Chevy Volt Passes Safety Investigation

An anonymous reader writes "A few months ago, reports of battery fires from crash-tested Chevy Volts caused the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to open an investigation into the type of batteries used in the Volt and other EVs. That investigation has now concluded, and the NHTSA says the cars are safe. 'The agency and General Motors Co. know of no fires in real-world crashes. GM and federal safety officials say they believe the fires were caused by coolant leaking from damaged plastic casing around the batteries after side-impact collisions. The coolant caused an electrical short, which sparked battery fires seven days to three weeks after the crashes. GM announced earlier this month that it will add steel plates to about 12,000 existing Volts to protect the batteries in the event of a crash.'"

Comments

So, they know of no fires

[drainbramage]

Except for the reported fires????

Thankyou, I know, your're from the government and you're here to help.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah the volt's batteries aren't safe like a big tank of hydrocarbons under your ass.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Jesse_vd]

Learn to read: "'The agency and General Motors Co. know of no fires in real-world crashes"

The fires happened to crash-tested vehicles only

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for the reported fires????

Thankyou, I know, your're from the government and you're here to help.

Did you miss the part where it says "no fires in real-world crashes"?

How about the part where it says the fires occured "seven days to three weeks after the crashes"?

Contrast that to the very real danger of fire in gasoline powered car. Explain how this is worse, and part of some gubmint conspiracy.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[LehiNephi]

You'd think that the lab-tested crashes would be the ones the NHTSA would be most concerned about occurring in the real world. Isn't the whole point of crash tests to determine that the car is safe in at least the most common types of crash? And if a vehicle fails (or catches on fire, or whatever) in that type of crash test, shouldn't that disqualify the car from being driven on US roads?

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Anonymous Coward]

Well to be honest, I don't think you will see too many crash wreckages sitting on the side of the road for weeks at a time under real world crashes.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Anonymous Coward]

"Contrast that to the very real danger of fire in gasoline powered car. Explain how this is worse, and part of some gubmint conspiracy."

You watch too many Hollywood movies.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[mrmeval]

It's government motors they know best, they do it all for you. Don't ask questions, don't speak up or they'll give it to you.

Nothing was hidden, no lie said,
close your mouth our you'll be dead.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[0123456]

yeah the volt's batteries aren't safe like a big tank of hydrocarbons under your ass.

I'm not aware of any car that puts a big tank of hydrocarbons under your ass, though my old car did put one behind the passenger seat.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[0123456]

Explain how this is worse, and part of some gubmint conspiracy.

The Volt has a gas tank _and_ a huge battery, so it's the worst of both worlds.

From what I've read GM apparently said that the battery must be drained after an accident, so that means another possibly complex procedure which isn't required for a gasoline car. I don't know exactly what that involves, but I presume the battery may be toast, or will at least require a thorough inspection before it can be used again... yet more costs that someone will have to cover after a crash.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[YesIAmAScript]

Yes, the battery must be drained after an accident. But this isn't much different than a gas car which requires the gas tank be drained after an accident. NHTSA in fact drains the gas tanks on gas cars (including the Volt!) BEFORE they wreck them because of the danger of the gasoline.

The draining of the battery is no big deal. It won't toast the battery. In this kind of wreck the battery has sustained damage that means it must be inspected and rebuilt whether it is drained or not. Also, the car is totaled after a wreck of this magnitude anyway, so the additional expense of draining the battery isn't a big deal.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[The Grim Reefer]

yeah the volt's batteries aren't safe like a big tank of hydrocarbons under your ass.

I'm not aware of any car that puts a big tank of hydrocarbons under your ass, though my old car did put one behind the passenger seat.

The Honda Fit does. The Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40 from 1972-1979 did as well.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[theNAM666]

Ymmm... Space Shuttle.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Zemran]

Several years ago I ran out of petrol going down a hill. I was able to coast into the petrol station further down the hill and put a load more petrol into my car. When I tried to start the car it would not start. I thought that it needed to pump the petrol from the tank to the engine and kept trying. What I did not know was that I had not run out of petrol, the petrol pipe had broken and the petrol was not getting to the carburetor, it was getting sprayed all over the engine and the floor. By the time the puddle of petrol finally managed to catch a spark from the starter motor the puddle had already spread under the car at the next pump. Most of the petrol station was destroyed. It was amazing to see so many people run so fast...

I do not accept that this theoretical risk of fire comes close to the real risk of fire in a normal engine...

Re:So, they know of no fires

[The Grim Reefer]

Contrast that to the very real danger of fire in gasoline powered car. Explain how this is worse, and part of some gubmint conspiracy

I've seen several automotive fires/explosions due to hydrogen leakage from the batteries in ICE equipped cars. The only fuel related fire I've witnessed in a streetable care was due to backfire through a carburetor that ignited starting fluid (diethyl ether) that was on the air filter. Gasoline is remarkable stable. You can extinguish a cigarette in gasoline, except on TV and in the movies of course.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[BasilBrush]

The Volt has a gas tank _and_ a huge battery, so it's the worst of both worlds.

... as a wreck after a crash. Whereas it's the best of both worlds in the usual state of being driven around as a car.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[spitzak]

I have a Honda Fit. The gas tank is under the front seat. Quite nice actually because the rear floor is completely flat and you can raise the rear seats and get a large and square storage area.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[MaskedSlacker]

As the driver sitting on top of that puddle, and presumably still in close proximity to the pump which would make a nice obstacle to quick escape ... you should be fucking dead my friend.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[mpoulton]

Yes, the battery must be drained after an accident.

The draining of the battery is no big deal. It won't toast the battery.

Are you sure about that? No current battery technology suitable for use in an electric vehicle can withstand complete discharge without ruining the battery. Discharging deeply enough to eliminate the risk of fire would also destroy the battery, I would think. Is there a reliable source that says otherwise?

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Anonymous Coward]

Encyclopedia Brown does exist.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[muon-catalyzed]

The Volt is by far the best car that came out of America in recent times. They all know Chevrolet scored some seriously good car here and lots of people are driven mad about it. There is handful of competition and pressure from non-GM dealerships like Toyotas, Nissans etc. The car battery "catches fire" is just another bash line of theirs. The main point here is that the car needs no gasoline at all for trips up to 40 miles and the Voltec EV powertrain is just so sweet, it has torque like a sports car, all electric and whisper quiet. So it is not a hybrid, but full EV with assisted gasoline generator when the battery runs out. This is in my book the best solution to the EV range anxiety problem and lots of other EV related issues, avoidable gasoline engine, but gasoline range when needed -- the best of both worlds.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[silverhalide]

To put it in perspective, a Volt battery has roughly 16 KWh of energy stored. An gas tank on an equivalent sized car is roughly 10 gallons. At 36.6 KWh/gal, that's 360 Kwh of energy, or more than 22X the energy of the battery. Now, assuming that all goes up at once, which one do you want to be near? Couple that with the fact you can't easily set off a lithium battery fire with an open flame or a spark, and I know which odds I'll be taking.

Of course the Volt has both energy sources. But, the point is that a battery pack--coupled with modern cooling controls, safety interlocks and fusing--is safer than a tank of gasoline in a multitude of crash scenarios. Yes, you have to be concerned about high voltage exposure, but all modern packs have disconnect relays that are wired to a crash sensor (ala airbags or the fuel pump cutoff switch).

The reality is this whole thing was a witch hunt likely egged on by Volt competitors.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Anonymous Coward]

The government shouldn't be involved in GM at all. You don't have to be a conspiracy nut to see the obvious conflict of interest.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy, the gasoline one wont trap my entire family in a house fire after it gets parked(unless it's a ford van and then it's cause of the cruise control)

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it'll catch on fire in your garage a week later.

Sweet dreams.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Anonymous Coward]

The volt costs so much that you have to be an idiot to see it as a way to save money. You can buy a similarly sized car with the same torque and power and with the price difference fuel it for five years.

And this without considering the double maintenance costs of volta egine and drivetrain compared to a naturally aspirated engine and the issue of replacing batteries due to aging every now and then

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice try - cars are 99% of the time towed directly to a body shop for estimate or totaling by the insurance co.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Anonymous Coward]

Gasoline is remarkable stable.

I predict a distinct lack of eyebrows in your future.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Smidge204]

On average, there is another car fire in the United States every 109 seconds. (PDF warning)

Not all of them are the result of accidents. Food for thought.
=Smidge=

Re:So, they know of no fires

[bhcompy]

Pretty much all alternate fuel platforms are too much compared to an old used Civic, SL, etc, and even some new cars. Prius, Civic NGV, etc are $10k a compact car with great mileage, and the gas savings on those are not going to break even over the 2-5 years people keep their cars

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Bruinwar]

Woah... so you did not get overwhelmed by the smell? This happened to me once, the fuel line blew (at a connection) & I knew what it was a moment later because the fuel vapor hit me like a wall.

Another moment later the engine quit. This was on I94 in the middle of Detroit at 2:30AM, no cell phone in those days... =D

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Hentes]

The batteries are themselves a spark source which means that if they are damaged they are much more likely to catch fire. Gasoline tanks in most cars are on the opposite side than the engine and all the electrical parts, so even if they leak the chance of catching fire is small.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Hentes]

These are relatively new cars and not really popular. The number of crashes they have sustained so far is too low to be representative.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[adolf]

The batteries are themselves a spark source which means that if they are damaged they are much more likely to catch fire. Gasoline tanks in most cars are on the opposite side than the engine and all the electrical parts, so even if they leak the chance of catching fire is small.

Is that what you think?

There's "electrical parts" all over a modern car, including around and even inside of the fuel tank.

And any gasoline leaking from a fuel tank tends to flow in a very specific direction, which might introduce it to other possible ignition sources. (I think the direction is called "downhill," and the means of propulsion is called "gravity." Please feel free to correct me if I've got these terms wrong.)

Re:So, they know of no fires

[cvtan]

1955 Jeep CJ5 had the gas tank under the driver's seat, so there is prior art.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[grqb]

"NHTSA in fact drains the gas tanks on gas cars (including the Volt!) BEFORE they wreck them because of the danger of the gasoline."

Do you have a reference for this? Not that I don't believe you, but if this is true, GM just got a whole load of bad press which may have set back the electric car over something that was NHTSA's fault. It's unbelievable that they wouldn't test gasoline cars and electric cars on the same footing. If they first drain the gas tank then they HAVE to drain the battery before the test for a good comparison.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure about that? No current battery technology suitable for use in an electric vehicle can withstand complete discharge without ruining the battery. Discharging deeply enough to eliminate the risk of fire would also destroy the battery, I would think. Is there a reliable source that says otherwise?

