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Hybrid Vehicles Chevrolet Volt Article Comments - 2011 Chevrolet Volt First Look
46 messages, Last post on Oct 22, 2008 at 4:38 AM
You are in the Chevrolet Volt Forum. Your Host is pf_flyer
2011 Chevrolet Volt First Look - The 2011 Chevrolet Volt is both more conventional than you might have been lead to believe and quite a bit more advanced than most potential buyers will know. (more)
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Replying to: madofcars (Sep 24, 2008 4:54 am) GM could do a 150 mile range Volt, but it would have so many batteries, it would cost $80,000. Cost is the limiting thing here. Very important factor. "Im sure you'll do more than 40, and if its the case, its not for you.So who is the Volt for ?" If you do, say, 60 miles in one day, then the on-board engine only has to run during those last 20 miles, not the whole day. Your gas mileage would still be great, probably something like 70 MPG that day. Pretty good. If you do 200 miles in one day, a bit high mileage but some people drive that far, then you would probably drop down to 40 MPG for that day only. Still OK. Most days most people will do around 40 miles total in a day and use zero gasoline.
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Replying to: coldcranker (Sep 24, 2008 9:36 am) If a 200 mile trip resulted in 40 mpg then you would have burned 5 gallons. And that would have occurred during the last 160 miles. Meaning that at this point you're now only getting 32 mpg. I think that's low. GM is estimating 50 mpg when driving in this mode. That might not be accurate either but it certainly seems reasonable for an aerodynamic car that has regenerative braking, low roll resistance tires, a small engine (1.4L) tuned for max efficiency that will only operate at it's most efficient power level. If the 50 mpg figure is correct then a 200 mile trip will result in 3.2 gallons burned or 62.5 mpg. For a 100 mile trip you'd only burn 1.2 gallons resulting in 83.3 mpg. People considering the Volt should definitely take into account the kind of driving they do. If you routinely drive very long distances then you'd probably be just as well off with a Prius or Honda's new Insight and save some money. But for the vast majority of us who's annual mileage consists primarily of short trips the Volt is going to deliver significantly better fuel economy.
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Still wondering.........Anyone have opinions on this question: For someone who buys a Volt and drives 20 miles round trip every day, will the car EVER use gasoline? Could a person technically buy a Volt and have a tank of gas last a YEAR and still drive 5,600 miles during the year, paying for only a couple hundred dollars in electricity?
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Replying to: larsb (Sep 24, 2008 10:25 am) Just about every major manufacturer has some form of EV in the works right now. My crystal ball tells me that when these vehicles start hitting the road we will see a fairly rapid deployment of charging stations. If that's the case a person with a 80 mile roundtrip (40 miles each way) commute to work could potentially burn no gas during a typical day's driving. The more I think about the Volt's capabilities the more I like it. Sure it will occasionally burn gas but the option is carrying around 1,000 lbs of extra batteries that you'll rarely use. How wasteful is that, not to mention the added cost and performance hit that you'd take. When it comes to fuel savings there will definitely be diminishing return realized from increasing battery pack capacity past a certain point. For instance in my case a 40 mile battery range would probably reduce my annual fuel consumption by 70%. It's obvious that each additional 40 miles of battery capacity cannot possibly match the savings of the first 40 miles and at some point it will just become ridiculous.
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Replying to: tpe (Sep 24, 2008 10:59 am) I have spent $2,992 on 36,419 miles since I bought the TCH. That comes to about 8.22 cents per mile in gasoline costs. In 27 months that averages to $110.81 per month, or $1,329.77 per year. Taking the scenario where I would use 20 tanks of gas per year in the Volt (including fuel used on my semi-annual trip to Texas) I would spend $480 per year on gas and if I spent 1200 kwh on electricity then that would cost me around $120. So that would mean $600 a year on fuel (at gas prices of $4 per gallon). That would mean I would save $729.77 per year in fuel versus the TCH, or about $60.81 per month. So to save ANY money overall, I would have to get a car payment that is no more than $61 higher than my current payment, assuming insurance costs being equal. With the Volt's price being tossed around at $35K to $40K, financing it for 6 years would be somewhere between $657.00 and $750.00 per month with zero down - either payment is considerably more than what I pay now for the TCH. Looks like it would be financial idiocy for me.
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Department of Obviousness Department: Volt needs to "change the image" of GM Ya Think? |
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Replying to: larsb (Sep 24, 2008 12:06 pm) |
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Replying to: tpe (Sep 24, 2008 10:07 am)
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Replying to: coldcranker (Sep 24, 2008 8:16 pm) I don't think that anyone is claiming the Volt will be the most efficient vehicle on the road once you've exceeded 40 miles. I think it is targeting people that typically don't drive further than 40 miles while also giving them the utility of not being range limited when they occasionally need to drive further. GM believes, and I agree, that this type of driver represents the majority of American motorists.
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Replying to: tpe (Sep 25, 2008 5:06 am) I previously thought that until all the talk (from GM) about how the Volt will not recharge the batteries using the engine after the initial battery charge is depleted. If you think about that, and read Post #366 (peralta) and #16 here, then you begin to realize that the engine may not be allowed to run at one RPM (sweet spot), or even a narrow range of RPMs near the sweet spot. Do this simulation: You're in a Volt. You have just depleted your battery charge so you hear the engine come on, and you're cruising at 60 mph down the highway. Now you come to a stop, and the engine must also throttle down, since power is not flowing to the batteries much, if at all, and, of course, you don't need power to move right now either. Now you hit the accelerator pedal to go again, and the engine must throttle up to meet power demands. If the engine would be allowed to run steady at its sweet spot, even when stopped in traffic, some of the power must go to the batteries, as all that energy has to go somewhere, but GM has chosen not to burn gasoline to recharge the batteries (maybe a little charging going on). But if you read peralta's post 366, you'll understand that it is very inefficient to use gasoline to recharge the batteries. However, its not too terribly inefficient (about 80%) to generate electricity on demand to power the electric motor. That 80% isn't as good as getting power to the wheels through a good transmission (95%) but in the big picture, its not bad. For those taking a long trip (vacation) in the Volt, I would expect no better than 30 MPG or so from a 1.4L engine with 20% "transmission" losses running the vehicle. The Volt will be great as an around-town car, but not on long trips. Railroad trains are diesel-electric in that they operate with no mechanical transmission, only a diesel engine running a generator, attached to electric motors to propel the train, just like the Volt after battery depletion. I suppose you could use the depleted batteries on the Volt for short bursts of power, recovered in regenerative braking and small amounts of engine charging. This is similar to the hydraulic hybrid concept, where hydraulic accumulators (analagous to batteries here) store short bursts of energy, and those hybrid vehicles gain 50% MPG in city driving, such as in UPS trucks and garbage trucks. Hydraulic hybrids will revolutionize stop-n-go trucks in the future. The Volt could do this and offload the engine during hard acceleration for short periods of time and probably do OK in overall efficiency, allowing the engine to reduce its load during acceleration.
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