Volt vs. Prius C, Prius and Prius PHV

I don't want to be harsh here, but you've spent a significant amount of time posting critical comments about the Volt in recent years and I find it a little surprising that you have spent almost no time sitting inside a parked car much less being a passenger on the road or actually trying to drive one for a few miles.

The seat height is adjustable. It sounds like the seat was adjusted way up and you just needed to lower it.

As you should know by now, the Volt is the largest possible size car that fits under the EPA's compact dimension rating. If it had one more cubic foot of interior space it would be rated as a midsize car. Granted, the Prius is clearly a bit larger overall and has excellent rear seating legroom compared to most cars of its general size.

 

never, in this state.

 

Just to be clear, the Nissan LEAF pack is not actively air cooled. The battery cells are enclosed 4 at a time inside a minimal aluminum module shell and then 48 of those modules are enclosed within a steel battery case which is fully sealed. There is no air fan. All heat exchange is entirely passive. Under very cold temperatures there are a few small heating pads to slightly warm the pack for better operation in severe winter conditions.

Some other cars like the Plugin Prius and, apparently, the Ford Energi plugins are using active air cooling with one or more fans. Cars with larger packs like the Ford Focus EV, Volt, Spark, Model S, etc. are tending to use liquid cooling. In the future, we may see some cars use active air cooling combined with A/C chilling but without liquid coolant.

 

The overkill statement was understood, and dismissed. Your statement did not state hybrids, but even if it did it would be irrelevant. Your statement was about liquid cooling and that is what I addressed in answering. As the only other car with a comparable size battery, long enough history and deployments, happens to be pure EV that is what was used for comparison.

You seem to lack of understanding of what causes li-ion battery capacity loss. The engine can reduce the maximum C load on while driving, but that is not a major impact on batteries life. While driving air-flow can more easily cool the batteries, especially smaller batteries with better surface-to-volume ratios Rather it is sitting/charging battery temperature that causes the problem. The impact of these temperature effects on the battery CANNOT be displaced by the engine. The only things that can decrease the impact of temperature is either reducing battery charge levels (Temps at 100F and above are relatively safe for almost all Li-ion batteries only if the battery is at 50% charge or less, and 140F needs 30% or less not to degrade), or modifications to the battery chemistry, e.g. A123's LiFePO4 chemistry will tolerate 120F at 80% charge, but needs to be at about 50% for storage at 140F to be benign. TMS can also be useful to allow greater power while charging at high-temperatures, as the act of charging produces internal heating in addition to ambient heat, so if you want to get even an 80% charge with no damage at 110F, it has to go very slowly. Of course slow charging is a meaningful option with a small battery, but if one is looking at a EREV or BEV with a large battery, faster charging is often desired.


For small batteries it may be much less of an issue (better surface/volume ration allow better direct air cooling). But smaller batteries also mean much less EV range which means greater gas usage. Over 22Million miles on Volt stats with a median mpg over 174MPG. Of course both fuels get used so need consider overall efficency.
While I doubt I'm the most efficient volt driver, over the 18 monthsr I've averaged about 100 MPGe overall efficiency in about 16K miles, and my best 1000 miles is over 128MPGe. How about you?

As someone who paid for it, I answer unequivocally yes it does.

Understood, part of the reason the PHV and others may fair a little better than the Leaf. Both allow active cooling while charging, But as far as I known, neither system allows the active cooling while the car is off and no longer charging. The Volt will use TMS if the battery is very full and the temp is high -- draining a bit of battery to protect the battery.


And yes bigger packs tend to have greater cooling demands, not the least of which is because they can drive a reasonable distance and still have a very full pack and because greater pack size demand greater charging which generates more heat. And when the pack is larger maybe they feel its more important to put in some level of cooling to show some concern (and maybe distance themselves from Leaf; adding air cooling as a late design element is way easier than liquid cooling).

 

Again, the focus was on hybrids. Those plug-ins only fully recharge to a capacity in the 80 percentile, not 100 like full-electrics will allow. They are not the same. We cannot just lump them together into a single category. That's not constructive. In fact, the plug-in hybrids don't need to recharge during the hottest part of the day. It's an advantage of having an engine available.

 

We are talking about the Volt, please stay on topic!