Draining and discharging is not necessarily the same thing. In the case of discharging you remove electrical charge from the battery. Draining can mean both that you remove the charge and in the case of batteries containing battery fluid (Like lead batteries.) it can mean to remove the fluid from the battery, possibly with the intention of replacing it with fresh battery fluid in the case that it has been polluted.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Dogtanian]

The Volt is by far the best car that came out of America in recent times. They all know Chevrolet scored some seriously good car here and lots of people are driven mad about it.

Ironically, it's not being sold as a Chevrolet in Europe (they're going to call it the Opel (or Vauxhall) Ampera).

That's presumably because over here the Chevrolet brand- which was almost unknown until a few years back- is now used for (and associated with) low-end vehicles made by what used to be Daewoo in South Korea.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[FrankieBaby1986]

that ignited starting fluid (diethyl ether) that was on the air filter

And what did we learn here? Read the directions on the starting fluid and remove the air filter before using it!

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah perhaps instead of bailing out GM with taxpayer money they should have let some Chinese company buy it.

Free market and all that.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[The Grim Reefer]

that ignited starting fluid (diethyl ether) that was on the air filter

And what did we learn here? Read the directions on the starting fluid and remove the air filter before using it!

I've done plenty of stupid things in my life, but that was not one of them. Just something I saw someone else do.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[jackspenn]

So why do we have crash tests? Oh right right, to use as evidence against the car companies the US government does not own.

If we applied science and we have test results ending with multiple cars catching on fire (even if delayed). Those results should either prove the car unsafe for the real world or discredit the test.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Luckyo]

Even more of something to read: Fires happened days and weeks after cars were crashed. Cause of the fire was determined to be that workers did not discharge the battery after crash.

For the record: it's currently a normal procedure to empty the fuel tank in cars after accidents (and testing). One of the important roles of these tests is to explore the emergency procedures with crashes of the new vehicle type. After the fire, there was a new recommendation to drain the battery in addition to draining the fuel tank for electric vehicles with batteries.

I don't think there was any concern of a battery fire like one happened in the tested vehicles happening during an accident. Weeks after the accident in a storage, on the other hand is a far more likely scenario.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Luckyo]

Car is safe in the crash. Car that didn't have it's battery drained is not safe after a few days after the crash. Unless you sit in the crashed car for days on end hoping for a fire, you're not going to get burned.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Luckyo]

You will put a totaled car in your garage? Without following the procedure to drain the battery and the fuel tank?

I think you deserve the darwin award then.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[jackspenn]

So only 1% of the people who drive the car home to comparison shop between body shops or are waiting to hear from the other drivers insurance are screwed. Well then it is OK if their garage goes up in flames.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Luckyo]

Funny how all that also matches if you change "government" for "corporations".

No wait, we at least get to vote for government and there are some transparency laws.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Jesse_vd]

Now-normal safety precautions were not taken in the instances that resulted in fire. Batteries need to be drained after a crash. The results... resulted in changes to safety procedures.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[BlueParrot]

>To put it in perspective, a Volt battery has roughly 16 KWh of energy stored.

THE FLAMMABILITY OF BATTERIES HAS FUCK ALL TO DO WITH THEIR CAPACITY!

Yes, I use caps, but this irks me so much. When a battery burns the energy doesn't come from the energy stored when charging it. It comes from reactions between the air's oxygen and the electrolyte ( and / or the electrode materials ). There is no direct correlation between the two. The reason people make the flawed assumption is most likely that Li-ion batteries is presently the most energy dense batteries there are, and it so happens that the cobalt based electrode in them is somewhat unstable. This instability is not directly related to the battery energy density. It just happens by coincidence that this material is both good at letting lithium ions diffuse through it, while it also burns quite well. It is perfectly possible that some alternative extremely stable material will be found with even better properties, producing a battery that is both more stable and more energy dense.

Another way to see it is that activation energy ( how easily something catches fire ) is not related to how much energy will be produced when it burns. That cast-iron frying pan in your cupboard would release VAST quantities of energy if you could react all the iron with the oxygen in the air, but it takes quite high temperatures to get such a reaction going. Hydrogen is very flammable, but it has a lower energy density than gasoline, even when liquid.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[dogmatixpsych]

I agree completely. If I had the money for one, I'd buy a Volt in a heartbeat.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[tibit]

Are you sure that NiMH drained to, say, 10% of normal cell voltage, is ruined? I've had plenty of NiMH cells that self-discharged to less than that and they still had full capacity after two subsequent charge-discharge cycles. So something is fishy in your post, unless you claim that NiMH is not suitable for use in an electric vehicle...

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much all modern cars put the big tank of hydrocarbons under the (heavily reinforced) passenger compartment. The idea is that if an impact is severe enough to rupture the fuel tank, the occupants wouldn't have survived anyway.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[cyn1c77]

To put it in perspective, a Volt battery has roughly 16 KWh of energy stored. An gas tank on an equivalent sized car is roughly 10 gallons. At 36.6 KWh/gal, that's 360 Kwh of energy, or more than 22X the energy of the battery. Now, assuming that all goes up at once, which one do you want to be near? Couple that with the fact you can't easily set off a lithium battery fire with an open flame or a spark, and I know which odds I'll be taking.

Your logic is flawed!

Gasoline would need to be premixed with enough oxygen to "go up all at once." In a real world situation, this is not possible. The oxygen deficiency would severely limit the magnitude of any explosion (sorry Hollywood). The combustion could burn someone trapped in the car to death, however.

An impacted lithium-ion battery, on the other hand, could actually dump most of it's energy at once through a series of shorts. This could electrocute people and then cause an explosion (discharge-driven blast wave). Then the lithium could react with atmospheric oxygen (again oxygen-deficiency could be a rate limiting step) to burn. Lithium fires burn hot, are very difficult to extinguish, and could ignite any gasoline nearby.

Personally, I would buy a hybrid to save money on gas. But I would rather be sitting in a gasoline-only car during a severe accident!

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Anonymous Coward]

Chevy, Vauxhall and Opel are all GM brands. Opel has been GM's European brand for nearly a century now, and it's the best known GM brand here. It's only logical they use that brand for the Ampera. I don't think it's a negative choice (anything but Chevrolet) as you suggest.

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep. I've met 3 people over the years who have had spontanious car fires. One while driving home from a DJ gig. One while driving to work. One who has had it happen 3 times, all while the car was parked outside his apartment. (No, no signs of arson in any of those cases, believe me they look.)

Re:So, they know of no fires

[silverhalide]

Nope, my logic is fine. I stated my assumptions - comparing worst case scenarios. You're applying a "best case scenario" (no gas tank rupture) to a worst-case lithium cell failure - thermal runaway with cell integrity failure. Lithium cells in a thermal runaway situation normally vent byproducts for a controlled burnoff of the products rather than explosion. Like you said, there's no free oxygen to burn the gas tank, same applies to the lithium cells. ASSUMING THEY'RE NOT RUPTURED.

Unfortunately you are making the common mistake of assuming that Lithium Ions cells have elemental lithium in them - not true. You can't apply the high-school chemistry notion that elemental Lithium is very reactive.

Lithium ion batteries don't spontaneously burn when exposed to air or water. They almost always burn because of thermal runaway, and it's usually the electrolyte that burns. Thermal runaway usually occurs because of dead shorts. Modern LiON cell design takes this into account and makes it VERY physically difficult for dead shorts to occur. There is copious fusing mechanisms located throughout the battery, and the battery housings are all composite materials. You pretty much would have to drive a steel stake through the heart of the cell to have any kind multi-cell dead short.

In the context of the volt crash test fires, all of them happened WEEKS after the crash test was performed.

What can happen in a gas fire is that if you sufficiently heat the tank such that it ruptures, you run the possibility of spraying gas everywhere that is then your typical fun fuel-air bomb. Since we're talking about wrecks here (which was the topic of the original article), this is relevant. This is a rare chance given a well- designed vehicle that has a tank in a secure location. So, usually, worst case you have a small leak. Fuel pumps cut off after wrecks for this reason, so you're not dumping fuel through a potentially broken line.

Honestly we won't really know the stats until we get a few million vehicles on the road. Given that there are 300,000 car fires a year, I don't think it will be hard for electric cars to beat that.

More info on how Lithium batteries fail:
http://www.mpoweruk.com/lithium_failures.htm

Re:So, they know of no fires

[Anonymous Coward]

Most modern cars put it under the rear seat.

Wait so we are adding more weight.

[bigdogpete]

So your solution to protecting the batteries are adding heavy Steel plates to the car. Which in turn adds more weight and gives less mileage. We can't find a metal that is lighter and stronger?

Re:Wait so we are adding more weight.

[caseih]

Yeah, like magnesium!

Re:Wait so we are adding more weight.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've yet to see an estimate of the actual weight added. Do you have any? If you did, then you can give us an estimate of what it'd be costing to use some other material instead.

Then you can ask yourself if that's worth paying.

Re:Wait so we are adding more weight.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would have suggested lithium, since it's already being used there, anyway.

CAPTCHA: contrary

Re:Wait so we are adding more weight.

[ChrisCampbell47]

So your solution to protecting the batteries are adding heavy Steel plates to the car. Which in turn adds more weight and gives less mileage. We can't find a metal that is lighter and stronger?

They've said the additional bracket (it's a stretch to call it "steel plates" has it's not exactly armor) weighs about 3-4 pounds and will have no noticeable effect on efficiency.

Photo of the bracket is here:
http://gm-volt.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/ChevroletVoltPartsInstallation115-724x1024.jpg

From this excellent overview of the actual "fixes" that GM will be doing to customers that CHOOSE to bring their Volt in for it:
http://gm-volt.com/2012/01/06/gm-chooses-to-%E2%80%98go-extra-mile%E2%80%99-with-volt-battery-protection/

Also, you might want to google "Volt high strength steel". The car has some of the highest structural rigidity in the industry. Yet another way in which the Volt is demonstrating a big leap forward in automotive technology.

Re:Wait so we are adding more weight.

[Khyber]

"The car has some of the highest structural rigidity in the industry."

So, less crumple zones to absorb impact, thus leaving me to absorb more of it.

No thanks.

Re:Wait so we are adding more weight.

[Anonymous Coward]

The entire car isn't a crumple zone. If it were you would be crumpled along with the rest of it. You're essentially sitting inside a strongbox that's covered in impact absorbing materials.

Re:Wait so we are adding more weight.

[dissy]

So your solution to protecting the batteries are adding heavy Steel plates to the car. Which in turn adds more weight and gives less mileage.

Or you could just go exercise a bit and lose 3 pounds of weight to make up for the difference, if your mileage is that important to you...

Re:Wait so we are adding more weight.

[jo_ham]

Yeah, I hear that Ford made the passenger cabin of the Ranger into a crumple zone - it dissipates energy really effectively!

The only downsides are slight crush injuries to your legs, arms, torso, feet, hands and head.

