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Old 11-07-2014, 11:14 AM   #11 (permalink)
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I think its good they stick around the 40 mile mark. Hopefully we'll see a significant drop in price though from all the other improvements and downsizing.

I also agree with what Redpoint said. This sounds like a pretty major improvement over the previous version.

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Old 11-07-2014, 02:30 PM   #12 (permalink)
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I think its good they stick around the 40 mile mark. Hopefully we'll see a significant drop in price though from all the other improvements and downsizing.
I am hoping they end up with a significant drop in WEIGHT and a significant improvement to CDa.

They could then make that existing 42 mile battery a 50 mile battery and improve gas MPG, sadly with the numbers given it aint gonna happen.

Likely a very similar car with a slight weight savings and slight improvements.

Hopefully they can get the city MPG up to the 60mpg a prius can achieve, that really is what kills the volt.

Oh and my volt seems to get 51 miles on a charge except for the last few cold days, I am hoping I am not seeing a trend. 9kw to go 25mph seems very excessive.

Ah well.
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Old 11-07-2014, 02:52 PM   #13 (permalink)
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Hopefully they can get the city MPG up to the 60mpg a prius can achieve, that really is what kills the volt.
Why would a Volt be using gas in the city? Seems to me the vast majority would be using the ICE only on highway trips once the battery is discharged.

Or a driver could use "hold" mode to save EV charge until arriving at the city destination.
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Old 11-08-2014, 04:18 PM   #14 (permalink)
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Originally Posted by redpoint5 View Post

Allowing the ICE to provide direct motive power to the wheels is huge. I've heard it said that the car only achieved 30 MPG when running the ICE/generator to propel the car.
This was always kind of a mystery to me, how does the Volt lose so much efficiency when using the gas generator when the concept of having electric-only propulsion with generator for boosting efficiency is used in so many applications? The energy conversion efficiency has to be absolutely terrible to bring the gas mileage down to that of a normal car.
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Old 11-08-2014, 06:52 PM   #15 (permalink)
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You cant have your lunch and eat it too. You either get highway or city mpg, but not both.
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Old 11-08-2014, 06:57 PM   #16 (permalink)
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You cant have your lunch and eat it too. You either get highway or city mpg, but not both.
Gen1 insight owners would be to differ !
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Old 11-08-2014, 09:16 PM   #17 (permalink)
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Well, if we were talking about 15 year old discontinued hybrids with the least sales you would be right. Unfortunately we are talking about the 2nd run of the Volt which surpasses sales expectations for an American hybrid and the runner up Prius and Honda HCH. Hondas seems to do well in highway, prius in cities. Of course its also a parallel vs serial hybrid design unless you add the accord to the mix. Too little is know about the new accord hybrid with its mix of electric motors and gas similar to the prius power splitter.

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Old 11-08-2014, 10:01 PM   #18 (permalink)
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Why would a Volt be using gas in the city? Seems to me the vast majority would be using the ICE only on highway trips once the battery is discharged.

Or a driver could use "hold" mode to save EV charge until arriving at the city destination.
I drove roughly 389 miles today with the volt down to chicago, I averaged 45mpg on the gasoline side and had 45 miles of EV at the beginning and 7 miles (from sitting at Kwik trip an hour, eating and driving like a snail afterword), I went over the trip and there was NO POSSIBLE WAY to drive the distance I needed to go at low speeds all on EV.

Likewise I end up in the situation when I go to Appleton and come back that I might get the volt to my door right on the money or as was the case last week the gasser started at the bottom of the hill leading to my apartment .7 miles away. That .7 miles was at about 20mpg, (yes it was cold on a highway with too much traffic and uphill a terrible combination)
I do not have charging at work yet and am thinking of walking the one mile from kwik trip and leaving the volt parked there all day on those days so I can make it when I do that trip once or twice a month.

Also I drive 108 miles every friday, I have mapped my trip and alternate routes quite extensively and it seems that I am pretty much capped at 51 miles of ev range with an outlier slightly above and several in the lower 40's when I have to drive full blast highway.

After several trials I have found that although I can perfectly time my EV for
1. Beginning,
2. Middle
3. End using hold mode
and maximize EV range...

My actual fuel usage for the trip (not economy) is better if I just use the EV up start to finish at the beginning and then hypermile on the slowish backroads leading to my destination.

Odd trivia, with 41 miles of EV at the begging
I use 1.45 gallons of gas to go the rest of the way (not bad at all)

With 52 miles of EV and gas once on the highway I use roughly 1.6 gallons of fuel (not good at all) this is obviosly only over a handfull of trips so far but I do note that I have an elevation change at the beginning of the highway trip, contrary to popular belief EV must trump gasser usage up hills and flat ground must make up for hills on the gasser.

The volt seems to be VERY sensative to temperature, air pressure in tires (I have to overinflate to achieve EPA) and elevation changes, much more so than any other car I have owned.

This means that it makes optimizing the trip much more tedious and like driving the dodge ram crewcab very easy to get craptaskic fuel economy. (Yes I have gotten 35mpg driving all highway at 50-60mph)

Also if the volt was optimized to get DRASTICALLY better fuel economy around town like the Honda Insight, Chevy Cobalt or even the Prius it would be MUCH friendlier for people like me to hypermile on the 4 lane highways that have amish buggies and farm tractors for the situations where I have to drive too far for my range.

