Volt's intrument display panel

if that's what they wind up using, good for them! i know that toyota also knows how to do it any way they want to. but i'm sure it's all a financial tradeoff for other features in any car and all those along with price will help each buyer make up their mind. i don't love the display in my wife's hycam, but i wasn't upping the package to gps just to get a large color energy display. the only thing i really use on my genII is the battery/motor/wheels for p&g.

 

interesting.

 

Sorry, that's a stupid display. I love my Prius display. matter of opinion. It works and is real. 2 very important points.

 

I hafta say, I rather like it, although it might be a bit video-gamey for my personal tastes. A couple of nits/questions/wonder-what-was-up-with-thats:

- What's with the old-school 'PRNDL' display? Reassuring to some GM (or, for that matter, any traditional automatic-driving) loyalists, but, really.

- IMO--and I respect that there are people (mainly in the selling-it rather than owning-it line of work and thinking) who know far more about this than do I--but why wasn't this car marketed as at least a Buick? It seems far off the Chevy demographic, and I suppose Caddy is too stuffy to embrace something like this, but... does this mean that GM know something that we all suspect, that they're in denial about? Namely, the automaker will soon be Chevy and Cadillac. And there's nothing wrong with that--other examples being:
- Toyota/Lexus
- Nissan/Infiniti
- Honda/Acura
- (to a lesser but still real extent) VW/Audi

Ford, too, seems to be smelling the wind of change, ditching the redundant and only slightly different from Ford brand of Venu^^ Uranu^^ whatever, some uninhabitable plantet's name.

There's no need for a plethora of divisions, but the Volt does seem upscale of Chevy, at least in the tech realm. I guess they might think Buick is too stodgy. (Check out the new Regals--and believe me, I'm no GM sycophant--they're not stodgy). They shouldn't have ditched Pontiac, especially when it just launched the G8. (Which, yeah, I know, is antithetical to many Prius owners, but let's face it, there will always be some degree of demand for that type of car. And it was a good one. And maybe, eventually, a collector's item).
~T

 

They properly have a good display. They could use some better software/interface design people for the screens though. Ford seems to be doing a better job here. My pioneer nav seems to fit right with the prius and makes the mfd look a little dated, and missing key information like engine temperature. I would say the prius could handle a better display and it would not cost very much.

I'd love it if it was designed by a some video game people, it looks like it was designed for those older consoles It would be really cool if they exposed the interface and let us designs our own apps for display. The prius also has the old-school transmission display but its PRNDB and squared instead of linear.

chevy has the corvette, camero, and is the logical place for this. Saturn was the place for the ev1, and might have held the volt, but the division was killed. Buick is for older demographics than they are trying to hit.

Ford raised the materials and prices in their line, and their was no longer any real differentiation with mercury. With the world car strategy mercury just does not make sense.

GM was focussing on making small changes to the same cars instead of creating better cars. It got to the point now that toyota builds a better buick - the avalon.

 

I think it is stupid. Volt will use gas to fill up wiper fluid. How the heck are you going to check the engine oil level? Is it safe to pull out the dip stick with the engine running?

If you floor the Volt, it won't turn on the gas engine but if you pop the hood, it would? It does not make any sense to lug around the gas engine, gas tank and exhaust system while driving on battery power alone.

 

You could just turn the car off before you open the hood, like most of us do when checking our oil. It certainly is safe to pull out a dip stick, but you won't accurately read oil level with the engine on

having an extended range engine seems like a logical choice for a erev, given the lack of charging infrastructure and cost of batteries. Now does lugging around a gas tank make a little more sense? Some of gm's design choices are not optimal, but there is no theoretical problem with a series design hybrid with 40 mile ev capacity.

 

if you pop the hood of your prius, you won't know whether or when to ICE will run. Volt merely is firing it up to protect people from themselves. If you need engine off, turn the car off.

I'm anything but a volt fan at it's msrp, but this seems like an appropriate safety solution with no downside that comes to mind.

 

I can hear the inverter when the car is on. Sometimes, if I want to check the oil level while the car is on, I just turn on the EV mode.

The "theoretical" problem with a series design is you have two powertrains and the battery (expensive and low energy density) drives the wheels while the ICE piggy-back rides it.

In a split hybrid plugin (like PHV Prius), both powertrains work together. ICE covers high power peaks so you have more consistent EV range. The power blending is automatic so you don't need "mountain" mode or "maintenance" mode hacks.

 

While I agree that gm seems to be attempting to solve an unlikely problem, I I think its quite a stretch to consider the behavior a defect. The only time I can see wanting the car on, but engine off is for ac, and in that case the ev switch is not going to prevent my prius engine from starting. Just turn the thing off like you probably do now.

You need to carry the cost and weight of an ice, and 2 motors/generators whether its a series hybrid or series/parellel like the phv prius psd. The disadvantage of parellel series is complexity, weight, and cost. The volt's design seems to have not taken advantage of these things. That does not mean that in the future gm won't drop in a cheaper, lighter, more efficient, more powerful generator and remove some of the complexity.

The disadvantages of series hybrids is that the engine can not add to peak motor power, and any generation will have a power transmission penalty as rotational motion is convereted to electrical then some directly to rotational energy as other is converted to chemical energy in batteries before being sent to the motor. The PHV prius adds the disability to disengage the ice and a motor generator when in higher speed ev mode. The prius psd also must convert much rotational energy to electrical and back. The prius could really use modes where the driver can select ev, hybrid, or max performance. Toyota may implement ev selection based on test feedback. Again toyota can fix some of the defects in the phv prius.

 

umm ... if ppl thought idrive was complicated ... dont know what they will think of this ... esp. chevy buyers ...

 

From the pictures it looks like GM stuck 2 iPads on the dashboard.

 

Yeah, it's unfortunate that the display on the '10 Prius is so lackluster compared to what others have. But I comfort myself with the fact that the actual machine is a cutting edge miracle!

 

Make enhancements... since I don't see what there is to "fix" after having driven a PHV for the past 3 days.

316.5 miles resulting in 84.0 MPG from just driving it speaks for itself.
.

 

The efficiency of CS-mode should speak for itself. Simplicity does not necessarily translate to efficient.
.

 

Those pics don't look real. Like it's simulated or something.
Personally I don't mind it, but I think it would be very 'busy' looking if you were actually driving the car.
Ofcourse, for $40,000+ for this thing, I expect it to have some fancy stuff for me to play with.
On second thought, I'll keep my Prius as I trust it over any gm product.

 

I am another responder that really likes the Prius dash. I find it informative, attractive, and I like the non-glare aspects of the display, especially at night. I turn the NAV screen illumination way down at night. I hate bright lights directly in front of me, as appears is teh case with the Volt. I certainly do not want a bright screen directly in front of the steering wheel and along side the steering wheel. True, I suppose they can be dimmed as well.

No thanks .... I will just "muddle" through a wonderful driving experience with my G3 Prius, which by the has 21,000 absolutely trouble free miles, and a lifetime average of 52.4 mpg.

 

Do you have this broken down between EV and HV? What was the mpg in HV mode and the kwh/mi in EV?

Color me jealous, John.

 

Being simple minded, I'm still baffeled about the whole plug in hybrid thing. Here, we have GM rushing the plug-in version Volt to market, without even mastering a non-plug in version, on par with the Prius. Yet GM's Lutz often said bad things about the entire idea of a hybrid:

GM: Hybrid compacts don't make economic, environmental sense - Jan. 6, 2004

Then, they went bankrupt.

.