The EuroNCAP review of that Ranger is gone now, but it was hilariously bad and one of the very few "not even 1 star worthy" vehicles.

The extended cab folded like paper at the point between the front and rear seats.

Re:Wait so we are adding more weight.

[drinkypoo]

That's really not how it works. I assume you know nothing about auto body (looks like a safe assumption) so here goes.

The most rigid points in any typical unibody or indeed any place but the frame of most full-frame vehicles are areas called "torque boxes" located at the base of the first and last pillars. In these areas the floor pan and the pillar tend to overlap and carry extra welds. In most cars these are the only areas designed to be absolutely rigid. Stress is transmitted between the front and rear at the bottom through the rocker area and at the top by the rails along the sides of the roof, and the roof itself. The roof skin is in fact one of the most important structural members in a unibody vehicle. In a front-end crash the windshield can carry up to 40% of the impact energy; the roof translates directional forces from the A-pillars (first-pillars) into shearing forces which are then distributed to both pillars at the rear of the vehicle. (or in a reverse collision, it's the final pillar, et cetera.)

In full-frame cars the frame was generally designed to flex as part of the suspension, and for performance use C-shaped frames are often "boxed in" to square by welding as well as cross-braced to make them rigid. The body is also designed with some flex, but generally less of it, and it floats around on top of the twisting frame on rubber bushings.

Either way what you really want is for the stuff you sit in to be absolutely rigid. The doors are usually a significant part of this strategy as well, but ideally they have nothing whatsoever to do with keeping the car rigid which simplifies and extends the life of the hinges and latch mechanism. What they do provide is the crumple zone that provides you from side impact. Over the front torque box you have the door, the fender, or both providing this crumple, while the doors cover the B-pillar. The C-pillar (assuming it's the last one) typically blends into the quarter panel (rear "fender" area, but fenders are tacked on and quarter panels are integral) which is both structural and a crumple zone.

IOW, you can and should have both structural rigidity out to the wheels, where it matters most, and copious crumple zones. I drive a 1982 Mercedes 300SD which is made of 100% high strength steel and yet is designed to crumple in an impact. It gets 30 MPG on the freeway, handles like a mad bastard in the corners, and would actually be quite safe if I had one with airbags. As it [allegedly] tops out at 100 MPH, and I usually do nothing near that, I still feel pretty safe in it. I don't lean forward when I drive, though, because I'm 6'7" tall.

Re:Wait so we are adding more weight.

[Anonymous Coward]

What a surprise that the government owned/controlled company and their company saving all electric car should now just happen to pass with flying colors.
Now they want to add a shell around the batteries or steel plates to stop the fires, move construction out of the country because it costs too much in labor costs (surprise) and then we get the news that it is all ok, nobody look behind the curtain.
I cant wait for the lawsuits that will hit just after the elections.

Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Gasoline fires happen at the time or minutes after the accident. Battery fires happen some random time later when the driver thinks that the vehicle is safe and the accident only caused a small physical damage. And the threat of fire is not only when the vehicle is in use. The fire can be started while the vehicle is inside of the garage and there is a room above where family members are sleeping..

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is a house fire, then a working fire alarm can get you to move outside. In a car accident, you may not be conscious or able to exit the vehicle before it is full of smoke or consumed by fire.

Replace those smoke detector batteries once a year!

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Then do not park your car in the garage if it has been in an accident recently.

Re:Simple

[bhcompy]

So GM adds a disclaimer to the service manual: In the event of an accident take the car to your nearest dealer for a free battery inspection

Re:Simple

[Will.Woodhull]

The fire can be started while the vehicle is inside of the garage and there is a room above where family members are sleeping.

Well, actually such a fire can start inside a garage even when there are no family members sleeping in the room above. In fact the risk is the same even if there is no room above the garage.

Sunday morning pedantry. Well, I have done my part. Time to wake up.

Come again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you have a source to validate your claim that GM just canceled the Volt?

Not in this case

[YesIAmAScript]

To have a battery penetration here, you would have to have a side intrusion into the car which extends about 2 feet in from the side of the car. Your side airbags will have gone off, the car likely isn't even drivable.

No one is going to think their car had only small physical damage with this kind of wreck.

And your statements about gas cars are also incorrect. I've followed cars on the highway which clearly were leaking gas. This isn't a fire hazard because it's been more than a few minutes since the wreck? I've seen cars just plain catch fire on the side of the road with no wreck at all.

And gas cars can catch fire in garages too.

http://www.nj.com/gloucester-county/index.ssf/2012/01/gloucester_township_car_fire_s.html

Re:Not in this case

[deniable]

Gasoline is not gas. Gas is usually LPG and those things do catch fire.

Re:Not in this case

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans use 'gas' as an abbreviation for gasoline. Everyone else uses 'gas' to indicate the gaseous state of some substance.

Re:Not in this case

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? I've heard many people use "gas" to refer to indigestion, even if it wasn't flatulence.

hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

if someone today came up with that we should all be driving around at 100kmp with 100L of highly flammable liquid people would say; are you nuts?
around here you can't have any more that a single jerrycan of gasoline in you garage it is too dangerous ....
same for glass, if someone today came up with the idea that we make windows out of something that turn into very sharp pointy pieces in case you break it
and it breaks real easy, there is no way that would be allowed

sometimes things aren't really as dangerous as they first seem

Re:hmm

[0123456]

if someone today came up with that we should all be driving around at 100kmp with 100L of highly flammable liquid people would say; are you nuts?

Sorry, but that's nonsense. Our ancestors used to drive electric cars, but when the ICE came along it was so clearly superior that they rapidly dumped the electric nonsense; it's taken a century for people to forget the lessons of the past and come to believe that electric cars make any kind of sense.

Re:hmm

[BasilBrush]

They didn't do it for safety reasons! And of course the technology of batteries has changed far more than the technology of combustion engines in that century.

Re:hmm

[nedlohs]

because battery technology hasn't changed at all in the last 100 years. Not at all!

I take you use a horse pulled cart still? After all the very they were clearly superiour to the first automobiles, and since apparently technology never changes in your universe...

I'm not sure why anyone would buy one of these

[terryfunk]

Yeah so hydrocarbons are dangerous...the technology to reduce the danger has been around considerably longer. Battery powered cars are still crap and it still requires a tremendous amount of hydrocarbons to PRODUCE the car in the first place.

Re:I'm not sure why anyone would buy one of these

[Smidge204]

The hydrocarbons required to produce an electric car are arguably less than what is required to produce a gasoline powered car. At the absolute worst case, they are approximately equal, but I'd argue it's less. Just comparing the energy investment of an engine + transmission with an electric motor + lithium battery - all else being equal - an EV wins out.

And before anyone starts: No, you can't bring up the environmental impact of nickel mining and refining. Today's EVs don't use nickel based batteries.
=Smidge=

Re:Well, this is going to piss off the Republicans

[zippthorne]

Eh... You don't have to buy an overpriced death trap from a 1/3 government owned "business" to buy a vehicle that doesn't rely on "big oil." There are a few electrics out there produced by companies that aren't GM.

You can have an electric car for which the testing didn't have a massive conflict of interest. More affordably (for some models), even. Why take the risk?

GM offers voluntary recall

[Tablizer]

GM will add battery shell reinforcements for free:

http://www.ctnewsjunkie.com/ctnj.php/tech/entry/gm_to_voluntarily_repair_volts_to_prevent_post-crash_fires/

doesn't require big oil

[YesIAmAScript]

It's is a hybrid. But you can drive between 35 and 40 miles without gas AT FULL SPEED. I have a friend who has one and drives for weeks at at time with no gas. I was with him when he drove up a several mile long grade of about 3-4% at 80 miles an hour on electricity only as part of the 32.5 drive to his house.

I don't know where you get the idea of short distances at low speeds from, but you're wrong. Perhaps you're thinking of the Prius PHEV or something else?

So the statement 'doesn't rely on a big oil corporation to be useful' is accurate.

Re:doesn't require big oil

[0123456]

I don't know where you get the idea of short distances at low speeds from, but you're wrong.

The reviews when it first came out said that it used the gasoline engine when driving at highway speeds because the electric motors weren't powerful enough to handle high-speed driving by themselves.

Here's one of the first results Google found:

http://gm-volt.com/2010/10/11/motor-trend-explains-the-volts-powertrain/

Which implies that it's more complex than those reviews said, so the gasoline engine will come on to help run the car in various situations, depending on what mode it's in. Like going up a steep hill at more than 40mph(!).

Re:doesn't require big oil

[Osgeld]

yea I am not going to spend that kind of money when my 6 year old kia makes me put gas in it once every 3 weeks for more distance, and electricity is expensive, it just cost me 88 bucks to run 2 computers and a space heater last month, I only put 20 bucks in my car

Re:doesn't require big oil

[BasilBrush]

Electricity to run an electric car much cheaper than gas to run a gas car.

Re:doesn't require big oil

[ChrisCampbell47]

... the gasoline engine will come on to help run the car in various situations, depending on what mode it's in. Like going up a steep hill at more than 40mph(!).

Wrong, wrong, wrong. 10-Oct-10 will live in infamy in the annals of the Volt because it's the day that people like the parent of this post misread GM's very interesting disclosure about the Volt powertrain to mean "the engine comes on at high speeds".

FOR THE FIRST 35 MILES OF RANGE, THE VOLT IS A FULL PERFORMANCE ELECTRIC VEHICLE.

"Full performance" means it can go ANY SPEED and MAX ACCELERATION under only electric propulsion. Over and over, lazy bloggers (and blog comment posters) have misread articles about the transmission to conclude that the engine comes on at high speeds or high acceleration. IT'S NOT A PRIUS. I have countless jackrabbit starts and high speed runs in my Volt to demonstrate it is most definitely not a Prius. I'm with Dan Akerson on this -- I wouldn't be caught dead in a Prius :)

Read the actual article more closely. It's a complicated car, with amazing results.

Re:doesn't require big oil

[Anonymous Coward]

Space heaters are quite expensive, don't believe the "dollar a day" claim as that only applies if you run it for part of the day.

Besides, some of that 88 bucks was probably for fees and taxes. And I really doubt you only had three electrical items running. Not that you identified your computers. There's plenty of computer that could cost 88 bucks an hour to run.

Re:doesn't require big oil

[Osgeld]

show me the numbers where it would be cheaper to sell off a paid for car for an overpriced experiment that requires 2 bills to fuel it

ok here are some numbers

it can take upto 1400 watts during charging upto 10 hours, and I currently pay 32 cents per kw-h

its going to cost me 4.48 per day to drive upto 40 miles, 1 gallon of gas in my area is 3.12 right now and will last in my kia for a little more than 39 miles, and its needing a tune up (so it could be better)

so I could spend an extra 1.36 a day for this cheaper option + it cost nearly twice as much in the first place? please explain how this is "cheaper" than gas?

