Behind the Wheel of the Volt.

The Chevy Volt has been electrofying the car world since its infantile concept debut. The Volt is a 110v re-chargeable electric car that is rumored to run 40 miles between charges. Here are some pictures of the the headline making vehicle.

You can plug it into any three-pronged household outlet, and it'll take about eight or nine hours to charge, or about three hours at a specially built 240-volt charging station. GM is working with some third-party charging-station companies as well.

Is that a typo? Only 40 miles for an 8 hour charge?

doesnt really surprise me...full electrics are oversized golf carts...remember our battery tech hasnt improved much in the last 20 years... that being said, i thought government motors was killing off the volt again?

Not a typo on the 40 miles but it use a gas engine to charge the batteries.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-10...?tag=rtcol;txt

I think the biggest thing people mistake about "green" electric cars is that the electricity isn't coming from nowhere. It's just pushing the problem elsewhere.

But I'm okay with people buying these. More gasoline for me and my god given right to a V8 truck.

buying gas once ever month or two would be pretty sweet, 8 hours on a regular socket? not that bad considering from the time you get home from work till the time you leave in the morning there is a good 12-15 hours of time.

What would get very old very fast is plugging/unplugging the damn thing.

I don't have any engineering background but it would be rather easy to design a small robotic/pad type system that sits in the middle of your garage. When you pull in and say hit the "charge button", some sort of protective cover slides to the side on the bottom of the car (to keep water/dirt/dust out) and perhaps and thru a sensor or two and some servos, a metal lead can be elevated to come into contact with the charging port. Obviously my idea is simplified for argument, but it would mean you can literally hop in, hit a button to undock, and off you go. No fussing with cords and being screwed if you forget to plug in the night before.

Originally Posted by kayijin

Is that a typo? Only 40 miles for an 8 hour charge?

No not a misprint but also not an issue for most drivers. The car is electric but it has both a battery and an internal combustion engine. The engine is used to turn a generator to produce additional electricity whenever the software determines that the current battery level needs some extra juice.

The 40 miles isn't an issue for most people. I can't remember the exact number but GM did some research and found out that (i think) 85% of US drivers drive less than 40 miles per day. So the logic is as follows. 85% of US driver could buy the Volt and for their normal daily routine they would use no gas at all. Just get up in the morning, go to work etc... Come home at night, plug it in. And then when you're ready to leave the next morning the car is charged and ready to go. For those days when you need to go more than 40 miles the internal combustion engine will kick in when needed and you can drive as far as you feel like as long as you keep putting gas in the tank. When you get where you're going just plug the car in.

Originally Posted by NACZ3

I think the biggest thing people mistake about "green" electric cars is that the electricity isn't coming from nowhere. It's just pushing the problem elsewhere.

True but it may not matter due to the way the US electric grid currently works. It's true that the energy has to come from somewhere so if someone plugs in an electric car to the grid then that power comes from however the grid produced that electricity. (nuclear, coal, hydro, whatever). The reason it may not matter is because "most" people would plug in their electric car at night and nighttime is when the US grid is full of "extra" power that just goes to waste because nobody is using it. You can't just turn off a power plant at 5:00 and go home. Those things run almost all the time so a LOT of the extra electricity they produce goes to waste.

While true that the power has to come from "somewhere"; if folks bought electric cars and plugged them in at night then they would be making use of what currently goes to "waste". it still comes from nuclear, coal, hydro whatever but at least it would be used, instead of currently going to waste like now.

Also there's always the option of slapping some solar panels up on your house to augment how you consume power. Many electric companies will allow you to "sell" power to them during the day if you generate excess power and then you can "buy" it back when you need it (like at night when the rates are typically cheaper).

Originally Posted by xeddex

True but it may not matter due to the way the US electric grid currently works. It's true that the energy has to come from somewhere so if someone plugs in an electric car to the grid then that power comes from however the grid produced that electricity. (nuclear, coal, hydro, whatever). The reason it may not matter is because "most" people would plug in their electric car at night and nighttime is when the US grid is full of "extra" power that just goes to waste because nobody is using it. You can't just turn off a power plant at 5:00 and go home. Those things run almost all the time so a LOT of the extra electricity they produce goes to waste.

Except I would think most people would plug them in when they get home in the evening right before turning on a number of lights in the house and turning on the AC. This is the time of day where there is a large spike in grid power usage and adding electric cars will just increase the issue.

i read some fairly interesting things about the volt. mainly, the batteries themselves. for one, they are only charged to 80% for a "full charge".. this is supposed to nearly double their service life. also, because of safety concerns, they had to put a steel-armor plate on the top of the battery pack, in case of fire or explosion (explosion is virtually impossible, but the chance is still there so they couldn't ignore it and be the next pinto). now, if you combine the weight of the armor plate with the 20% less capacity per-charge, you actually end up with a battery pack that performs about exactly the same as lead-acid batteries pound for pound. you dont even save that much space... i think the point is that we could have had electric cars 50 years ago in mass production, because lead acid batteries have been cheap and reliable for many decades now. the volt just uses a lot of new technology in ways that make it really no better then what we could have always done.