DBCassidy

 

Yep,

The Volt rear seat is indeed CRAMPED!

DBCassidy

 

John,

Its' his habit to switch to his own adgenda - the one that suits him only.
He can't stay on topic, possibly due to the weakness of his responses.

DBCassidy

 

I'm making this up? , no way. Many first responders have not received GM direct training of the issue of the Volts' battery, even to this very day. The training that has been provided is through third party info sources, not GM. Your response is not correct.

DBCassidy

 

We should not knock other people's cars. All these cars meet or does not meet their needs. That is why they bought one. They are all good cars.

 

Prius trumps the Volt in passenger room, plain and simple.

DBCassidy

 

If the car they buy do not meet their needs, how can it be called a god car?

DBCassidy

 

All good, yes. All great, no.

Think of it as a grades like you get in school. Every assignment turned in doesn't get a "A". Some work is better than others.

Look at how much more effort Toyota spent on cost-containment than GM.

 

The car is good for the person that bought it. What is good for me is not good for you.

SCH-I535 ? 2

 

I must disagree. All three of Volt, PriusC and PriusPHV are great, each in their own way!
Different people have different desires/needs and each of them can be the ideal car for different people.

Think of it as grades in different classes in school. Some classes emphasize some aspects and others emphasize other things. A paper that gets a B- from one professor might get an A from another.

While you talk about about cost-containment, that is not what everyone values. Making things cheaper does not make them better, it makes them cheaper.

The real issue is value for the customer. I may value ride-quality and overall efficiency more than someone that bought a C. Does not make one car better than the other; just makes them better for different people.
Its easy to define customer segments such that Volt PriusC Prius and PHV are the best "value" for people in that segment.

The original Post did a decent job of defining their criterion and showing different regions where different cars were better for that criterion.

 

I keep a car a long time and I pay cash for my cars. So I looked at the volt and all the hybrids. I wanted a midsize car that got 50 mpg. The Prius 4 met my needs. The Volts small back seat killed it for me. The Ford Fusion lack of mpg killed it. Only the Pruis met all my needs.

SCH-I535 ? 2

 

You are missing the point John is trying to make. Toyota has excelled in keeping a high quality vehicle like the Prius affordable to the masses. Toyota has captured the market with affordability, dependability, and high resale value with the Prius.

The Volt has, to date not done the above.

Where did the "cheaper" insinuation come from?

Please explain yourself.

DBCassidy

 

Let's remind ourselves what you originally said:

And I responded with a link and written quote from a popular first responder blog in 2010 from back before the first Volts were delivered to customers. The quote was:

I think the record is clear that you threw around some baseless accusations that were completely contrary to what an actual first responder wrote on his blog. The fireman wrote on his blog that in his opinion GM was going beyond what any other car maker was doing to train first responders on how to handle electrified vehicles after a collision. Toyota, for example, had been selling the Prius with a high voltage battery pack for 10 years at that point but it didn't occur to the blogger to praise Toyota's training efforts. Actually, he specifically called out "all foreign automakers" as being less proactive than GM.

Should GM be directly training each and every first responder in the country? No, that would be unnecessary. There are already well established first responder training channels who regularly disseminate similar information on how to handle a variety of accident scenes. All GM needed to do was some initial training and creating videos and documentation which could then be taught by others.

 

The assignment was to deliver a high-efficiency vehicle for the masses.

Delivering something else instead leaves nothing for them to purchase.

Not fulfilling the requirements means no "A" grade.

 

The design goal for Volt is to avoid the sub-par gas engine as much as possible. The only reason allowed for using it was the range. It sounds convienient but it leads to inefficiency, long recharge time, high cost, high weight and small interior space. The concept was easily understood and so it was easily greenwashed. The benefit of electric mile was hyped up.

Owners chasing after EV miles are forced to defend the Volt. Shots fired will be returned. They know it is not optimal but it works for them and better to focus on the positive aspect of it than the negative.

PiP is a well balanced, state of the art engineered plugin hybrid. It was designed with the entire life cycle to have the lowest emission, highest efficiency, max interior space, respects owner's refuel time with consideration of upstream emission of both fuels.

Prius C is also one of the lowest emission from manufacturing to fuel used to operate to recycling at the end of life. It is the most affordable and it was made possible because of the success of the iconic (gen2) Prius.