It find it more than a little ironic that the animation on GM’s Volt media website offers an embed code that doesn’t work. Thankfully, GM is web enough to give the average car nerd access to its propaganda, so you can click on over and see what all the fuss is about (hit the little higher res button under the image). The cartoon in question– complete with the kind of background music you’d find at a Lebanese restaurant– clearly indicates the Volt will not recharge its batteries until its owner plugs it in. So, are we to assume that once Chevy’s hybrid depletes its battery to about 30 percent of charge, after a [maximum] of 40 miles (downhill, wind at your back), the Hail Mary’s 1.4-liter ICE mini-mill will sustain the generator sufficiently to maintain something other than really crap performance? Good luck with that.
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I would think it will have “re-gen” braking which , I can only guess, was assumed to be understood by now. Even the EV1 had that, so why back up? I would really be surprised if it doesn’t.
I’m not sure if the Pious or CiviC has regenerative braking?
::scratches head::
… then what’s the point of the ICE, then?
Both the Civic hybrid and the Prius have regenerative breaking.
If the Shitty Dolt doesn’t have it, I could see this as a disadvantage.
what a turd. 40K for this? are they nuts?
Batteries that don’t last, a 1.4l mill, and infamous Gm reliability. Plus it’s all brand new, so we know there are going to be lots of problems.
Didn’t the EV-1 have an 80 mile range? Wikipedia thinks so.
If that’s the case, someone tell me why we’re backsliding.
monkeyboy :
Yes, the Prius(and all Toyota) and Civic(and all Honda) hybrids all have regenerative braking technology. I would think the Volt would surely have it as well, but without the gas motor to help charge batteries, there is no telling how much braking it takes to recharge the batteries to full capacity. It may be too much, which could be a possible reason the Volt may NOT have it. No one knows for sure until GM says it does or doesn’t.
ferrarimanf355 :
According to GM the ICE is only there to act as a generator to power the elecric motors when the batteries run out. Which then leads the question, “Why not just use the ICE to run the car?” Because then you have a Prius, and GM would never want to do anything that might make too much sense.
They both have regen braking. It’s part of the hybrid thing.
As it looks now, the Volt is going to have PR problems. GM marketing has been pitching this vehicle as a hybrid when in reality it’s more like a short-range EV with an engine just in case you run out of juice. That the engine doesn’t recharge the battery is going to be a rude surprise.
In fact this whole system doesn’t make sense. For most of the time, the ICE drive train is dead weight.
GM screws up a one-car funeral.
To anyone who cares about efficiency, the Volt is a hard sell.
Please define crap performance?
Can we agree that the buyer of the Volt will have a different expectation of 0-60 times, g-force capabilities and skid pad performance?
The Volt movie DOES say it has regenerative braking. It’s very clear on that point.
So, as I surmised all along, what we have here is an EV with a UPS for when the power goes out.
Of course, in this case the UPS is an ICE powered by gasoline/E85. No doubt the generator is also the flywheel of the engine.
If they have played it smart, then there should be no need for a transmission, and the braying of the 1.4 litre ICE powering the generator will sound like the 1.5 litre Prius mill driving its CVT when the battery runs out climbing a long hill (mountain) on the interstate.
The obvious tradeoff would be to ditch the ICE and its weight for more batteries, but the average clueless idiot buying one of these things is no doubt better of with the spare engine.
Forty grand for a commuter car when the average job is 8 bucks an hour selling other equally well-off patrons cheap Chinese junk at WalMart.
I predict a great future for the Volt.
So, to sum up:
1. When running on batteries, the engine does nothing, and sits as dead weight.
2. When running on engine, the batteries do nothing, sitting as dead weight.
Brilliant!
The whole point of plug-in hybrids is to charge the battery cheaply from the grid, thus saving precious oil…for China. Anyway, the confusion is all semantics.
The Volt is/was always designed to run (hopefully, in city driving) forty miles in all-electric mode, drawing down the battery from its “full” 80% state-of-charge (SOC) down to its “empty” 30% SOC. At that point the 1.4 liter ICE engine starts spinning the generator at one of five fixed rpm levels, depending on the given power requirements of the car’s electric motor.
