Report from April 9, 2015
The
volt is not a normal car. Chevrolet is touting it as an electric car,
but it does have a gas engine and that causes some confusion in the
public, myself included. The natural assumption is that the gas engine
drives the wheels directly, as we are so used to that idea from normal
cars and even from hybrids. However, Chevrolet does say the gas engine is a “range
extender”, basically a generator of electricity which helps recharge the
battery and can power the electric motor. But even their schematics of
the drive train show times when the power from the gas engine goes
directly to the wheels. However, in real life, I cannot recall ever
being aware of the gas engine directly powering the wheels, it is truly a
range extender I’ve found.
One nice thing about the
Volt is the level of control the driver has over the mode the car drives
in. It takes some getting used to but offers the ability to maximize
the use of the battery for when it makes the most sense, and employ the
gas engines energy when that makes sense. The battery has very limited
range, touted at 35 - 38 miles, but this winter it has been 30 miles or
less. Again it may be the cold weather effecting the range and snow
tires. Regardless, when I drive to New York City, I have found it best
to use the Normal setting in town, and switch to gas when on the
highway, back to battery, Normal, when driving in NYC. The Volt allows
you this level of control. The drive settings are Normal, the default
setting, which uses the battery until it is exhausted and and switches
to the gas generator. In that state, when battery is exhausted and the gas engine
is energizing the car it behaves much like a hybrid in that the engine
comes on and off depending upon the driving conditions, at low speeds it
can be electric, any exertion or faster and the gas engine comes on.
The other drive modes are Sport, Mountain, and Hold. Sport is as the
name implies is truly sporty. It is great when the battery has a good
charge then the Volt becomes truly a nimble vehicle, very responsive and
quite fast. Mountain is a strange setting, it keeps the battery half
full, so if you are above that, it is running normally with battery
power, and it switches to gas when it hits that limit. If it starts out
below half full, the engine does double time, both powering the electric
motor and feeding electricity to refill the battery. It is quite
disconcerting to have the gas engine laboring away on high, while one is
going along at a moderate speed. The idea is to save enough electric
power to help go up mountains and hills. The other setting is Hold,
which simply puts the car into gas mode and saves the battery for when
you go back to normal. I have found Hold quite useful for long trips, I
engage it when on the highway so it goes into gas mode and stops
draining the battery and go back to Normal when in a town setting when
one is doing stop and go traffic, and it is nice to not have any
emissions.
This brings me to the weirdest aspect of
driving the Volt, the disconnect between the accelerator pedal and the
gas engine. One is so used to expecting that when you depress the accelerator, the gas engine responds, it is called a gas pedal for a reason. However with the Volt there is no direct correlation between pressing the accelerator pedal and the gas engine, and when it doesn’t respond as expected, it is disconcerting. On most cars the when you press the gas pedal you give more gas to the engine. Not so in a Volt. When I go to the
Hold mode, the gas engine comes on and runs according to the electric
needs, wether to run the motor turning the wheels or recharge the
battery when it gets depleted below the level set for it. So when you
are going up a hill, both the engine and the battery are feeding the
motors turning the wheels, when leveling out, the engine will still be
going full speed to replenish the battery, even though the motor isn’t
needing that much power and you have stopped depressing the
accelerator. That is the weird part, the disconnect between what you
hear with the engine and the pressure you put on the accelerator.
April 16, 2015
I purchased my Volt this
winter, December 30th, and I got snow tires on it immediately, given my past
experiences with a front wheel drive in the snow. I think that has had a
dramatic effect on my mileage, judging by how my car is performing now
that I took them off last Friday. I just drove down to New York and
back, Tuesday and Wednesday, about 240 miles or so. I’d noticed that the
battery showed over 30 miles when fully charged, while all winter it
has shown under 30. Driving down to the city, once I got beyond Hudson
city limits and it was highway driving, I put the car into the Hold
mode, and drove on the gas engine’s power to conserve the battery for
city driving. Even so, over the course of the over 100 mile trip, I was
averaging about 45 miles to the gallon, as good as I got with my prior
Jetta hybrid. Once in the city, I cruised along emissions free on the
battery power. The garage where I park my car does not have a set up for
charging electric cars, but fortunately, I had over 20 miles left on
the battery so I was fine for the return trip. On the return trip, I
drove out of the city on electric power, until I got to the Sawmill,
about 10 miles. I then switched over to Hold to save power for the
mountains midway on the Taconic. By switching on and off the gas
through the hold mode, I was able to cruise home getting about 48 miles
to the gallon on the return trip, pretty good I’d say!
The volt definitely seems to prefer warmer weather, I'm curious to see how it performs as the spring moves into summer. I'm very happy now with my Volt, I was having doubts, but now realize that its lack of performance battery wise and mileage wise, was due to the cold and the snow tires. Let us see how it fairs this summer.
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