Re:doesn't require big oil

[hawguy]

If you ran a 1500watt space heater and 2 150 watt computers for 10 hours/day for $88/month, that works out to around 16 cents/kwh ($88 / 540KWh)

If you put 10KWh into the battery each day to go 20 miles, that's 300Kwh, or $48 to go 600 miles.

You don't mention which Kia you have, but if you get 30mpg, 600 miles at $3.50/gallon would cost you 600 / 30 * $3.50 = $70

So you'd still come out ahead with the Volt if you're only comparing fuel costs.

But since you're only putting $20 every 3 weeks into your car, your average commute is only around 11 miles ($20 / $3.50 * 30mpg / 15 days) so if fuel costs are important to you, you might be better served with a bicycle.

Re:doesn't require big oil

[MaskedSlacker]

it can take upto 1400 watts during charging upto 10 hours, and I currently pay 32 cents per kw-h

Where the fuck do you pay 32 per kw-h? I only pay 30, and I live in a 3rd world hole with a criminal for a power company.

Re:doesn't require big oil

[Osgeld]

cut the space heater by half, and make that kia 40mpg, and drop about 40 cents from gas .... i would end up spending about a buck thirty more for the volt

never mind the kia is paid for, and the volt, while not offering much of anything more cost twice as much

Re:doesn't require big oil

[Osgeld]

fuel surcharges and now they have to be extra careful about environmental shit cause they had an ash dam cave in a eat a town alive + our lovely electric company was part of a investigation cause their CEO's were taking trips to london and whatnot, eating at the finest drinking the best, and sleeping in gold sheets on the billpayers dime

fuck it was 42 cents last year! which sparked the investigation

Re:doesn't require big oil

[BasilBrush]

show me the numbers where it would be cheaper to sell off a paid for car for an overpriced experiment that requires 2 bills to fuel it

Why? That's not what I said.

its going to cost me 4.48 per day to drive upto 40 miles

No it's not. Recently a guy drove from Land's End to John O'Groats in the UK in a Tesla. 894 miles cost 20 GBP (approx $30).

Re:doesn't require big oil

[Osgeld]

"Why? That's not what I said."

yea but no one is going to give me a volt for free

and blah blah whatever, these things only get about 40 miles on juice at highway speeds, maybe if I had a couple days to get to work I could do it for that

so I tell you what, give me a free volt, and let me show up at work however long it takes to absolutely max out the efficiency of this thing then we will compare numbers and not hearsay out of the sun, otherwise its worthless junk that does not apply to the real world

besides the fact its a GM car, the piece of shit wont even last long enough to have a resell value, I know I own a GM as well, fucking thing sounds like a bench grinder ready to die only 3 years in with regular maintenance, and will be worthless before its paid off. and is already getting a weight increase without a power increase so it wont have the pinto effect

have fun with that

Re:doesn't require big oil

[dpeilow]

I was one of the guys who did that drive. It cost £20 for electricity and would have been £200 in an ICE. I'm getting a Vauxhall Ampera (european Volt). For me the car will pay for itself in its lifetime. £40,000 of fuel savings for commuting alone. See https://twitter.com/#!/dpeilow/status/158629331885752321/photo/1 for the details.

Re:doesn't require big oil

[Anonymous Coward]

Spot on. Go for a ride in a Toyota HSD vehicle. They can't move more than 6 inches without firing up the gas engine.

Re:doesn't require big oil

[BasilBrush]

and blah blah whatever, these things only get about 40 miles on juice at highway speeds, maybe if I had a couple days to get to work I could do it for that

Actually, the Tesla Roadster I mentioned has a range of about 180 miles at 70mph.
http://webarchive.teslamotors.com/display_data.php?data_name=range_blog5

And the Chevy Volt that TFA is about is a hybrid, so it's range is no different from a conventional car. Just put more gas in at a gas station. It'll do about 33mph without using any fuel, so most journeys won't need gas. But longer journeys are no worry whatsoever.

Re:doesn't require big oil

[Anonymous Coward]

That's pretty good, since the Volt can't go over 70 mph on electric only.

I still don't want one

[msobkow]

I've been doing some research. The Volt was only tested in -10 weather in Canada, not the -20C to -40C we get in Saskatchewan. As battery efficiency drops dramatically in the cold, I have my doubts about it's electric range capabilities here.

And once you switch over to gas power, the Volt gets atrocious mileage compared to many other similarly sized cars, including Ford's lineup. And the Ford I'm looking at sells for literally half the price of the Volt. $20,000 buys a HELL of a lot of gasoline.

Re:I still don't want one

[msobkow]

If the Volt is the best GM can do, the bailout/aid money they were provided was a waste of taxpayer dollars. They'll still end up bankrupt if they can't do any better than this.

Re:I still don't want one

[rally2xs]

35 mpg city/40 mpg highway on gasoline alone, after the battery is flat.

Y'all are gonna appreciate cars like this when gas gets to $7 / gallon, which it will, and this car will go 40 miles for seventy cents of electricity, and it takes $7 to go the same distance in a 40 mpg car, and $14 to do it in a 20 mpg car.

Re:I still don't want one

[ChrisCampbell47]

I've been doing some research.

Might want to try a little harder.

The Volt was only tested in -10 weather in Canada, not the -20C to -40C we get in Saskatchewan. As battery efficiency drops dramatically in the cold, I have my doubts about it's electric range capabilities here.

The Volt functions down to -13 F / -25 C cold. That's the COLD SOAK temperature of the battery. If the battery pack is colder than that, then the gas engine will fire up to generate electricity to warm up the battery above that temperature threshold. Note that I didn't say ambient temperature; we're talking about the temperature deep inside the car, inside a 400 pound battery pack. It takes a long time at a given ambient temperature to get the battery pack itself down to that temperature. Does your weather stay at or below -13 F / -25 C for 24 hours at a time? If so then I agree the Volt isn't for you, but it's great for the rest of us.

And once you switch over to gas power, the Volt gets atrocious mileage compared to many other similarly sized cars

37 MPG is pretty damn good by nearly any standard. "Atrocious"? Don't be such a drama queen.

the Ford I'm looking at sells for literally half the price of the Volt. $20,000 buys a HELL of a lot of gasoline.

Make sure you're doing a fair comparison. The Ford you are comparing to (you don't say which) likely will have it's doors blown in by the Volt's performance. Further, the Volt is likely more luxuriously appointed than whatever econo penalty box you are comparing with.

For lots and lots of current Volt owners, their previous car was a luxury sports sedan. Mine was an Audi.

Re:I still don't want one

[oracleguy01]

What is going to happen to the price of electricity when suddenly everyone is charging their cars at home and demand spikes? Gas prices might not be the only thing that will go up in the future. I'm not saying gas is better than electric but all that electricity has to come from some where.

Re:I still don't want one

[Jeremi]

They'll still end up bankrupt if they can't do any better than this.

Don't worry, they're doing okay.

Re:I still don't want one

[dbc]

The Volt functions down to -13 F / -25 C cold. That's the COLD SOAK temperature of the battery. If the battery pack is colder than that, then the gas engine will fire up to generate electricity to warm up the battery above that temperature threshold. Note that I didn't say ambient temperature; we're talking about the temperature deep inside the car, inside a 400 pound battery pack. It takes a long time at a given ambient temperature to get the battery pack itself down to that temperature. Does your weather stay at or below -13 F / -25 C for 24 hours at a time? If so then I agree the Volt isn't for you, but it's great for the rest of us.

I saw the weather do that when I lived in Minneapolis, so yes, I'm sure it does that in SK. In Minneapolis, it is common for there to be a week of weather in January where the daytime high never gets above -5F for the whole week. Minneapolis is the deep south compared to SK.

Re:I still don't want one

[zippthorne]

Well, that depends. Are we meeting this demand solely on current capacity, or are we approving new nuclear power plants to meet the expected demand?

Re:I still don't want one

[rtb61]

Just a reminder, just about every kind of power station can generate energy more efficiently than a car. Power stations are also largely located remote from centre of population, helping to create cleaner healthier cities. So smog-free cities, yes we all know, self centred douche's will scream like your typical toddler for their noisy gas guzzler and scream even louder when they get taxed up the wazoo for using it in city environment (you want to suck on an exhaust pipe do it in your garage don't force others to do it).

The electric car is inevitable, the only thing holding back it's dominance is battery design and thanks to computers, that is being slowly but surely solved.

Don't forget you will charge your car off peak overnight, helps the power station to balance our their load. Now add that same battery pack to your home and your protected from brown outs and even blackouts, depending upon how long they last.

Re:I still don't want one

[Nos.]

I live is SE Saskatchewan. This winter is hardly a fair example (its been very warm here with the exception of the past week). However, even in an average winter, we would rarely see as cold as -25C as a high for more than a few days in a row. So what this says to me, is even though I thought the opposite, the Volt may actually be a reasonable car here. Even if its not the most efficient choice during the extreme cold, we're talking maybe less than a week on average in any give year that it drops below those temperatures. That means, that >98% of the time, this is the most efficient choice of vehicle in these climates.

Re:I still don't want one

[blindseer]

Just a reminder, just about every kind of power station can generate energy more efficiently than a car.

I agree. What bothers me though is that for these plug in electric vehicles to meet the claim of a lower carbon footprint the power is going to have to come from something other than coal. A coal fired power plant can achieve 60% efficiency. A common internal combustion engine used in a car can get about 30% efficiency, some as high as 40%. All the energy from the coal is coming from carbon. In a vehicle powered by gasoline or diesel fuel half of the energy is from carbon, half from hydrogen, give or take.

Even though the power plant gets 60% efficiency there is some losses from the transmission lines, battery charging and discharging, and other losses along the way. Some of these losses when comparing a plug in electric and an internal combustion powered car are a wash since the car will be exposed to losses due to wind resistance and such regardless of where the energy comes from.

With some quick research on things like heat engine efficiencies, where our electricity comes from, and bit of chemistry I can do some quick estimates on how much carbon is released into the atmosphere per mile driven. I've come to the conclusion that an electric car is really just a coal powered car and the amount of carbon per mile is pretty much identical to the gasoline powered car.

Sure, I could lower my carbon footprint by trading in my truck for a little car like the Chevy Volt but I could also get the same level of carbon output reduction for a fraction of the price by trading in my truck for a ten year old small gasoline powered car. The real savings in carbon comes not from being electric but from being a smaller, lighter, vehicle. I had a ten year old gasoline powered car and I didn't like it very much so I traded it in for a small SUV. I'm much happier now, especially since the snow began to fall. Getting stuck in the snow used to be a common occurrence but is now just a bad memory. You will have to pry my truck from my cold dead hands. I don't give a damn about carbon footprints when stuck in the snow 30 miles from home, or even two blocks from home.