There is no reason to “recharge” the battery, since that would be giving money to those OPEC terrorists.
That is, “not recharge” as defined in the usual sense. In actuality, the battery will always be charged/discharged somewhat during this “charge-sustaining mode”, because of two (primary) factors. There will be small mismatches between the generator’s output and the electric motor’s requirements, moment-to-moment. Excess juice from the generator will be shunted to the battery; power demand in excess of the generator’s output will come from the battery. Additionally, regenerative braking will always charge the battery.
So while the whole system is designed to maintain an approximate 30% SOC in charge-sustaining mode, in reality that level will fluctuate due to these and other factors. And unlike the body of the Volt, this never changed: GM always said from the (virtual) get-go that “a gasoline/E85-powered engine generator seamlessly provides electricity to power the Volt’s electric drive unit while simultaneously sustaining (at 30%) the charge of the battery.”
A long continuous upgrade (like I-70 out of Denver) may leave the Volt feeling underpowered. But the same thing happens to a Prius too.
According to GM the ICE is only there to act as a generator to power the elecric motors when the batteries run out. Which then leads the question, “Why not just use the ICE to run the car?” Because then you have a Prius, and GM would never want to do anything that might make too much sense.
I don’t know that it’s *that* nonsensical. In theory, at least, running the ICE at an constant optimum RPM to power the generator could be more efficient than revving it up and down to power the car directly. Plus, there’s a lot of hardware to split the torque between the two power sources that you no longer need, saving weight and complexity.
The proof will be in the actual product, of course, but GM’s solution may be the more elegant and efficient. They key, of course, is if the batteries perform as advertised, which is the limitation that’s prevented implementation of this design to date.
Not charging the battery makes sense to me. You get inevitable losses every time you convert from one form of power to another. The ICE takes chemical energy (in gas) and converts it into mechanical power. This mechanical power is converted to electrical power by the generator which in turn runs the electric motors which converts it back to mechanical power.
Why would you take additional loss of converting to chemical energy in the battery? The ICE isn’t making any (or much) excess energy that you would want to store lest it be wasted. The power plant can generate electricity far more efficiently than you are going to do with your GM volt.
I think it would make more sense to run the ICE all or most of the time and mix the power from the battery and the ICE electrically in the same way as the prius mixes them mechanically in a planetary gear setup. Still, I bet the prius is more efficient but who knows.
“A long continuous upgrade (like I-70 out of Denver)”
Where a Volt will be hauling 1000lbs of essentially dead batteries, powering the electric motors with a 1.4 litre engine through cabling, power controllers and the like.
Versus a Prius, hauling a 200lb battery pack, powered by a 1.5 litre 76HP motor driving the wheels nearly directly.
How can the Volt win, here?
“Why not just use the ICE to run the car?”
Because that would require a heavy multi-cog or CVT gearbox and clutch or a power sapping torque converter. The electric motor can be connected directly to the wheels as it doesn’t need to be disconnected when the car comes to rest, it just stops (max torque is at zero rpm). The same electric motor can also be used for regenerative braking (my Firefox won’t run the animation so I’m not sure if they’re doing that). The ICE will be optimized for high power output but probably not enough torque to propel the car from standstill (compare with Honda’s VTEC on the high rev/output cams, the same cams can’t produce enough torque at low revs).
One thing in all this electric vehicle hoopla I’d forgotten about is road tax. Yes indeed, that portion of the price of liquid fuel at the pumps that is supposed to go towards building and maintaining roads and associated infrastructure.
How long before declining fuel sales light off the neurons in the tired bureaucrat’s brain, and they think: ‘Hey! That electric car ain’t paying its way on MY roads!”
That’s when everyone will be forced to equip their vehicle with a tachograph and send in their monthly fee to the tax collector based on a per mile charge. The possibilities for the bueaucratic imagination are almost infinite as to which vehicles would be favored for a break, and so on. Yes, no doubt soot-spewing diesel buses will get off scot-free, because they’re mass transit.
Now what was wrong with the old electric tram/trolley bus? Nothing really, except GM got rid of them as a concerted lobbying effort as late as the late 1960s here in Halifax, and earlier in most civilized areas in NA except Toronto. PBS even made a show on it a few years ago. The circle is about to be closed.