Also my EV % stays around 68% but I use all electric with a handfull of exceptions all weekdays but then on weekends exceed. (trips like the one I just took help nothing in this regard but I needed the cargo capacity the volt had to carry my cargo (wouldn't likely fit in the insight)
The brutal cold short trips during the week are well worth having electric and yes ERDTT on my volt with be disabled or at a minimum reduced once that situation starts to occur.

I need to actually keep the insight around to make the weekend runs but "others" are borrowing that while I put the volt through its paces.

I have been manually logging my EV/Gas miles since my smartphone hates the volt (work provided)

But honestly I rather keep my own documentation of the volt and coordinate it with the terrain and trip.

Cheers
Ryan
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Old 11-08-2014, 11:01 PM   #19 (permalink)
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Thats interesting.... Most find best mpg is from not using the electric part of most hybrids except to extending coasting of the glide in P&G or to sustain lean burn if equipped. There is a few papers published on the prius how its best to use gas for acceleration and electric to coast or maintain.

Hows the non hybrid part of the volt? Does it accelerate well for merging? Is it roomie for large adults? Does it handle well in wet or windy weather? Do you have to fight to keep it on the road or does it follow the curves? Can you ride the brake to a stop to max regen or is it difficult to modulate braking effort vs max regen?
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Old 11-09-2014, 07:05 PM   #20 (permalink)
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Thats interesting.... Most find best mpg is from not using the electric part of most hybrids except to extending coasting of the glide in P&G or to sustain lean burn if equipped. There is a few papers published on the prius how its best to use gas for acceleration and electric to coast or maintain.
On the volt when you are driving somewhere in the 35-60mph area you slowly charge up the battery if you are carefull with the throttle. After a period of time the gas motor shuts down, the only way the volt seems to leave for "optimizing" gasoline fuel economy is to drive like grandma and try to maintain the magic 5 miles per KW or better (if possible) while driving off gas derived electric miles. I also shut off all heat, fans and lights while the gasser is off.

Also the volt needs a FAS as it wants to run the motor for an interval of to,e regardless of what you are doing, AKA under a variety of circumstances the volt wants to leave the motor running when you are coming to a stop or even stopped. I have found if I know I am going to stop I can put the car in L and brake agressively on regen only and usually force the engine off a bit prematurely, then I can coast up to the stop with the motor off as opposed to the damn thing running until the car comes to a complete stop.

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Hows the non hybrid part of the volt? Does it accelerate well for merging? Is it roomie for large adults? Does it handle well in wet or windy weather? Do you have to fight to keep it on the road or does it follow the curves? Can you ride the brake to a stop to max regen or is it difficult to modulate braking effort vs max regen?
In hold mode the volt performs exactly like it does in EV mode and is surpizingly zippy for a suburban weighted car.

Being heavy it seems to handle just fine in any weather, but likewise being extremely heavy and with a very low center of gravity means you can turn hard and then end up with a skid, traction control has always taken care of this issue (me coming from an G1 insight I don't brake I just tend to turn on dry pavement) However in the winter with summer tread energy savers I will likely have to take corners significantly slower than I am used to, but then again I have always driven vehicles that are light (save the suburban) and turn with special manuvers tightly in snow and slush.

I am guessing the volt would work very well in snow and ice if I get appropriate tires (especially on the front) but me being a cheapskate that likely won't happen, unless I can find a way to make the suburbans 15" tires fit on the volt Sadly I think the smallest diameter I can go is probably 16" which sucks but it is because of the volts massive rotors and strange offset so I am stuck, unless I can find some strange 15" rims (oh and the lug spacing isn't a major issue apparently, just the bloody offset needed because of the massive rotors)

In terms of regen I prefer to leave the car in L when I am around the city or coming to a stop because I can more easily find the sweet spot where power usage is exactly ZERO. Getting max regen is easy, just leave it in L.

Like a prius getting the volt into a true neutral is impossible without a delicate and adjustable foot, Neutral on the stick makes the car provide a small amount of power to simulate freewheeling (whatever the heck that means) No idea why they did that but you do put some energy into the motor in neutral so I usually (unless I am feeling lazy) try to keep the neutral position using the foot pedal.

Now in terms of power when in the so called CS mode at the end of the charge I have found some irritating quirks.

Under certain circumstances the car will delay accelerating after mashing the go pedal once the battery is depleted, most everyone else has never experienced this but I and a pair of other guys have, generally if you brake enough to make the motor prematurely shut off AKA the car assumes you are coming to a stop then when you end up having to stomp on it the car has a delay.
I have had this behavior under other circumstances and am uncertain why it occurs but in general save for this glitch I can't explain the car is normally quite fast off the mark regardless of drive mode, except mountain mode which I have yet to find a good use for (I have experimented but can't find the ideal situation where it is of much use)

Me being a hypermiler have gotten to experience this bug multiple times but it is my own damn fault but then again I get dramatically better fuel economy around town with the volt on gas than the EPA because I coax the gasser off whenever it will allow.

What is irritating is right after the motor first starts I am usually nearing a stop and the motor during warmup will not shut off for some time and sits idling, occasionally I put it into mountain mode and gain a few extra EV miles for the hassle of having the ICE race anyway as It warms up.

Ah well, too bad I don't have full instrumentation for the volt, I hate black boxes and sadly the scangage can brick the car so I have avoided plugging it in as of yet.

Cheers
Ryan

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