You can argue which comes first, the electric car or the nuclear power plants, if you like. It's my belief that the nuclear power plants need to come first. I need to see a real demonstration of the intent to remove ourselves from fossil fuels before I buy an electric vehicle. I'm not going to buy an electric vehicle in the hope a nuclear power plant will come to lower my carbon output, the car will likely be obsolete first. This is all irrelevant to me until I can get my hands on an electric vehicle that can carry me, my guns, and my game home from the hunting grounds without getting stuck in the mud and snow.

When it comes to tail pip emissions other than CO2 I'm also not convinced on "clean coal" producing less pollution. With the low sulfur fuels, catalytic converters, engine control units monitoring the exhaust I believe the car emissions to be quite "clean". This is compared to coal plants that buy the cheapest, and therefore dirtiest, fuel they can get by with. I've heard stories of how many of these plants will "blow the pipes" at night to clear out all the soot when no one is watching.

It's going to take quite a bit to convince me to buy an electric vehicle. I might be running my truck off of oil piped in from Canada and Mexico instead of domestic coal and natural gas but at least I'm not getting stuck in the snow. I'll wait for some nuclear power plants and some 4WD electric trucks before I wean myself from gasoline.

Re:I still don't want one

[rally2xs]

If the price of electricity doubles, then the electric cars will only go five times as far on the same amount of money instead of 10 times as far, for a $7/gal gasoline price and a 40 mpg car.

But the price of electricity won't double because most states have a "public utilities commission" that regulates prices.

And why should the price go up? The current rate of electricity now builds new power plants, new transmission lines, and so forth, so when electric companies double their sales from the extra power they're selling to electric car owners, they should basically be doubling the money available to build power plants and distribution systems.

I don't really see the problem here.

Re:I still don't want one

[rally2xs]

Suggest you look at natural gas fired electricity as a bridge to the future, where the future will be solar and geothermal and wind and tidal and anything-but-carbon-based. But it _is_ in the future, we can't do it now, but we can get ready for it by having a transportation infrastructure that makes it worthwhile to reseach large-scale renewable energy.

Re:I still don't want one

[Anonymous Coward]

> A common internal combustion engine used in a car can get about 30% efficiency, some as high as 40%
You're limited to 37% with steel; that's the Carnot limit at the point where steel starts to lose its strength.
Peak efficiency for an ICE can get quite close to that, but average efficiency is much worse; particularly for a petrol engine, due to pumping losses (if the throttle valve isn't fully open, the engine is expending energy sucking air through partially-closed throttle; diesel engines don't have this problem).
A series hybrid such as the Volt has the advantage of being able to run the engine at peak efficiency constantly (if you take your foot off the accelerator, it can increase the battery charge current to take up the slack).

Re:I still don't want one

[blindseer]

Why would I buy an electric vehicle when the electricity is produced with natural gas? Why don't I just burn the natural gas in my vehicle?

I get your point, reduce our carbon footprint with a shift in fuels. The problem with that policy is that the energy in coal cannot be legislated away. We can cap and tax all we want but people will still burn coal. There is only so much natural gas that we can produce. The faster we burn it, the rarer it gets, the more expensive it becomes. Basic economics.

If people want to see the world shift away from fossil fuels then there needs to be an alternative that is better. Better can mean a lot of things but it can almost always be boiled down to costs. Right now electricity from wind, solar, and geothermal can easily cost double that from coal. Even if coal prices were to triple we'd still be burning coal since coal does not need the wind to blow, the sun to shine, or a specific geological formation.

I see nuclear as the next step. Just like coal it works rain or shine. Also, like coal nuclear is cheaper than wind, solar, and geothermal. Nuclear is possibly cheaper than natural gas. We still use natural gas despite its cost because it makes for a cheap peak power source. That is cheap as in cheaper than fuel oil or other forms of producing the electricity.

For wind, wave, solar, and so on to replace coal the price gap, and reliability gap, will have to narrow considerably.

Bringing this back to vehicles the performance gap on electric vs. internal combustion will have to close as well. It will take some real changes on pricing and technology before we see long haul trucking run on electricity.

Re:I still don't want one

[YesIAmAScript]

The Volt doesn't get atrocious gas mileage. And Ford doesn't have a single vehicle in the size range of the Volt which matches it on overall mpg (counting only gas mode), let alone beats it so badly as to call the Volt mpg "atrocious"

As far as I know at this time, in the North American market Ford only has one vehicle in any size range that gets better mpg than the Volt (again, only counting gas mode) and that is the Fusion Hybrid. It tops the Volt by 5% (2mpg). It costs $30,000, about 3/4 what the Volt does.

Yes, you're right about the $20K buying a lot of gas. You will never make your investment on a Volt back in fuel savings. I've done the math many many ways. If you buy a Volt, it has to be beause you want to be able to drive without gas. Otherwise just get a Prius (if hybrids work at SK temps) or a high mpg gas car like Cruze Eco or one of the Hyundais and pocket the savings as gas money.

Re:I still don't want one

[evilviper]

Why would I buy an electric vehicle when the electricity is produced with natural gas? Why don't I just burn the natural gas in my vehicle?

1). Because the POWER PLANT that burns the natural gas does so at double the efficiency you could with a car-sized engine. Fuel cells could change this, but they're damn expensive, and there's no sign of that changing.

2). Then you're stuck on another fossile fuel, with no path forward. Here in CA there's a healthy mix of hydro, wind, solar, and natural gas... Burn just natural gas and you lose out on that cheap hydro power, and the rest.

Re:I still don't want one

[Anonymous Coward]

And the Ford I'm looking at sells for literally half the price of the Volt. $20,000 buys a HELL of a lot of gasoline.

THIS is the magic formula. It amazes me how many people fail to realize that paying an extra $10,000 or $20,000 for a more fuel efficient vehicle is actually costing them more money than if they had bought a gas guzzler. For those that argue that they are buying it to save the world not money, let's be honest, very few fit that description. Most people choose fuel efficient vehicles with the idea of saving themselves money on gas.

Re:I still don't want one

[rubley]

You think gasoline is created without using electricity? It takes 8 KWh of electricity to create/deliver a gallon of gas. My Volt eliminated 2 gallons of gas per day (16 KWh) and only takes 12.5 KWh of electricity to charge. Knowledge and opinion are very different, you're apparently only familiar with one.

Re:I still don't want one

[Per Wigren]

I miss the days of $7/gallon gasoline. Here in Sweden and most of the rest of Europe it's already over $8.

Re:I still don't want one

[drinkypoo]

They'll still end up bankrupt if they can't do any better than this.

Don't worry, they're doing okay.

Unfortunately, your "citation" does not prove this. It tells us they sold a lot of cars, but it doesn't tell us if it made a profit.

Re:I still don't want one

[rally2xs]

$7 / gallon, in our country that is roughly 3000 miles "wide" and 2000 miles "high", will devastate our economy if we have to pay it. We should advance electric car technology with all possible haste, to fend off the day when the American economy is forced into total collapse by energy prices that just cannot be paid.

Re:I still don't want one

[drinkypoo]

37 MPG is pretty damn good by nearly any standard. "Atrocious"? Don't be such a drama queen.

No, it's pathetic compared to a Golf GTI at 50 mpg, or a Jetta TDI at 45 mpg, or that newish Jag with the V8 TDI and twin turbos at 40-50 mpg, or a Bluetec Lupo at 70 mpg. Don't be such a pathetic cheerleader.

For lots and lots of current Volt owners, their previous car was a luxury sports sedan.

Only for idiot posers. Oh wait, that's all volt owners. The volt is the new prius. Does nothing to help the environment, in fact it's worse for the planet than the competition. Costs more. More to go wrong. First generation and kinks not worked out. Mileage ultimately not that good. It's a total failure, except for how it's altered the public's perception of GM, which already had an electric vehicle that people wanted to buy over a decade ago and torpedoed the program because it was a threat to their service revenues.

Re:I still don't want one

[drinkypoo]

Because the POWER PLANT that burns the natural gas does so at double the efficiency you could with a car-sized engine.

That is really not true. Modern direct-injected gasoline engines are about 25% efficient and diesels can be even better. Steam turbines are banging around 50%. Big diesels for marine use are banging around 50% too, at the top end. Then you lose maybe 5% in transmission to the charging station. Then you lose another 5-15% during charging. It also loses charge just sitting around, something that doesn't happen with fossil fuels unless you have a leak. So yes, there are big improvements, but they are not double.

Re:I still don't want one

[Anonymous Coward]

GM wins just about every Federal contract now, including additional contracts to buy cars they don't need. In addition they are not required to pay corporate taxes for the next 15 years either.
Add to that the Federal government hiding flaws in the GM cars like this and falifying problems with competitiors like Toyota a couple years ago and you will begin to see how this is possible.

These are the reasons you don't want the government in business. Unsafe products, unfair business practice, and the consumer loses out in order for the government to get ahead in a field they can't compete in.

Re:I still don't want one

[willy_me]

No, it's pathetic compared to a Golf GTI at 50 mpg, or a Jetta TDI at 45 mpg, or that newish Jag with the V8 TDI and twin turbos at 40-50 mpg, or a Bluetec Lupo at 70 mpg. Don't be such a pathetic cheerleader.

You can't make direct comparisons between gasoline and diesel engines when it comes to environmental impact. With the same fuel efficiencies, a diesel engine is going to put ~20% more CO2 into the atmosphere then a gasoline engine. Diesel fuel contains more carbon per gallon then gasoline.

But there are also other things to consider. For example, the CO2 byproducts resulting from the refining process. There are the transportation costs to consider. It can get very complex but the 20% estimate is a reasonable one. Just something to consider when comparing gas to diesel engines.

Re:I still don't want one

[drinkypoo]

GM wins just about every Federal contract now, including additional contracts to buy cars they don't need.

If it makes you feel better, that was already true.

In addition they are not required to pay corporate taxes for the next 15 years either.

So, like every other defense contractor? It works well for GE, too. But I guess GM is getting this by fiat? Pun intended.

Re:I still don't want one

[drinkypoo]

The difference is that you can buy relatively carbon-neutral biodiesel right now, but BP and Dupont are preventing us from buying relatively carbon-neutral butanol by sitting on it via their shell company, Butamax, and suing anyone who tries to make Butanol and sell it to the public.

Re:I still don't want one

[drinkypoo]

Gasoline is the problem. Biodiesel from algae using technology proven at Sandia NREL in the 1980s using our tax dollars can replace 100% of our automotive fuel needs while simultaneously helping to reclaim desert and restore the water table. Small diesels that we don't have here only because of crash standards designed to support undertrained drivers operating overweight vehicles which are economically desirable to produce get mileage better than any practical gasser and could run on this carbon-neutral fuel. With that said, some of the older gasoline-powered cars could be converted to natural gas with significant ecological benefits, rather than taking them off of the road entirely.