How can the Volt win, here?
It can’t. GM is so intent on leap frogging the japanese and proving it is a technology leader that it is forgetting to build a practical car, which is basically why the japanese are killing them in the first place.
I can see the point and advantages to using the ICE to produce electricity that is then supplied to the electric motor rather than directly driving the wheels like a Pirus. It is certainly simpler (no complicated transmission). I know from a college friend of mine who went to graduate school and worked on hybrid drivetrains that getting a smooth transition between the electric motor(s) and the ICE was the biggest problem that they had to solve. Second, it allows the ICE to operate at an optimal RPM. It’s similar to, though not as efficient as, a turbine deisel engine powering electric motors.
Kids:
The volt has one purpose: to give the feds an excuse to loan GM $25 billion. That has been done.
Of course, GM really needs more (see 700 bailout) but that is a separate PR campaign.
I expect to see the Volt quietly killed after launch, and eventually recycledinto new cars around 2015. Nobody is going to be buying a new car until 2010 anyway — with no leasing or financing — which means the price of gas will come down to about 2.50 a gallon, which means the Volt as a concept isn’t needed anymore.
EV cars also meet pollution requirements.
jbyrne :
September 30th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Why would you take additional loss of converting to chemical energy in the battery? The ICE isn’t making any (or much) excess energy that you would want to store lest it be wasted. The power plant can generate electricity far more efficiently than you are going to do with your GM volt.
From an efficiency standpoint, I can see your point. From a driveability standpoint, That car will be a total dog with just the gas engine providing electricity. If they would charge the battery up to 40% so that you had some battery juice to call upon. That would seem to make a more enjoyable (and maybe safe?) car.
This thing is likely to be a real pig to drive when long uphill grades are involved. Of course the geniuses in Detroit don’t get out enough to know what it is like to drive through the Rockies or the Sierra Nevada.
Unless that motor-genset is turbocharged it is also going to have a steep performance drop off with increasing elevation like all normally aspirated engines do. A nifty little HP vs. altitude calculator is here: http://www.slowgt.com/Calc2.htm#BasAltCal . An ICE which maxes out at 75 HP at sea level is down to 51 HP at 10,000 feet. Driving a Volt across Colorado might bring back memories of doing the same in a classic VW bus.
There’s the solution. If the ICE won’t recharge the battery, but regenerative braking will. Once the ICE kicks-in you just need to drive around with one foot applying the brakes. :)
@Paul Niedermeyer
You pretty much wrote what I was going to post.
I think the “the engine charges the batteries” explaination came from GM marketing people, who didn’t properl understood what engineering told them.
6-ish pages of comments and only a few people actually trying to understand the drivetrain instead of panning it.
shaker :
“A long continuous upgrade (like I-70 out of Denver)”
Where a Volt will be hauling 1000lbs of essentially dead batteries…
Versus a Prius, hauling a 200lb battery pack, powered by a 1.5 litre 76HP motor driving the wheels nearly directly.
You conveniently leave off the couple hundred pounds of 2-into-1 transmission in the Prius.
That and the fact that the I70 west of Denver has to be the worst place to drive either car. Once a year on vacation, sure I’ll take a Volt that way. 100+ miles each trip a few times per week or month in that area and the Volt probably a suboptimal choice.
To anyone who cares about efficiency, the Volt is a hard sell.
…like the Prius?
altoids :
So, to sum up:
1. When running on batteries, the engine does nothing, and sits as dead weight.
2. When running on engine, the batteries do nothing, sitting as dead weight.
You forgot:
1. 99% of your driving on functional tires the spare, jack, flares, etc sit as dead weight.
2. Most of the time you commute to work using fewer than 5 gallons of gas, about 10 gallons of gas are sitting as dead weight.
JuniorMint :
Didn’t the EV-1 have an 80 mile range? Wikipedia thinks so.
If that’s the case, someone tell me why we’re backsliding.
Because after 80 miles in the EV1 you were DONE. If you did not want to be done then you either called the tow truck or got out to push.
