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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.'"
yeah the volt's batteries aren't safe like a big tank of hydrocarbons under your ass.
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
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.
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.
Yeah, like magnesium!
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
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
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.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
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.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
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.
"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.
One simple rule for its versus it's
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.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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...
I love stacking my barbecues in the shed at the end of summer - you can't beat a bit of grill on grill action.
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.
One simple rule for its versus it's
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.
One simple rule for its versus it's
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)
They'll still end up bankrupt if they can't do any better than this.
Don't worry, they're doing okay.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
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/
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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=
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=
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.)
Kid-proof tablet..
1955 Jeep CJ5 had the gas tank under the driver's seat, so there is prior art.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
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.
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