Re:I still don't want one

[climb_no_fear]

Funny that no one in the US every seems to consider trains, buses and other forms of public transportation as an option to maintain mobility.

Re:I still don't want one

[slater.jay]

That's because most of us here in the US aren't in dense urban population centers where public transportation works.

Re:I still don't want one

[blindseer]

1) The efficiency of using a stationary natural gas power plant to charge an electric vehicle is not the only factor in the viability of doing this as a shift away from foreign oil and/or reducing one's carbon footprint. (I mention both because some people, like myself, are not terribly concerned with their carbon footprint but are concerned about foreign energy destroying the economy.)

One other issue is that of range. An electric vehicle will need a recharge every 50 miles or so while a natural gas vehicle will need a fill up every 200 miles or so. A recharge takes hours, a fill up takes minutes. Barring some massive shift in infrastructure (swappable batteries) and/or technology (higher density electric storage) electric vehicles will not be viable for planes, trains, trucks, buses, and ships. Natural gas is viable for these needs, if a bit less convenient than liquid fuels.

2) We would not be stuck on fossil fuels. Natural gas can be synthesized. Natural gas is primarily methane but the synthetic alternative does not have to contain any carbon, it could be a mixture of ammonia and hydrogen for example. The energy to produce this synthetic fuel could come from wind, solar, nuclear, or whatever.

A natural gas vehicle has just about all the advantages of a gasoline vehicle while burning a domestically produced fuel with a reduced carbon output. If the natural gas gets too expensive then there is the possibility of making a synthetic alternative and placing it in the same pipes we already have for the natural gas. There is a possibility of considerable losses because of the conversions involved but this can be addressed by using off peak power and intermittent power (wind and solar for example) that might otherwise be wasted anyway. Part of the problem with nuclear power is that the power output cannot be changed rapidly. With the ability to synthesize ammonia and/or methane with the excess power output the nuclear power plant can be run at peak efficiency all the time.

This also does not rule out the use of a vehicle like the Chevy Volt that uses electricity for short trips but only needs the use of a natural gas internal combustion engine for things like long trips and extreme cold temperatures. With the use of synthesized natural gas there is no dependence on fossil fuels and people can use whatever source of energy is cheapest or most convenient.

Re:I still don't want one

[climb_no_fear]

That is an urban myth (pun intended).

From the wikipedia page on "Demographics of the US":

As of 2012, the United States has a total resident population of 312,884,000, making it the third most populous country in the world.[1] It is a very urbanized population, with 82% residing in cities and suburbs as of 2008 (the worldwide urban rate is 50.5%[2]). This leaves vast expanses of the country nearly uninhabited.[3]

The people "in the middle of nowhere" would continue to need long range cars. It's just that US cities are designed on the premise that everyone drives (i.e, no sidewalks or bike paths) and highly decentralized shopping and so on which makes you perceive (admittedly possibly correctly for you) that this is not feasible.

Re:I still don't want one

[Smidge204]

The Volt will run the gasoline engine to provide heating for the cabin and battery if it decides it's more efficient that way, versus using electricity for heat and running the engine in charge sustain mode sooner. I'm also fairly sure that the Volt has pre-heating capability, so if you're still plugged in it'll warm up the battery (and cabin) before you get in, assuming you remembered to activate the feature. In short, I don't think extreme cold weather is going to be that big of a problem.

37MPG isn't exactly "atrocious" either... yeah, you can get that with much cheaper cars, but it's above average at least...
=Smidge=

Re:I still don't want one

[Smidge204]

The latest generation of gas fired, combined-cycle power plants can get 60% efficiency. While a modern gasoline engine can achieve 25% efficiency, it can only do so under close to ideal conditions so it's not really a good way to go about comparing the two. By the time you work it all out, I think "double" would be an acceptable close approximation for conversation purposes.

And if you're going to include transmission losses for electricity, let's include production and distribution losses for gasoline: According to the DOE, The overall efficiency of getting the oil out of the ground, refined and into your car is about 83%. That means for every gallon of gas delivered to your car, at 36.6kWh/gallon, you've used 7.5kWh of energy. You can drive just as far in an EV with 7.5kWh of electricity as you can in your average gasoline car with one gallon of gasoline.
=Smidge=

Re:I still don't want one

[Smidge204]

A series hybrid such as the Volt has the advantage of being able to run the engine at peak efficiency constantly (if you take your foot off the accelerator, it can increase the battery charge current to take up the slack).

The Volt will never use the ICE to charge the battery. It will turn the engine off instead. It's true that the Volt's engine can be kept much closer to ideal operating speed and load, thus improve efficiency, but this is done through regulating the output and speed of the electric motor(s). Until the ICE clutches in directly to the drivetrain, anyway, then all bets are off. But that should only happen at favorable speeds anyway.

There is nothing to be gained by burning fuel at 25% efficiency, charging the battery at 85% efficiency, then drawing that out again at another 85% efficiency. Skip the charging step.
=Smidge=

Re:I still don't want one

[Smidge204]

If the battery pack is colder than that, then the gas engine will fire up to generate electricity to warm up the battery above that temperature threshold.

Actually, the Volt's plumbing is such that engine coolant is used to heat the battery pack... that's much more efficient considering close to 3/4 of the energy put out by the engine is heat!

=Smidge=

Re:I still don't want one

[YesIAmAScript]

Golf GTIs don't get 50mpg. They get 27mpg on the US rating system, the same one the Volt gets 37mpg on.

Perhaps you mean the Golf TDI? The Golf TDI gets 34mpg on the US rating system, the same one the Volt gets 37mpg on.

I think you're greatly confused, you don't understand that the US gallon is smaller and the US measurement system produces much lower mpg figures for the same vehicles.

When measured on the same European system you are referring to, the Volt will get better figures than 37mpg. It won't get 70mpg, that's true.

Re:I still don't want one

[evilviper]

No, it had horrible problems scaling up. It never worked.

Re:I still don't want one

[evilviper]

1). Yes, yes it is. Efficiency is paramount. We don't have enough of any given fossil fuel to supply the entire transportation needs of the country for the next few decades.

2). ANYTHING "can be synthesized", but none of them are cost-effective. End of story. Gasoline can be synthesized, too, so switching our infrastructure over would be a very costly unnecessary step. For synthesis, where do you think hydrogen comes from??? WE GET IT FROM NATURAL GAS. It's insanelly expensive to get hydrogen from water, or just about anything else.

Your ideas reek of magical thinking, and complete ignorance of the topic.

Re:I still don't want one

[drinkypoo]

What are these problems you speak of? It worked just fine. What didn't work was the actual goal of the program, which was to find special species that would increase yield. What they found instead was that the best thing was to just let whatever species of algae that showed up to colonize the ponds, as it was going to be a species that would work in that climate and in that water.

Re:I still don't want one

[blindseer]

Efficiency is not paramount. I had an "efficient" car before. It burned about 2/3 as much gas as my current truck per mile. It also got stuck several times in the snow... in my own driveway. I'm quite happy burning more fuel now since it means I don't have to dig myself out of my own driveway. Or walk home because my car got stuck in the road. When Ford comes out with a plug-in electric F-150 truck then we can talk.

Your "end of story" comment implies to me that nothing I could say could convince you of anything. Okay, fine, electric vehicles will rule the world. Whatever. Time will tell who is right.

Re:I still don't want one

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, assuming your numbers are right, your conclusion is wrong.

A typical car (with a 25% efficiency engine) gets approximately 16% efficiency overall (due to losses in other systems, such as the transmission).

A purely electric car, powered by running a 25% efficient gasoline generator, (about 5% low, because you can use more efficient designs which aren't practical for direct-power ICE cars) which charges at 85% efficiency, and draws power at 85% efficiency (again, slightly low, it's more like 87%) is still sitting at aproximately 18% efficiency overall.

Oh, and that 26/16% overall efficiency of a typical ICE car assumes ideal driving conditions.

Re:Well, this is going to piss off the Republicans

[ChrisCampbell47]

"no real benefit other than being able to run for short distances at low speeds on the battery"

Low speeds, huh? I wish I'd known that when I was blasting down the highway earlier this evening in my Volt, purely electric. Top speed: 101 MPH*

Please mod parent down, just more of the usual misinformed opinio-crap. And if you have mod points, please look for other garbage posts like this and mod them down too. Wish I had some mod points today.

In the meantime, chew on this: http://wardsauto.com/commentary/why-innovation-dying-america

* I didn't go that fast, I stayed down at a safe speed. 101 MPH is the published top speed of the Volt, regardless of which mode it's in.

No official word from GM ...

[Anonymous Coward]

But they already said that they production is on the cutting table because of lack of demand

http://gm-volt.com/2012/01/10/gm-says-it-if-necessary-it-will-cut-volt-production/

The info about the (unofficial) cancellation is being on the news this week.

Re:No official word from GM ...

[hawguy]

In the article you quoted, they said they haven't even kept up with demand. So it sounds like they are selling cars as fast as they can build them.

GM’s North American President Mark Reuss said the automaker is still filling orders and may not know until around the second quarter.
“There’s no trend because we haven’t satisfied demand,” Reuss said to reporters. “I told everybody that we’d be looking at satisfying demand right around second quarter. We’re not there yet, so I don’t know.”

Of course, it remains to be seen how well demand holds up for the remainder of the year. If there is a spike in gas prices this summer as some have predicted, the Volt should do well.

Re:No official word from GM ...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it says they're not committed to a hard production number, nowhere close to cancellation.

There's plenty of things to be concerned about, but a company being flexible on production numbers isn't one of them.

Re:No official word from GM ...

[Smidge204]

GM plays fast and loose with their numbers. They had set a goal of 10,000 vehicles sold in 2011, and when they fell short (selling only 7,600) they changed the claim to 10,000 produced rather than sold. They have been building more Volts than they are selling since last August or so and they have already been reducing production. Chances are, if your local dealer sells Volts, he's got one or two sitting on the lot waiting for a buyer. Sending a car to a dealer's lot counts as a sale, even if that car never ends up in someone's driveway.

The Volt as a vehicle is not that bad - a bit pricey for what you get but that's the early adopter premium you see with anything else. GM's marketing and PR departments have handled things so poorly it's impressive they sold as many as they did. They are completely unable to be honest about what the vehicle is and what it's capable of.

Basically what I'm saying is GM's executive branch is a bunch of compulsive liars, and I wouldn't be completely shocked if they are deliberately fumbling the Volt so they can drop the technology in a slightly less inflammatory way than they dropped the EV1. I remain cautiously optimistic that isn't the case, though.

Even if it isn't a concerted effort, their heart clearly isn't behind it.
=Smidge=

Re:No official word from GM ...

[type40]

Wow, that is the most asinine statement I've seen in a while.