GM has decided, for good or bad, that 40 EV miles will be enough for most daily needs and the addition of the ICE (rather than more batteries) will allow for range to be extended to that of any normal vehicle if the driver demands a 400+ mile range.
We still need to see how the Volt performs on & off battery, in the heat, in the cold, and on the I70 west of Denver.
@ Mirko Reinhardt
Exactly.
There are those who hear “recharging” and assume that has to mean the ICE will fully charge the vehicle, then say the Volt is horrible because it doesn’t do that. Forget that implementation would be inefficient.
Paul and others understand any charging of the battery is, by definition, “recharging”. Just because the charge of the batteries will vary by 10% or more but never fill up from ICE power is not an excuse for people to continue to be so obtuse.
I am bothered by the extended hype of this car, but I still want to know the Truth. Farago & Co. can continue to detail the actual problems with GM and the Volt. But I would like a little more critical thinking from the actual posts, even if Farago wants to continue writing pithy “officially official” headlines.
@JoeEgo
Do you have a background in engineering? I do, but I don’t think you need one to understand this.
I have a feeling that Farago doesn’t and starts spanking GM for the wrong reasons. Evidence:
So, are we to assume that once Chevy’s hybrid depletes its battery to about 30 percent of charge, after a [maximum] of 40 miles (downhill, wind at your back), the Hail Mary’s 1.4-liter ICE mini-mill will sustain the generator sufficiently to maintain something other than really crap performance?
Of course the battery won’t stay nailed at 30% SOC. If you want to accelerate hard, the battery will be there adding power. If you brake hard, you will be able to store the regenerated energy.
Replenishing the battery with the engine would not only be less efficient, but would raise two more problems:
1) When you come home, the battery will be full -> stupid for a plug-in hybrid
2) With a full battery you can’t do regen
So, Robert:
1) Think
2) If you don’t understand drivetrain engineering, don’t write about it in a way that shouts out to the world that you don’t
Because that would require a heavy multi-cog or CVT gearbox and clutch or a power sapping torque converter
Interesting point. I’d like to know if (how?) the loss of energy going from engine to generator (and mass & friction) to driveline compares to the loss due to mass of and friction within the Prius’ gearbox/MG1/MG2 arrangement.
Anyone?
@ psarhjinian
Most people probably think the Prius has a CVT and couldn’t be bothered to try and understand how HSD actually works.
@Mirko
My background is IT and simple programming. I have two advantages:
1) I was sitting here thinking…
2) I distinctly remember some early Volt media describing how the series hybrid would operate. One picture, in particular, showed a charge over time graph along with a description of the behavior over a long trip.
The graph showed initial (steep) charge depletion over the first 40 EV miles then a very gradual charge increase of between 10% to 20% then another steep discharge. The description was how the system ran off the battery until requiring more charge. Then the ICE provided power, some portion (5% to 100%; was unclear) used to charge the battery above a bare minimum in order that the vehicle could then operate as a pure EV for another several miles. The behavior on long trip was depicted with the ICE operating sporadically (5 minutes in 30? not really detailed) after the initial EV performance.
Along with this media was details of questions on trip planning. One question was approximately, “Can the car know I am on a long distance trip so it will charge the battery fully during the early portions?” The answer was no, the car does not know when you will stop and/or have access to a power outlet. It does not know if your trip will be 50 miles or 500.
Another piece of media was a Powerpoint presentation from GM on commuting habits. Details of particular note were average commute distance and usage of secondary vehicles in the household.
This combined information sparked my initial interest in the Volt as something other than another cool gadget/car. My previous commute was 32 miles 1-way. If a power outlet was available at the office, even for a fee, my gas consumption would have dropped to near nothing. If there was no outlet it would still have been less than 1 gallon per day.
My current 2.5 mile 1-way commute means I should start bicycle shopping. Even the horrible mileage seen in my current car means at least 3 weeks between fill ups.
Wow. I must be spending too much time on the Scion forums.
It took me 28 posts to realize that “ICE” in this application stood for “Internal Combusion Engine”… and not “In-Car Entertainment.”
I think I’ve just become THAT guy.
