Cowmeat learns to drive the Volt

[cowmeat]

I'm borrowing my old Insight Turtle from my son for a couple of days while the Volt is in the shop. I forgot how addictive the instant mpg readout is! And I forgot how cool it was to have 100+ miles on a tank and the gas gauge hasn't even moved.
I've cranked the AC the whole time I'm driving and the car has still averaged over 65 mpg

[cowmeat]

Got the Volt back this afternoon with a brand new EV battery courtesy of GM. There apparently was some corrosion that was causing the temp sensors in the battery modules to fail, so they opted to just replace the entire pack.

Since I rarely if ever use gas, it's almost like getting a new car

[Ecky]

Originally Posted by cowmeat

Got the Volt back this afternoon with a brand new EV battery courtesy of GM. There apparently was some corrosion that was causing the temp sensors in the battery modules to fail, so they opted to just replace the entire pack.

Since I rarely if ever use gas, it's almost like getting a new car

Nice! I've read something before about the temp sensors, I wonder if they're common failure points?

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by cowmeat

Got the Volt back this afternoon with a brand new EV battery courtesy of GM. There apparently was some corrosion that was causing the temp sensors in the battery modules to fail, so they opted to just replace the entire pack.

Since I rarely if ever use gas, it's almost like getting a new car

Should keep an eye on how much your fully depleted battery takes to charge and how many kwhrs your battery takes to recharge.

If you can use more than 10.2kwhrs you have a 2013+ capacity battery

[cowmeat]

Yeah, I'll track it over the coming weeks to see what range and discharge amount I can get.
Today it gave me the standard out of the box 35 miles of range from a full charge last night, so it's starting all over to bring it up from there.

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by cowmeat

Yeah, I'll track it over the coming weeks to see what range and discharge amount I can get.
Today it gave me the standard out of the box 35 miles of range from a full charge last night, so it's starting all over to bring it up from there.

It can take several full discharge cycles before it learns the new pack parameters then it will level off.

[cowmeat]

I drove my 38 mile commute and had 13 miles of range left this morning, so the new battery is already giving me over fifty miles of EV range.

[cowmeat]

I drove it today all the way to where it kicked on the ICE and it used 10.4 kwh before switching over.

I assume that means they replaced it with a newer style battery with higher capacity

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by cowmeat

I drove it today all the way to where it kicked on the ICE and it used 10.4 kwh before switching over.

I assume that means they replaced it with a newer style battery with higher capacity

Yep,

That is the same as my 2013 on a good day.

Old 2011 Batteries usually maxed at 9.9kwhr so you now have about an official 3 miles additional range (unless you hypermile)

[cowmeat]

Yeah, I hypermile so I figure I'll get it to mid fifties range before too long. It'll take me a bit to get it back up in the fifties since I drove like a bat outa hell to finish off the EV charge

If I could push it to upper fifties I'd only have to charge every other day either at work or at home, but since they let me charge for free at work I'll probably just keep charging it every day there