Yeah, they're deliberately fucking up on a car that they spent few billion on to get out to market in near record time. It's not like they had the perfect opportunity to drop it when they were, I don't know, going though bankruptcy (like they did with the diesel engine for light duty trucks).

The Volt is a halo car like the Corvette. The car itself is the marketing. Its job is to get people into showrooms so the sales force can sell costumers another Chevy product.

"Wow, Volt is nifty little car. I think the only time I'd have to use gas is when we visit the cabin."
"Even then it will deliver mileage in the high 30's"
"Wow, but forty large is steep."
"Well for about eighteen five you can get into a Cruise Eco, that'll deliver 40 plus on the highway."
"Oh, so its a hybrid?"
"Nope, they just tweaked the regular Cruise for maximum mileage."
"I see, so it doesn't have A/C or air bags. It's a stripper."
"Nope, its got the same amenities as every other Cruise, its actually nicely equipped. If you have time for a test drive I'll show you."
"Sure, why not."

Re:No official word from GM ...

[Smidge204]

If my comment was the most asinine, then yours is a contender for most ignorant.

For starters, your little story about a bait-and-switch also makes no sense - why not sell the Volt at $40K instead of a Cruze Eco for $17K? Usually dealers try to get you to spend more, not less.

The effective MPG of the Volt is highly variable, since you do get ~35 miles of all-electric driving assuming you've charged up when you got the chance. If your trip is under ~35 miles, then you will use zero gas* (See disclaimer below). The same ~35 miles driven in a Cruze Eco would have used just under a gallon.

From here you can do the math: For a trip of length X, how much gas will I use in a Volt and how much will I use in a Cruze Eco? Well, both the Cruze Eco and the Volt have the same 37MPG highway rating from the EPA. So guess what? The Volt will always use less gasoline than a Cruze Eco for any length trip.

But if you compare a Volt to, say, a Toyota Prius, then the Prius uses less fuel for trips over 153 miles. (at 48MPG EPA rating)

That said, it's not nearly as common for people to drive 100+ miles in a single trip as it is for people to drive under 35 miles. This is why GM picked that as a sort of magic number as a balance cost and electric range. As a machine, and as a plug-in hybrid, the Volt is pretty nice.

Marketing-wise, however, GM has completely fumbled. Their press releases and public comments are contradictory and opaque. The advertisements fail to touch upon any reason for actually buying the vehicle, and instead focus on people's confusion about how it uses both gasoline and electricity: "I thought this was an electric car why does it have a gas tank?" and nothing about the car itself. I think I've seen ONE ad that actually mentions things like top speed, excellent off-the-line torque and cheap operating costs, and they pulled it from circulation. That was also the only commercial you actually saw the car in motion, now that I think about it...

=Smidge=
* "Zero gas" will be used not counting fuel burned in engine maintenance, fuel maintenance, and battery heating modes. The Volt will never not use gasoline - unless the tank is empty, not sure what'll happen then.

Re:No official word from GM ...

[type40]

The part of your post I thought was asinine was the statement about GM management deliberately sabotaging the car. Yes, the marketing has been off the mark, but its a fundamentally new product to the modern automotive marketplace so there's a learning curve to the marketing. I also doubt they're going to sink massive marketing money into a car they know has limited market appeal.

Yes, the math is variable with the Volt & Pruis. The sad fact is people don't buy those cars because of logic or math, they buy them because they fill an emotional need.

It's not bait and switch, it's a loss leader. GM doesn't make any profit on the Volt (or the Corvette for that matter), GM has said they don't expect the Volt to be profitable until generation 2 or 3. The Cruise on the other hand makes a profit for every unit sold.

The point of a halo car is to drive brand awareness and dealer foot traffic. The Volt (like the Prius) is not going to be a major player in Chevy's sales figures, 1-2% tops. The Cruise will likely out sell the Volt 5 to 1.

Re:No official word from GM ...

[tibit]

Yeah, they're deliberately fucking up on a car that they spent few billion on to get out to market in near record time.

You haven't seen much corporate stupidity from on-high if you think they wouldn't be capable of doing precisely that. I'm not saying they are doing it at all, just that no one should be putting it besides them.

Obligatory Simpson's quote

[Brett Buck]

"Top of the line in utility sports
Unexplained fires are a matter for the courts!
Canyonero!

Re:Not to defend GMs horrendous safety and quality

[hawguy]

In the end, the Volt turned out to be a lemon .... the battery charge does not deliver the promise (miserable) 30 miles per charge and the gas engine has an efficiency about as bad as a small SUV (~22 mpg). And for $40K that is a crappy deal. Maybe that is why GM just canceled the model.

When consumer reports tested the car, on their 150 mile trip of mixed city/highway driving they got 70mpg.

They said that the battery-only range varied from a low of 20 miles (with electric heater on) to up to 50 miles at moderate speeds with no climate control switched on. 25 miles of electric range would cover most of the typical American's commute (USA average is 29 miles per day)

Re:Well, this is going to piss off the Republicans

[zippthorne]

Blah Blah, Republicans Bad, Volt Good...

It has to be the republicans trying to destroy it. It couldn't have anything to do with it being a lackluster vehicle with crappy specs not quite designed for the market it claims.

Protip: If I'm paying $40k for a car, I'm not in a position were "money savings on fuel" are an issue. I want to show off my environmentalism chops, and I can't do that with a jonny-come-lately Prius when full electrics like the Leaf are out.

Re:Not to defend GMs horrendous safety and quality

[rubley]

Unlike you, I own a Volt, so, unlike you, I don't need to lie about the numbers.

It gets 25 (winter) to 46 (mild weather) miles per charge for me. When the battery runs low and the gas engine is powering the car, it delivers 38-40 MPG depending on speed. My lifetime economy (4.75 months, 4350 miles) is 255 MPG. I'd say that's pretty good, considering my Lexus was getting 19 MPG on the same commute.

Apparently you're also not smart enough to do the math, it turns out the Volt is cheaper than the average car.

$45.5k sticker (loaded)
$7.5k tax credit (complain about this and I'll complain about the child deductions I'm funding with my six figure income)
$11k gas savings (5 years, for me)
= $27k gas vehicle equivalent (the average new car sale price in the US is ~$29k )

If you're still not convinced the Volt is a good idea, I suggest you start reading this blog http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/

Real experience

[Sithech]

I last put gas in my Volt on 11/20/2011 (7 gallons). I have driven 2,358 miles since then, using a total of 5.4 gallons. Mostly on freeways at speeds between 45 and 75 mph depending on traffic. There's a public charger across the street from work, which is 31 miles from my house.

My best ever all electric range is 51.3 miles. My worst ever is 33.5.

My engine does not turn on ever unless the temperature is below 25F or the battery is at the designed lower limit of state of charge.

The car handles and drives wonderfully. I have, in 13,500 miles, rotated the tires. I will have to change the oil in a couple years. My lifetime average mpg is 158 mpg. Because I changed to a time of use schedule I have a lower electric bill now than I did before buying the car.

Hippocrates says "There are two things, knowledge and opinion, one of which makes the possessor really to know, the other to be ignorant."

Re:Real experience

[gmon750]

And as great as your results are, enjoy the money savings while you can. Fuel taxes is what maintains the roads and highways.

Essentially, I'm subsidizing you. One way or another Uncle Sam will eventually end the free-ride that electric/hybrid owners have and come up with some kind of beauracracy that will tax you to pay your fair share of "road tax".

Re:Real experience

[Johnny Mnemonic]

We're both subsidizing truck traffic, which is more damaging to the roads than they pay for in fuel taxes.

If things were really going to be fair, the tax burden would shift up to trucks and away from personal use vehicles. Of course, that would make consumer goods more expensive, as they're trucked in and the increased cost would be passed on; or at least, until the train freight infrastructure could expand enough to absorb the extra traffic.

Personally, I would rather pay less at the pump and pay more for consumer goods that have to be trucked, but I can see that that would be politically unpopular thing to do. Let alone probably end businesses like Amazon due to increased shipping costs.

Re:Well, this is going to piss off the Republicans

[rubley]

Short distances? 40 miles covers the daily driving of 90% of Americans. Low speeds? The Volt will attain 100 MPH on battery power alone, look for "autobahn volt" on youtube if you want to see it. No real benefit? My lifetime fuel economy is 255 MPG, is a Civic gonna do that? Prius?

where the hell do you live?

[SuperBanana]

Most of the petrol station was destroyed. It was amazing to see so many people run so fast...

OK, so I know from you calling it "petrol" that this wasn't the US, but...they don't have required fire suppression systems in your country?

Here in the US, every gas station has to have an automatic fire suppression system. When they let go, it's very, very impressive...

Re:where the hell do you live?

[adolf]

Here in the US, every gas station has to have an automatic fire suppression system. When they let go, it's very, very impressive...

Maybe in your US.

Here in in my US (which we usually just call Ohio), automatic fire suppression systems are few and far between at gas stations: There's generally a fire extinguisher prominently mounted nearby, and sometimes a highly-visible EPO on the main building, and that's it.

that's incorrect

[YesIAmAScript]

It doesn't come on to go up steep hills at more than 40mph. You have badly misread this text.

The car slows down if you climb a steep grade at more than 40mph if the electric battery is low. Because of this they have a special "mountain mode" where the battery is not allowed to get that low. It reduces the range of the car by about 1/3rd and that's on top of the fact that you get reduced range climbing hills like any other car.

The gas engine will not come on PERIOD unless the battery runs out or if the temperature gets so very low that the electric car heater is so inefficient that there's little point to driving on battery. This happens at some temp below 10F.

The only time this text mentions the engine coming on and assisting at any speed is when in charge sustaining mode. Charge sustaining mode is the "regular" hybrid mode when the battery is depleted and all the motion is coming from the gas. In this mode it acts like a non-plugin hybrid, all the propulsion comes directly or indirectly from gas.

The initial mode you operate in after a charge up is charge depleting mode. In this mode the gas engine doesn't come on except at very low temperatures as I mentioned above.

I think the source of your confusion may be that the initial reviews indicated the gas engine connects directly to the drivetrain (through the ring gear) to drive the car at highway speeds. But this only happens when the gas engine is already on (the car is already in charge depleting mode). Before this info came out, GM had said (for a while) that the gas engine only ever drove a generator that generated electricity to run the electric motors to drive the wheels. But this turns out not to be efficient (as Toyota also knows, later Priuses get better mpg because they do this more often), so GM made it possible for the gas engine to drive the drivetrain directly. A lot of people got angry about this, mostly for no reason, although GM saying it would work one way and then working another I guess is at least worth mentioning.

But I emphasize again, this only happens in charge sustaining mode, which is the mode the car is in after the battery has been depleted (after the initial 37 miles or so). In charge depleting mode you can press the pedal as hard as you want and the engine never comes on. It'll hit its speed limiter of 85 but the gas engine won't come on. This is what makes the Volt a ER-EV (extended range EV) and not just a regular PHEV. This is unlike any other PHEV out there except for the Fisker Karma.