Most people probably think the Prius has a CVT and couldn’t be bothered to try and understand how HSD actually works.
Toyota does call it an eCVT, to be fair. Or at least they had in the past.
I guess that what I’m trying to say is why not offer a “TRUE” Volt, where all of the ICE stuff is replaced with batteries? There would certainly be an increase in range to 60-70 miles that I’m sure that a lot of people could live with.
I’m starting to think that GM is hedging their bets, and the Volt that they introduce will need an ICE, because it will probably have a 15-mile electric-only range. There’s no other reason that I can think of, including the jump from the 1.0 I3 to the 1.4 I4.
I don’t know…I’ve had to replace more than my fair share of the General’s bad alternators over the years. Consequently, I doubt that I would trust their alternator/inverter technology to be reliable on an ongoing basis.
Based on my experience with GM cars, I would say that it’s probably not advisable for them to attempt the engineering feat of actually MERGING the ICE and electrical systems at this time.
shaker :
September 30th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
I guess that what I’m trying to say is why not offer a “TRUE” Volt, where all of the ICE stuff is replaced with batteries? There would certainly be an increase in range to 60-70 miles that I’m sure that a lot of people could live with.
Simple. Because then you can’t drive from LA to Las Vegas (or even Santa Barbara or San Deigo) with it. Pure electric cars won’t sell in the marketplace because they die after you drive X miles in them if you don’t get to an electric outlet. The EV-1 et al would never be true mass market vehicles, no matter what they cost. Something like the Volt could be, assuming the price is right. The Prius already is.
@shaker
The problem with that is the price will still be high, at least as high as any other comparably sized vehicle. A 60-70, even 80, mile range is simply too short for most of the market to consider even though it may fit most of their usage patterns.
That was the argument about EVs to begin with, the EV1 in particular: what if I just need to run an errand after work? Drug store late at night? If your EV needs to spend more time recharging you’re out of luck. If your midnight errand chews up too much time and/or range then you won’t have enough charge to get back from work the next day.
The ICE in the Volt is to make the car as transparently similar to a normal car as possible. As long as you use the Volt as a commuter car, putting the forethought and pre-planning into the purchase decision, you will get to use the vehicle as you would any other car. Start it up and go. Yes, there is the plug-in issue, but used as a commuter vehicle your gas consumption can be reduced by more than half (even over 30+ mpg vehicles). At the same time as you realize these savings, the car is ready for use any time as long as there is gas in the tank. Just like we’ve been used to for 100 years.
Late night ice cream run? It’s ready. 3AM bailout of your drunk cousin? It’s ready. The only penalty is burning gas, which is what any other car would be doing anyway.
Prius drivers are happy they get 48,000 miles of trouble free driving then they trade them in for another wack at good fortune from the Prius God.
When the batteries need replacing the car will be worth what?
I would like GM to sell the drive train without the batteries making them optional. This would elimnate the cost of replacing them and destroying resale value.
The Volt seems to be better configured to reduce costs of driving as compared to the Prius and if 250 ft lbs of torque isn’t enough to keep the people off my back maybe my Volt regenerative braking will.
I thought Bob or Rick said it was a single speed Engine, so therefore once the electricity runs out, the engine kicks in to generate electricity for the Motor???????
If it can’t charge the batteries, it really screws over a lot of people that don’t have access to electrical outlets where they park their cars.
Given the price of the Volt, I think you would get an economic payback vs. a comparable ICE car after at least 10 years.
Quick show of hands, please. Who really wants one?
Quick show of hands, please. Who really wants one?
…
… *meekly* I sort of want one still.
I’m a huge nerd with a James May sort of infatuation with mechanical devices and basic physics. The idea of an electric car that doesn’t strand me once the battery charge percentage goes critical makes me happy in a “ooh, the Linux terminal” sort of way.
Can I retrofit a squirrel and a little wheel? There seems to be room for that.
The cost of the Volt is such that my guess is that a free battery replacement is calculated in by GM. I don’t think battery technology is there yet for decade plus use and the raw matrial is expensive so an economic model were the battery is loaned for the duration of the cars life is logical. Adding a supercapacitor isn’t out of this world either to releave the batterpack of wear.