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Hybrid Vehicles Chevrolet Volt Will the Chevy Volt Succeed?
544 messages, Last post on Oct 28, 2009 at 1:11 PM
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I think it will attract the eco-yuppies but it just doesn't look economically viable. It is hard to believe GM is betting the farm on this with so many variables unknown. Don't get me wrong, I love the engineering but I just bought a $10,600 Hyundai that has been getting me 36mpg. It basically moves the same amount of people from point A to point B. It does so comfortably using well fleshed out technology. I can drive it for 250,000 miles  $4.00/gallon for $27,777 and be at about the same price as a Volt. Obviously the cost of money still favors the Hyundai and there is no uncertainty about battery life and bleeding edge technology. I'm also not considering the cost of electricity in that figure. Plus, we are seeing lower oil prices, which eventually will make it's way to the pump. It is feasible we will see $2.50/gallon gasoline again so that erodes away at the equation even more. Like most all hybrids, it is cool but they have to be cost effective to be attractive to me. |
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| Wow, the interior design of the car looks great. it even has a battery monitoring system. Really quite different from the Chevrolet Models I have seen so far. I haven't read the entire post but I think it's going to be really expensive | |
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Replying to: coldcranker (Sep 17, 2008 7:56 pm) My frustration is that we're still putting engines in cars - the logistical impacts of that are still there. Had they just left the engine out - and used the space to add an emergency battery pack with a 5-20 mile range to find a hummer (that is funny) or Lowes/Costco/Walmart electric station to plug into, I'd be jumping in line for one. (I know it takes 10 hours to "refuel" - another problem.) Honda has put the FCX on the road as we speak, and frankly, I'd be prepared to throw up some solar panels and make my own H-station for it. (heck, put solar panels on the Volt!) At $600/month incl insurance (and maint I think), the FCX is a win! Not in CA, I can't get one  As for the Volt, never buy the first year model of anything could never be truer - I'll be waiting - let's see how it goes. I do seriously wonder if $85BILLION is enough to convert every "gas" station in America to support H-fueling, ya know?
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Replying to: hoyahenry (Sep 18, 2008 4:36 am) GM could probably lease the Volt for $6/month and not lose as much money per vehicle as Honda is by leasing the FCX for $600/month. The $600/month that Honda is charging is a token payment and should not be interpretted as anywhere near what the actual cost for a fuel cell vehicle currently is. The Volt will only be produced in very limited numbers the first couple years. Even at its high price I suspect that initial demand will far exceed supply. So buying the first year model won't even be an option for most people. I'd guess if you took the typical driver of a 4 cyl. Camry and put him in a Volt he'd cut his annual fuel consumption by over 50%. In my case I'd probably reduce my fuel consumption by 75%. Sure it's not the 100% reduction you'd see from a pure EV but it's more than a small step in the right direction. As energy storage devices evolve we might eventually be able to shed the ICE completely but the technology isn't there yet. A vehicle like the Volt will represent the best we can do at the present time and it shouldn't be dismissed because it isn't a perfect solution. |
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There is a GOOD REASON that the Volt will not be here until 2010. The battery and gas engine "generator" system probably has yet to be proven completely road-worthy. Here's my thought. The gas generator engine will be required to produce enough electricity quickly enough that the battery will be charged "on the fly" while driving the car and have enough juice to push the car at highway speeds. Because supposedly, when the battery runs out of electricity from the "home charge" then the generator makes enough electricity FAST ENOUGH to power the battery enough to keep the car at highway speeds. That seems to me like a VERY DIFFICULT engineering problem. I don't know of ANY charging device like that which requires more than 5 volts and can provide enough charge to power the device while it's working and drawing a lot of power. And to produce 16 kwh on the fly? That seems very tough to do. I don't know that even a large solar array can do that. Any engineer types or battery experts care to pipe in and explain to us how that will actually work?
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I would love to see an electric car put the whammy on the oil industry. BUT- I think this car has been prematurely introduced in order to make GM seem "Loanworthy" to the Government. The battery life logistics don't make sense, and the fact that the car still has a gas engine on board eliminates it as 100% electric.It still sucks up gas. IMO- They are gambling that the shortcomings of the car will be solved by the planned intro date. Fueled , of course, by Fed $$. If you introduce a car- your purpose should be to get the public hot for it NOW- so it sells like hotcakes. Not have them ponder its shortcomings , pick it apart,or have the competition come up with its own versions. There will be other electric cars by 2010 after this cat has been let out of the bag. PS- It looks like a 1997 Plymouth Breeze. WTG Lutz.