Originally Posted by NACZ3

I think the biggest thing people mistake about "green" electric cars is that the electricity isn't coming from nowhere. It's just pushing the problem elsewhere.

The internal combustion engine is terribly inefficient. We're talking on the order of 75-80% of the energy from the gas we burn is wasted. The electricity that's generated from power stations is much much more efficient. So even if we're shifting our fossil fuel burning from cars to power stations, we're going to be saving a lot of fuel that would otherwise be wasted.

Originally Posted by siliconnerd

Except I would think most people would plug them in when they get home in the evening right before turning on a number of lights in the house and turning on the AC. This is the time of day where there is a large spike in grid power usage and adding electric cars will just increase the issue.

They already thought of that problem. The Volt software allows you to specify when charging should happen so you can plug it in when you get home but program the car to not start charging until 10pm when your rates go down (or whatever works for you).

Originally Posted by hughJ

The internal combustion engine is terribly inefficient. We're talking on the order of 75-80% of the energy from the gas we burn is wasted. The electricity that's generated from power stations is much much more efficient. So even if we're shifting our fossil fuel burning from cars to power stations, we're going to be saving a lot of fuel that would otherwise be wasted.

Yep. and from a "green/clean" point of view it's much easier and WAY more productive to upgrade a power plant to be cleaner and more efficient than it is to upgrade all the users downstream. It's much better to fix a smaller number of sources than a large number of destinations.

generating electricity is not a problem... and the international electric unions welcome more demand for stronger transmission lines.

40 miles on a charge, what a waste and useless for most.

Build one a 400 mile charge capability and get back to us....

I have much better and more exciting things to do with $30,000 (minimum).

I'll buy a 3 cylinder Geo Metro that gets 60 mpg for commuting and keep my S4 in the garage for evenings and weekends. And still have money left over...

If anyone is interested in staying on top of the Volt I'll recommend http://gm-volt.com/

It's not the "official" site. It's an enthusiast site and it has some very knowledgeable folks. it's become one of my daily reads on the web (Just like [H])

thats not entirely true. if you consider any power plant that burns a fossil fuel the problem is they suffer from the same efficiency problem. its a thermodynamic problem, any process that converts heat to kinetic (rotational) energy has a theoretical maximum of 40% efficiency. that means in a perfect world you'd have 40%, and we all know that'll never happen.

that being said if we can get more nuclear power and renewables up to a decent level of power production, that would be great. fossil fuels wouldn't be a problem!

but for the time being, we're simply shifting where the fuel is burned and the difference in efficiency is nil. personally i think with pushing out electric cars we're putting the buggy before the horse. we need to figure out better ways to get energy that does not involve fossil fuels and get a solid infrastructure to support electric vehicles. then it would make a lot of sense. theres a few interesting things coming up, but we're still a long ways off.

Originally Posted by hughJ

The internal combustion engine is terribly inefficient. We're talking on the order of 75-80% of the energy from the gas we burn is wasted. The electricity that's generated from power stations is much much more efficient. So even if we're shifting our fossil fuel burning from cars to power stations, we're going to be saving a lot of fuel that would otherwise be wasted.

I'm looking forward to new Extended-Range EVs (ER-EVs) here in Europe as well. Since we got 230VAC outlets by default, charging our EVs should be twice as fast as in the US, Canada, Japan and other 110VAC countries We also have the option of 480VAC for charging which should allow for 2 hours or less to a 100% charge.

I could just see 230VAC becoming the standard in other countries as well because of EVs

Originally Posted by shawnoen

40 miles on a charge, what a waste and useless for most.

Build one a 400 mile charge capability and get back to us....

Do you drive 400 miles a day? If you want to drink a Coke do you insist on having 20 gallons of Coke on hand even though you only want a drink?

An inch is as good as a mile if all you need is an inch. Insisting on having a mile when all you need is an inch doesn't sound particularly wise to me.

If you really do drive 400 miles a day then you're one of the 15% that the Volt wasn't designed for. Sorry.

Originally Posted by Elledan

I'm looking forward to new Extended-Range EVs (ER-EVs) here in Europe as well. Since we got 230VAC outlets by default, charging our EVs should be twice as fast as in the US, Canada, Japan and other 110VAC countries We also have the option of 480VAC for charging which should allow for 2 hours or less to a 100% charge.

I could just see 230VAC becoming the standard in other countries as well because of EVs

Yep, here in the US most single family homes are wired for 240 because of large appliances. GM already said that the Volt will support higher current charging which should take the recharge down to 3-4 hours. The problem is that in the US you are not allowed to wire a new 240 line to your garage by yourself. You would have to hire a profession to wire your garage for 240 which isn't hard to do but it would be another added expense.

I dont know anyone who drives more than 40 miles a day. I think this is a great car from a "normal" persons perspective. I say normal as in a person whos not looking for a high performance car or the fastest car for the money.

its about 4 miles from my house to any store and 6 miles round trip to school. So thats only 10 miles to get places that i need to go.