Re:that's incorrect

[YesIAmAScript]

Ugh, I hate the terms charge depleting and charge sustaining. So confusing. I just use them because they are the official terms.

I messed up, using "charge depleting" where I should have said "charge sustaining" in my "(the car is already in charge depleting mode)" above. The engine is only on in charge sustaining mode and the engine only drives the drivetrain directly in charge sustaining mode.

Steel plates

[Zadaz]

Steel plates are great at preventing electrical shorts.

Re:Steel plates

[FrozenFood]

they are also known to weigh nothing.

it's no big deal

[YesIAmAScript]

There is no way you can discharge deeply enough to eliminate the risk of fire. You can only minimize it. The risk of fire is from the chemicals, and they are still dangerous and flammable even when discharged.

Lions (as used in the Volt) are not destroyed if they are discharged completely. It's not good for them, it reduces their lifespan. But doing it once (or a few times) won't end their lives noticeably prematurely.

Re:it's no big deal

[Dogtanian]

Lions (as used in the Volt) are not destroyed if they are discharged completely.

The Volt uses lions? My god, I can see that *would* be a problem- even if undamaged, they'll generally be very pissed off and aggressive after a crash, and therefore even more likely to bite your damn head off.

Not that they're particularly safe in that respect even under normal use. No wonder GM went bankrupt if they were doing expensive and dangerous things like putting lions in their cars.

It's not good for them, it reduces their lifespan.

Having a lion in one's car is even more likely to reduce your lifespan for the reasons given above.

I propose that it would make a *lot* more sense to use batteries to power the car instead. Preferably using Titanium-Germanium technology, or Ti-Ger for short.

Re:it's no big deal

[Smallpond]

I think you misunderstood. These cars are made by Chevrolet, so they are Detroit Lions.

Re:it's no big deal

[oPless]

Ti-Ger?

Sounds Grrrr-eat! :-)

Re:it's no big deal

[Luckyo]

Bad news for you. Many other parts of the car are also flammable. To make a car non-flammable you would have to remove essentially entire interior, most of the paint, some of drive train, entire fuel assembly, oil assembly, several other fluid assemblies and so on.

Oh, you mean "randomly catch fire on its own or with minimal flash?". Yeah, drained battery is safe.

Re:Not to defend GMs horrendous safety and quality

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see all the running costs there, only fueling.

and 27k car will get you in mustang/taurus territory, going for a similar compact car will net you a 17k focus sedan that will run around your volt and will use 28k fuel just before getting to the price of a volt, and after that there is still more before breaking even

please, do the math, but right. the volta is priced like a bmw and kitted like a fiat. compare appropriately.

Re:Not to defend GMs horrendous safety and quality

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd rather have my taxes go to giving out free Volts than give another dime of tax deduction money to people who get married and have kids. And if someone doesn't want to drive the best car ever produced by America and support American industry, give them some birth control on my dime. There are enough lazy, entitlement-generation people living here.

You want to have kids? Work hard and save your money. Why should I pay for it?

Ya'll hippies love the crony capitalism

[Anonymous Coward]

Hippies loving on the crony capitalism of Government Motors.

dumbasses.

No fires, but they happened this way...

[clafarge]

Did they really say "[they] know of no fires in real-world crashes" and then explain how they happened in the same paragraph?

Re:No fires, but they happened this way...

[Smidge204]

"Real world" = happens in the general public. The two fires were both the result of laboratory testing: one explicitly trying to reproduce the conditions that caused the fire.

Basically, you'd have to slide sideways into a telephone pole at 40+MPH and have it strike dead center of the vehicle. Then you'd have to let the car sit for at least a week, maybe two or three weeks, without bothering to disable the battery or drain the battery coolant. After all that, you probably still need a little bit of luck for it to happen...

But there have not yet been any Volts bursting into flames in the wild. When (not if) it happens, I bet good money it'll be related to the gasoline engine or 12V lead-acid battery and not the traction battery.
=Smidge=

Re:Not to defend GMs horrendous safety and quality

[rubley]

I don't think 27k is going to get you Mustang/Taurus with Navigation, sat radio, backup camera, leather seats, and remote control smart phone app. Comparing it to a Focus is ridiculous. I traded in a Lexus for a Volt. The other brands I was shopping were Jaguar and Audi. Comparing it to a BMW is no stretch. The drivetrain is smoother and quieter than a Rolls-Royce Phantom. Having 273 ft-lbs of torque available at 0 RPM is entertaining too. For some reason a Volt must pay justify itself immediately on economic terms. Why doesn't a Porsche 911 get reduced to a calculation?

The electricity to run it is very cheap for me, I get a special rate at night, $0.055/KWh. So a completely dead battery takes $0.70 to charge (~12.5KWh). The Volt is adding roughly 300 KWh/month to my bill, but before I bought it I eliminated wasted around my house (computers running all day, switched to LED lights) to the tune of 400-500 KWh/month. So I'm driving around on electricity that I was wasting a year ago. And for those who think the power needs are going to collapse the grid, please remember that it takes around 8 KWh of electricity to create/deliver a gallon of gas. So I eliminated 16 KWh/day (2 gallons of gas in my old car) and replaced it with ~13 KWh in battery charging

Re:Not to defend GMs horrendous safety and quality

[Anonymous Coward]

How much did your electric bill go up to charge the car in the evenings? That isn't free either.

Re:Not to defend GMs horrendous safety and quality

[rubley]

$0.70/per day ($0.055/KWh) I reduced my bill by 400-500KWh/month by eliminating waste, and the Volt adds about 300KWh/month, so even with the Volt my bill is lower. Don't forget it takes 8 KWh of electricity to produce a gallon of gas, my grid usage is still less.

Re:Not to defend GMs horrendous safety and quality

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering I was able to buy a used TSX in excellent condition, complete with the leather seats and nav and so forth, for less than $16k, why should I even consider spending 40K on the Volt? Even if gas jumps to $5/gallon, the price difference is over 4800 gallons of gas. At my normal mileage, that's about 150k miles worth. Seeing as how gas isn't nearly that expensive... why should I have bought a Volt again? Really not seeing how it works out in the numbers. And even if you don't like Acura, I was considering an A4 or a ES 330 in the same price name. Used luxury cars have been cheap for the past few years.

So much hate for...pretty much everything.

[jo_ham]

Seems it's cool to hate just about everything on slashdot, so to solve the image problem of the Volt among slashdot geeks they should just tell them that the navigation system runs Linux. Then it would be the greatest product ever created, and would "crush all those closed cars" that "you do not own!"

Problem with the coming high Voltage freeway

[Will.Woodhull]

I had to re-read that bit about adding 12,000 volts to steel plates a couple of times before it made sense (still working on my first pot of coffee of the day).

But it made me realize that Chevie has picked a poor name for their electric car. We are doomed to see electrifying headlines about damage when a bus gets hit by 12 volts, etc.

Stupid stupid name.

Re:Well, this is going to piss off the Republicans

[Anonymous Coward]

Here is something else to ponder. Check out this link, http://www.voltstats.net/ especially for all you non believers. This is real life mileage rates for people driving the Volt today.

As far as people saying "Government Motors" put out this vehicle, please remember the Volt concept was unveiled in 2007 and the production version about 18 months later. The bail out was in 2009 so about a year later. This vehicle was almost killed because of the bailout, not a beneficiary of it. People need to get facts straight and stop bashing GM.

Re:Not to defend GMs horrendous safety and quality

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you charge the batteries for free?

Re:Not to defend GMs horrendous safety and quality

[adolf]

Why should anyone buy a new car, ever?

We should just drive old cars. They're demonstrably cheaper.

Just have a look at Cuba's aging fleet and you'll see that regular people just don't ever need new cars.

No fires in real-world crashes?

[Bigfield]

Hmm... Of course there really can't be real-world crashes as there are very small number of vehicles in real-world use. Yet. However, good thing is that they reacted quickly to the problems and as some have already pointed out, the Volt's design with batteries is in many ways safer than that of the traditional gasoline powered cars. Chevrolet Volt / Opel Ampera is any case an iteresting design and surprisingly brave move from GM.

Re:Not to defend GMs horrendous safety and quality

[Anonymous Coward]

we're past that point. car companies have long learnt their lesson and have retired good cars from the market with exchange programs and substituted them with car having planned obsolescence built in: no longer cars have steel gearing, chain transmissions, over engineered suspensions..

that's why you see 60-70' muscle cars running around fine and get 90' cars falling apart (partly: complex regulations and components do honestly make them more complex and prone to failure)

Re:Not to defend GMs horrendous safety and quality

[Anonymous Coward]

"$7.5k tax credit (complain about this and I'll complain about the child deductions I'm funding with my six figure income)" You can't mix those two things as though they're related - they're not. So yes, we can complain about the fact a guy with a "six figure income" is getting $7500 he does not need from those of us who do. You're rich, you can and should pay more - it's your fair share.

You're diddling of the numbers is also extremely misleading, the Volt is not as cheap as you make it out. It may have cost you that much at the point of sale but it costs considerably more to produce. It's only through a mass subsidizing you could see a sticker price of $45.5K. Depending on how you count it, the subsidy ranges somewhere between $150,000 and $250,000 per car sold. If they can sell double the amount of cars this year (very, very long shot) then that subsidy may drop below $50,000 (estimates vary though). The actual price of the car, if you had not benefited from all the tax payer subsides, would have been well over $100,000.

Re:Not to defend GMs horrendous safety and quality

[Anonymous Coward]

>For some reason a Volt must pay justify itself immediately on economic terms.
>Why doesn't a Porsche 911 get reduced to a calculation?

because the Volt is squarely aimed to the cost conscious market, while a porche is aimed at the be cool market and the "petrolhead that can't afford better market" (but the rs3 iss awesome, or so they say)

just some extract from the volt page:
I was actually in control of how much gas I consumed, and it was a powerful feeling
Charging for about $1.50 per day on average
Bose® Energy Efficient Series speaker system
Goodyear® Assurance® Fuel Max® tires

now, let me compare with the marketing catches from a porsche page:
(just before selecting the boxter) A roadster that stirs emotions and is synonymous with pure performance.
(on the page)
spirit, declared
porche intelligent performance: more information
We have redefined the Boxster in terms of its performance, and defined how the roadster of the future should look

if you can't see why one is reduced to calculation and the other not, you should just keep driving the volt deluding that's better/comparable than a jag.

hint: it's not the optional list. it's the execution.

now, a little disclaimer: I totally love the volt concept (and the tesla S, for that matter). I'm just waiting until the early adopter finance enough r&d to drive the price down for us double digit income, cost conscious, low class work force.