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Volt Battery technology still very much in "test" mode Not only does GM have the issue I mentioned earlier today to deal with, but they also have a LOT of battery testing yet to accomplish. Plug-in hybrid vehicles like the Volt began to seem feasible because of new technology that made lithium-ion batteries safer, more durable, and less costly. But while individual battery cells using the technology seem to work well, yoking nearly 300 of them into a battery pack has proved challenging. That, in turn, is forcing GM to design systems that make the vehicle more expensive. "At the cell level, things look good," says Mark Verbrugge, the director of the materials and processes laboratory at GM's research-and-development center. "There are still issues at the pack level that we're trying to iron out, which gets pretty nerve-racking as we get close to production." A battery pack for an electric vehicle is complex. The cells have to be wired together to deliver power reliably, despite the harsh vibrations and jolts encountered on the road. (For an example of what can happen when things go wrong, see "Electric Cars 2.0.") Even a few defective cells or connections can dramatically lower the performance of the pack. What's more, the pack includes complex electronic controls for charging each cell, delivering power, and capturing energy from braking to improve vehicle efficiency. And maximizing the battery's life requires a good cooling system. To make matters worse, methods for testing whether a battery pack will last for the life of the car are only now being developed. "There's only so much known about how to accelerate the testing of batteries," says Greg Cesiel, GM's program director for the E-Flex Vehicle Team, which is developing the Volt and related electric vehicles. Questions remain about how to simulate driving the car and charging the pack, and how to confirm that the pack will survive vibrations and exposure to hot and cold temperatures over the life of a vehicle. Verbrugge says that one of the biggest challenges is ensuring that the batteries won't fail in extreme climates, such as the deserts of Arizona. Conventional starter batteries already give automakers trouble in hot areas, he says. Today, they're the car part that most commonly fails under warranty in the Southwest. "Batteries don't like hot temperatures," Verbrugge says. "But we're not going to say to people in Arizona, 'We're not going to sell you our Chevy Volt. You can drive one, but we're not going to give you a warranty.' That's not an option." |
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Replying to: larsb (Sep 18, 2008 6:45 am) I'm not sure what you mean by that. The ICE generator only needs to be able to charge the battery pack as fast as its being drained. Let's call highway speeds 80 mph. A generator capable of producing 20 kW will be able to keep up. A 1.4L engine, probably rated at 80-100 hp, should be plenty big enough for that. Now there may be brief periods where the battery is being drained faster than it is being charged. Like when you're accelerating or climbing a grade. That's why the ICE will start re-charging when the battery pack still has 30% of it's charge. This extra reserve will allow the vehicle to temporarily access more power than the ICE is capable of generating, which is why in this configuration your performance is not limited by your engine's instantaneous capability.
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Replying to: tpe (Sep 18, 2008 8:22 am) If so, then the only hurdles remaining is perfecting the battery system, keeping it cool, keeping it secure, and making sure it can be affordable and warrantied properly. |
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Replying to: 2doorpost (Sep 18, 2008 7:12 am) So what does this have to do with the Volt? Here we are critiquing the Volt and making arguments against GM's ability to ever become loanworthy. Right now America in it's entirity isn't loanworthy. We are worried that the Volt is part of a scam by GM to gain undeserved loanworthiness. The average buyer is not going to ever buy a GM anything so he doesn't want GM to ever be loanworthy. So American to not want anyone to ever get a decent job at GM. What isn't realized is that a country with no manufacturing base, as we have now nearly finished becoming, is a country where people can't pay their bills and where there is no growth in good jobs. That creates a situation where we lose in so many ways. There is nobody left believing that the economies of these places will ever return. Detroit will remain infested with foreclosures that will turn into low income rentals over time. No manufacturing base will return. Assemblers at Japan of America don't make the earnings to salvage any of the dying cities and towns across America. Our top universities now almost exclusively prepare non-US citizens for hi-tech jobs. If you are losing 3-4 billion a month, eventually, only the competitor is on TV with it's ads. That's called a downward spiral. Only problem is America goes down too. Is the average buyer now happy where this country is headed? I wonder what the ratio of people not paying for their place to stay on time is vs the ratio of people not paying their Japanese car payments on time is? I'd bet we pay Japan first in this comparison.
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