit because the perception has changed that GM does not have any cars the shopper might want, then GM is delighted with the Volt. Well, they are already delighted since ~ 60 Billion dollars was handed to them, but this is just icing on the cake. See, these people are not Volt shoppers per se, they are rejuvenated GM shoppers.

 

Reason doesn't matter. Heck, how much of effect did the severely impaired inventory of Toyota have? Whatever the case, Cruze is dramatically outselling Volt. That's not what a "game changing" technology should be competing with.
.

 

I for one am delighted that people are buying the Cruze. It is the first smart car GM has ever made for US sale. I hope they sell a gazillion of them instead of 20 mpg Pieces of shit.

I am not interested in straight ICE cars, but if I was and the Cruze was made by Ford I would check it out. Why Ford ? For probably illogical reasons that is the only Detroit car company I do not dislike a lot.

 

My "lifetime" average is 2.99, not 2.48. It's measured at the wall with a Kill-A-Watt. I always exclude gas miles from the calculation.

4.3 is exceptional. Roundly, 4.3 in a Volt would be 55 miles, which is certainly doable, but not by me. My best week was ~3.4, my best drive 3.7. Are you using L1 or L2 charging? What are you measuring with? AFAIK, the best number anyone has recorded with a Volt (Wayne at CleanMPG) is about 5.5 mi/kWh.

 

Remember all the Volts fans positive that the car would consume 200 wh/mile ? LOL

 

Bill Robbins did 72.9 miles EV. He calculated 5.786.

CleanMPG Forums - View Single Post - 72.9 Miles on One Charge

Wayne's was a bit less of a set course, though, IIRC.

 

Volt being a failure or success will be placed squarly on the shoulders of gm and chevrolet. If they are not all in on making it a success if will fail. How long will they let slow or falling sales continue. What is their past history, saturn, pontiac ,oldsmobile, ev1. Have they or are they changing the culture at gm to accept the volt? What i have seen so far and heard from their employees is no they do not accept the volt. How then do you plan on selling this car and concept to the consumer???? Why will the volt fail tell gm to look in the mirror....

 

1100, will it get to 2000?

mfennell, thanks for the numbers. You should start a new thread though.