Winter operation of GM Volt

[jayman]

I'm wondering if the mythical Volt has actually been put through cold region testing? Car makers used to do cold weather testing in places like International Falls, MN, North Bay, Ontario, Thompson, Manitoba - military bases like Fort Greely, Alaska (Cold Regions Test Center)

If the Volt is produced, we'll soon hear if it works in Canadian or Heartland winters

[usbseawolf2000]

Originally Posted by daniel

The Volt is supposed to be an electric car that only uses a gas engine as a range extender!!!!!!!

Exactly!! How is warming up the battery pack extending the range? If the battery pack and the combustion engine work together, then it is a hybrid.

[Alric]

The point is moot. GM will sell enough Volts just to say they are selling it. It will be years before the Volt is old out of California and the east coast. I am taking bets.

[daniel]

Originally Posted by jayman

I'm wondering if the mythical Volt has actually been put through cold region testing?

How can they test something that does not exist? They've never even built a prototype, except for the body.

Originally Posted by usbseawolf2000

Exactly!! How is warming up the battery pack extending the range? If the battery pack and the combustion engine work together, then it is a hybrid.

An EV using lead-acid batteries will go twice as far at 25 Celsius as it will at zero Celsius because of the characteristics of lead batteries. My Xebra has an aftermarket LiFePO4 battery pack and goes as far at zero as at 25 Celsius (40 miles). I do not know how cold it has to get before it begins to lose range. When the battery temperature (not ambient temp) goes above around 40 Celsius the Prius will refuse to go into EV mode, because NiMH batteries don't like to get too hot. LiFePO4 are supposed to be stable up to around 260 Celsius, if I remember correctly. (I'm not sure of that number, but it is quite high.)

Different batteries have different characteristics.

The idea of an EV with a range suitable for all or most of your commuting and errands, with a range extender for the occasional longer trip, is a great one. You could get most of your transportation from the grid, which uses domestic energy and is cleaner at its worst than the cleanest cars, and yet not have to own two cars to meet the need for an occasional longer drive.

But GM clearly does not want to build an EV, so it's doing everything it can to not build the Volt. First it announces a $20,000 car with a 40-mile EV range. Then it gradually raises the price to $40,000 and cuts the EV range to 30 miles, and now apparently it says that in cold weather it won't be an EV at all, just a series hybrid. By the time they've boosted the price to $60,000 and cut the EV range to 10 miles they'll be able to cancel the program, saying that nobody will buy a small $60,000 car that only goes 10 miles on grid power.

Everything about this campaign is designed to make the car gradually less and less appealing, while trying to convince a gullible public that they're really trying to accomplish something they did better ten years ago, but "just can't be done," as they'll probably announce about the time Nissan or Toyota or some European or African company actually markets a freeway-capable EV in the U.S. (And the only reason the Zenn is not freeway capable is that the company does not have the capital for crash testing. The Xebra has 3 wheels for the same reason.)

[usbseawolf2000]

Hopefully, Volt uses A123 LiFePO4 battery. The issue with LiFePO4 is low energy density and high cost. Hymotion 5kWh L5 costs $10k at consumer hand. The pack alone without the BMS charger is probably $7k. With that guesstimate, Volt with 16kWh battery pack alone would cost about $22k.

If GM picked LG Chem Li-Polymer due to lower cost, we need to see how it performs under low temps.

How much did you pay for your after-market LiFePO4 pack? How many kWh is it?

[daniel]

It cost a bundle. And I don't know how many kWh it is. But since it gives the Xebra a range of about 40 miles, and the car went 3 miles per kWh with the heavier lead batteries, the pack probably has about 12 or 13 kWh. The pack came with a 25-amp charger, and I had to have an outlet wired into my dryer circuit for it, but my Kill-a-Watt meter only measures up to 15 amps, so I have not been able to measure the actual electrical usage. The pack is about 500 lbs lighter than the old lead pack, so the car probably goes a wee bit farther per kWh.

[usbseawolf2000]

How many hours does it take to fully charge it from empty? You can calculate the kWh if you know the SOC usage (30%-80%?). I assume your dryer circuit is 110 Volt.

[jayman]

Originally Posted by usbseawolf2000

I assume your dryer circuit is 110 Volt.

If you have a natural gas/propane clothes dryer, the plug is 110/120 volts as you only have to run the motor that turns the drum

If you have an electric dryer like I do, it's a 240 volt 30 amp circuit. I have a welder receptacle in my garage, which I rarely use. That is also 240 v, 30 a.

[usbseawolf2000]

I assumed he had 110V because I don't think Kill-a-watt works with 240V.

[jayman]

Gotcha