Breaking news! Chevy volt technically driven by gas engine!

[gone-ot]

...or, California is simply mirroring the aerospace methodology of "...test it like it's flown..." and demanding that ALL vehicles be "...tested like they're (really) used."

[euromodder]

Like many, I've been following the hype about the Volt - or the Opel Ampera as it is to be known in Europe - and the news was quite exiting.
230 MPGe right ?
Now it turns out its a very, very mediocre hybrid once its batteries are depleted.
It's become a Prius with a longer range on batteries, but at the cost of a far worse FE on gas.
Who was waiting for that ? I wasn't.

If governments want to support the introduction of ground-breaking technologies, fine.
But they shouldn't be supporting run-of-the-mill everyday cars - unfortunately, that's also happening here in Belgium.

[cfg83]

Old Tele man -

Originally Posted by Old Tele man

...or, California is simply mirroring the aerospace methodology of "...test it like it's flown..." and demanding that ALL vehicles be "...tested like they're (really) used."

I look at it in terms of worst-case-scenario, which is maybe what you are talking about. Test to the driving mode that is most polluting, which is ICE-on regen mode. If the Volt succeeds in general, then maybe they'll make the EV-only Volt that has been rumored.

CarloSW2

[gone-ot]

Originally Posted by cfg83

...worst-case-scenario...

...exactly.

[tjts1]

Originally Posted by Old Tele man

...or, California is simply mirroring the aerospace methodology of "...test it like it's flown..." and demanding that ALL vehicles be "...tested like they're (really) used."

LOL then why do they smog check my car at 25mph on a no load dyno.

[euromodder]

The blokes at Autoblog drove a Volt to a totally unimpressive 34 mpg on gas.
Not impressive as an EV (only half the Leaf's range).
Not impressive with an ICE (worse FE than an Insight or Prius).
It's going to be a very hard sell for GM and Opel.

[Angelus359]

I would rather have them had NOT put in a direct power train, because well... then it would need a direct power train

I would rather a well balanced ecofriendly inline 3 cylinder or even turboboosted well balanced 2 cylinder acting as a generator, without insane amounts of extra things necessary.

Hell a 2 cylinder turbo diesel with no drive train would have been happy, and significantly cheaper to produce.

Think of the weight differences.

[dcb]

but it is not efficient to use an engine to drive a generator to drive a controller to drive a motor to drive the wheels. It is even less efficient if you have to charge and discharge batteries.

[Angelus359]

This may be true, but if you drop in a capacitor for burst differences, and used that for first accessed storage and first charged storage instead of batteries, it would be drastically better. Capacitor AND batteries would be nessessary.

A simply better option would be a stirling heat differential electric generator.
2 FWD electic motor, 40mile battery, and some capacitors would be nessessary.
You take a closed system heat differential generator, with the heatsource being a small leanburn turbo diesel (1L 2 cylinder). (Yes I know turbo is a LOT of boost for a 2 cylinder, and a 2 cylinder doesn't have a lot of exhaust)
You take the intercooler on the turbochargers, and run it past a part of the heated side of the heat differential motor. The other part of the heated side you have replace the standard radiator. Thermally insulate the intercooler and the radiator that is heating the warmed side from the outside world. On the cooled side of the heat differential motor, you would want to run past a standard frontal radiator, and under the non exhaust parts of the underbody of the car, have white or silver alluminum sheets that are thermally linked to the cool side. Small (1inch) alluminum fins running along the underbody parallel to the car's motion could aid that even further.
Wheelwell covers, insightwheels, and kammback could help further.
That way there is lots, and I mean lots of heat dissipation on that section for the heat differential motor.
Optimal exhaust setup would be leave engine, turbo, catalytic converter, down the line, another small turbine with a small alternator at muffler location optionally (use venturi effect to increase velocity for this purpose)(not sure how well this would work), then out the back.

The power sources would go as follows
Electric regeneration, turbo diesel generator, and then heat-recapture on exhaust (intercooler is heated by turbo which is powered by exhaust), and cooling system via heat differential motor.
Propulsion would be all 1:1ratio electric, FWD (awd luxary).

The reason this is drastically better than the volt is heat recapture.
Without a heavy liquid filled transmission, or powertrain, the engine compartment has a lot more room. That room can easily fit a secondary heat differential motor.
If I remember right at one point mazda tried making a stirling powered truck, but due to how the engine works, even though it had lots of power, the RPMs raised too slowly.
It takes about a minute for a stirling engine to even turn on due to warmup phase.

I may be wrong, it was just an idea.

Just think about what happens to weight and space when you take out the flywheel, transmission, powertrain, run a tiny motor, and recapture the heat as electricity, along with making proper aeromods.

[dcb]

there's plenty of pork on the 3500 lb (4 seater) volt They can't seem to bring themselves to design a car on a diet. A manual gearbox isn't a huge space/weight penalty in your average car, the edison2 team used one to make a 800 lb 4 passenger (non hybrid too) xprize winner:

http://www.edison2.com/tech-specs/