Will the Chevrolet Volt be a failure or a success?

That is about as delusional as the people who think the world is going to end on Saturday.

Write back in 5 years and we can better gauge its success.

 

Is there any evidence that has actually happened to a meaningful degree?

 

I don't know about evidence (other than incredible first quarter sales for Chevy), but I can tell you anecdotally:

I first test drove the Volt at a local dealership in Delaware that got one in for a demo (the owner of the dealership actually bought it himself out of state and was using it in this way, not an official GM demo). They had a big sign on the highway advertising that the Volt was there.

When I went in it was abundantly clear most of the sales staff had not been trained on the Volt yet. They also did not know when they would be getting allocations or how long I'd have to wait for deliveries to start in Delaware. They did however have a computer program set up to show the cost savings compared to your old car and a volt and a cruze eco, because of the price differential the cruze almost always won out.

When I told them I'd put adeposit down and get on their waiting list they tried to get me to get a cruze to hold me over until it was available (because my prius was dying). I ended up high-tailing it out of there and finding a reputable dealer in New York with open allocations, but in that particular dealership it was painfully obvious the staff had been trained more on diverting traffic to the cruze than to selling Volts.

 

I suppose I can see somebody idling entering to look at a volt and getting a Cruz but somebody like you with a strong intent to buy a Volt is never going to get ma Cruz. It would be like me going into BMW and saying I want an M5 and them saying well there's a bit of a wait on that how about our spiffy little 1-series. It's just a strange vehicle to cross-sell.

Thread tangent a bit but the cruze eco seems silly, it has a marginal increase in mileage for a substantial increase in cost.

 

Truth be told, they almost had my wife convinced. Its a similar car physically and the money pitch was pretty persuasive. Its impossible to argue a financial case for the Volt (effectively could have gotten 2 Cruze's for the same price). It came down to my wife just acknowledging how miserable I'd be in a conventional car and determining my happiness was worth it (I have the best wife ever).

 

^^ Nice compliment. I hope you tell her, too.
Was she willing to switch from her SUV to a cruze if you did ?

 

Sweet Mine just recently oked a less than optimal monetary decision on a new car, too

 

baby steps, baby steps

I did get her to go along with the solar decision right on the heels of the car thing which I thought would be a little too much change for her too fast.

She never liked riding in or driving the prius, but she is down right envious of the Volt now, I have no doubt I'll be able to get her into an EV when the next new car is needed (provided they otherwise meet our needs by then).

 

I had a Volt for a week. It was a nice change of pace compared to our two Toyota hybrids, a Prius and Highlander. I wrote a review for my blog, though it is somewhat focused on child safety seats, as that is our readership demographic.

 

"It can take a full night to go from empty to full charge. The faster 240V unit charges in a few hours, but costs $1000 to $1500 installed. I don’t have a long commute, so for running the kids around town, the standard charger was fine. If you drive a lot more miles per day, the 240V charger is probably a necessity."

This doesn't make sense to me. If I start the everyday with a full charge, from the 120 volt system. It doesn't matter at all how far I drive before I get back to my charger (the rest is done on gas). The reason to have a 240 volt charger is if you are charging more times per day than once, or for only limited number of hours.

Also, neglecting to mention electric mileage at all, or electric costs seems a bit obscuring.

 

Sounds like he trying to describe the potential problem of going out in the evening with the Volt, thus leaving too few hours to stuff in 10.4 kwh daily. 'All night' vs 'a few hours' might confuse people. Seems simpler to just say '12 hours' vs '6 hours.'

 

I simply plugged it in whenever I was at home, as I work from home but am frequently running errands and kids around. The included charger was fine for my use and I only ran out of charge and switched to gas a few times for limited miles. The same may apply to a stay-at-home or work-at-home mom or dad, or someone who has a short commute or can plug-in at work. If you have less time to charge and want to make sure to have a full charge to minimize gasoline use, then of course the 240V system would be very helpful, if not necessary. Perhaps I can clarify the wording of that section somehow.

As I said in the blog, there are plenty of other websites (like this one) where people can argue the costs per mile and such. I'm sure nothing I post would satisfy critics of the Volt or fans of the Volt as it's not my area of expertise. Obviously, kids and safety were the focus of the review, rather than absolute cost and value.

 

It would not lock up the engine. Air trapped in a cylinder becomes (effectively) a little spring.

Pumping air through the engine takes energy too. Keeping the valves closed is more efficient if you're spinning the engine w/o combustion.

That's exactly how the various cylinder deactivation schemes work. When the fuel injectors stop firing, the valves in the affected cylinders are closed.

 

It seems kind of odd to me to suggest that under high load, when the ICE will need to spin by design anyway and the electrical system is least efficient (high speed cruising) that the PHV will burn extra energy to spin an inactive ICE rather than just use power from the more efficient source (gas).

It seems to fly in the face of what makes Prius the most efficient cars in the world now.

 

Weekly report:
264.3 mi, 79.03 kWh* -- 29.9 kWh/100mi or 3.34 miles/kWh. (+12 gas, 0.37 gal, 2 trips, 32.4 mpg)

Wife had a 34.9 mile day of 80% highway, nearly hitting EPA. I maintain that EPA EV rating is too low. Note that she is 5mpg off EPA gas operation numbers.

* Slightly lower than actual. Two Sundays ago, I missed about 1kWh (applied to 1st week below, which is slightly high).

Here are previous weeks in reverse order. I'll do this until it becomes impractical if anyone is interested.:
172.9 mi, 54.25 kWh* -- 31.4 kWh/100mi or 3.19 miles/kWh.
191.1 mi, 62.25 kWh -- 32.6 kWh/100mi or 3.07 mi/kWh (+12 gas, 0.36gal)
249.7 mi, 73.1 kWh -- 29.27 kWh/100mi or 3.41 mi/kWh (+7 gas, 0.2gal)
223.6 mi , 75.71 kWh -- 33.85 kWh/100mi or 2.95 mi/kWh
227 mi, 81.3 kWh -- 35.8 kWh/100mi or 2.79 mi/kWh

 

No, that's exactly what Prius does now, though it is even more efficient with the PHV. We refer to that mode as "Warp Stealth".

I observed it firsthand with the PHV too. There is obviously a penalty for having the engine spin (verses the added cost & complexity of a clutch), but the estimated efficiency was displayed as 315 MPG.

So when you're cruising along at 70 MPH seeing the display show +100 MPG, why wouldn't that be an excellent balance of price & performance?
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I've never ended up with a correct value for the power penalty for the warp stealth, but I made some calculations which gave me about 1200W to spin the ICE, a true bargain!

 

Consider it as "engine maintenance". Volt has it too and it burns gas. Do you find Volt's engine and fuel maintenance modes odd as well?

If you look at the result, Prius PHV is still more efficient in either electric or gas.

 

It does, but it's forced to spin it to protect MG1 (I think it's MG1). As j pointed out they could add a clutch, but that means more weight, cost and complexity so they traded off.

In the case where the Prius spins the engine in a high-speed glide there is actually no demand. But the rpm limitations means it has to waste gas directly or indirectly. They determined that it would be worse to idle the engine using gas than spinning it slowly from the battery.

 

I'm looking forward to commutes in the winter, when the-best-both-worlds approach really shines. In other words, that benefit of great from the engine while still getting a major MPG boost.
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