Cowmeat learns to drive the Volt

[cowmeat]

I think all the years newer than mine give you the option to save the charge, and 2013 and beyond have a little more EV range than mine. You'd be pushing the very outer limits of EV range IMO at 58 miles, but the ICE does fire up seamlessly since all it does is provide juice like a generator, it's not hooked up to a transmission.

A 2013 volt should have the option to save charge, but even on the highway using ICE the Volt gets pretty good gas mileage. I got around 40 mpg on the way home from the dealership (the one time I used gas in mine), but I like to follow semis and not everybody does that. If you run it out of charge on the way to work getting way over 100 mpg, and only get 35-40 mpg on the way home, you're still netting better gas mileage than anything else out there

[ME_Andy]

You're a good candidate for a 2016 Leaf (107 miles of range).

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by straight5

I drive 58 miles a day, Monday - Friday. About 80% of the drive is highway or interstate, and very few red lights. There is no charging station at work. I'd been wondering if I could stretch the range on a 2011 - 2013 volt that far, but it doesn't sound like I could.
In the volt, does the engine run only when you get down to a predetermined state of charge, or do you have some control?

The car will simply run on gas once you run out of EV.

If you air your tires up, have 50+ degree weather, leave climate control off and keep your highway speeds low you should easily hit 50 miles on electric.
That's 8 miles of gas which should be less than a quarter gallon of fuel.

If you have 80+ weather, idle the car plugged in 10 minutes, leave all accessories and lights off, take surface streets so you can keep speeds below 35mph, use all hypermiling techniques, keep your kwhr/mile above 6 miles per kwhr (2013+ kw gage helps), keep tires above 50psi, accelerate slowly using 20kw or less
And you should exceed 60 miles ev.

On a 2013 you can command gas use any time using hold mode

[Hank1510]

It's going to depend a lot on what you mean by highway driving. Solo driving at 80? Drafting safely at 55?

My commute involves driving 60-65 and some city (80% state highway). I'll get about 42-46 miles on my 2014 before the gas engine kicks in. Spring/summer driving with the AC on enough that I'm not uncomfortable. Engine only, I get a little over 40mpg on road trips.

Earlier Volts without "hold" mode still have "mountain" mode. This doesn't let the battery fall below 50%. You can even use it to charge with the engine to 50% if the battery is low, but this is inefficient.

I put together a calculator to compare operating costs for gas, hybrid, plug in hybrid, and full electric. I can give you an output if you give me some info for electric rates, fuel cost, and estimated mpg/range. I think the Volt website has something similar.

The first 40 electric miles are going to be much cheaper than gas, your oil changes significantly less frequent, and the Volt has quite a bit more power. I think the Prius starts to make more sense with 100+ mile round trip.

[cowmeat]

Since I've owned the Volt I had always assumed the light I saw on the door panel above the charge door button was a reflection of the charge door light.

This morning I realized it's actually the the gas door button

I literally forgot it existed!

[RedDevil]

YKYAEI you manage to forget about the gas door release button on your DD

[straight5]

Thanks everyone for the replies. Thanks for the offer Hank1510. Concerning the Leaf, sorry, but I'm just not a fan...............
My regular commute (one direction) is 10 miles of 40 - 50 mph usually solo. Then 16 miles of 55-70 in traffic, where following other traffic is more or less the norm. And 1+ miles of 30mph. Because of the hills around here, I can coast quite a bit. I've checked to see how far I coast (not p&g) in my Saab. I only counted the times that I coasted more than two tenths of a mile with the clutch disengaged, and come up with about 7 miles one way, and a little over 8 the other.
I understand that a Volt will end up with considerably better mileage, I agree with you there. I guess one of my concerns would be that the engine would start and run for only a few minutes at a time each day - barely reaching closed loop. My thinking is that running the engine for such a short period of time on a regular basis probably isn't good for it.

[cowmeat]

I understand that a Volt will end up with considerably better mileage, I agree with you there. I guess one of my concerns would be that the engine would start and run for only a few minutes at a time each day - barely reaching closed loop. My thinking is that running the engine for such a short period of time on a regular basis probably isn't good for it.

I'd say with the hilly terrain on your 58 mile commute that wouldn't be an issue. You'd probably make it to work on EV and less than halfway home, then the ICE would kick in. It would have plenty of time to warm up daily with that kind of commute.

[Hank1510]

Yeah, you don't need to run the engine until the battery is depleted. I messed with trying to use hold mode to use the battery at optimum times, but most of the time I'd get home with a small amount of unused battery.

The think the Volts engine is actually designed for frequent start/stops and low engine temperature operation. I remember reading some differences to a typical engine, but I can't find it now.

[cowmeat]

I'm going to experiment in the Volt to see what kind of gas mileage it will get using the ICE motor only. Since the gas has just been sitting in it for three months, I might as well play around with hypermiling it while I burn through the tank of gas.

Does anybody know offhand long long you can keep the gas in the tank without it starting to degrade? And does it hurt your ICE motor to go months without being fired up?

I'll fill it up completely tonite (I used a couple of gallons the first week I owned it playing around with "mountain mode") and I'll reset the trip-B button. Then I'll find out just how many miles I can actually get on a tank of gas if I don't plug it in every night.

It's going to be a long, slow experiment since I put less than 40 miles a day on it.