Cowmeat learns to drive the Volt

[RedDevil]

Is the battery shaping up from frequent use, or is the range indicating system anticipating on your driving style?

[cowmeat]

I'm not sure, hopefully it's shaping up, but more likely it's programmed to adjust the estimated range by the recent input.

[vskid3]

Originally Posted by rmay635703

GM has put the powertrain into the 2016 Malibu hybrid and it gets class leading fe

Did not know that. Those are some impressive numbers for a car that size.

Cowmeat, it looks like the range estimate adjusts based on your driving. What's the farthest you've gone on a single charge?

Do you mainly drive with it in L? I noticed that the one I test drove would just coast when you let off the gas in D at city speeds (which I prefer), but it would regen at freeway speeds (pretty sure both were in normal mode). This was going off the kw display the 2013+ received, not sure if or how it would show up on the 2012's displays.

[cowmeat]

The farthest I've gone on a charge so far is 44 miles, but on my daily commute of 38 miles, I always have at least 5 miles still showing, and I can turn that into even more miles.

And yeah I drive it in "L" all the time so I rarely have to use the brakes as the EV system slows the car while in regen mode. That also works when you are driving it ICE, it will still regen the battery on slowing and when it has regenerated enough power, it will switch off the ICE and go into EV mode until it burns through the juice.

When I'm in "L" and only need to slow slightly (or I'm going down a light incline) I've learned to ease up just a little on the gas pedal and the car will start the regen mode without noticably slowing. I can regen for a long period of time that way, which extends the range even more

[cowmeat]

I added yesterday's commute to my fuel log. I guess I'll be adding it daily, or maybe taking a pic every night of the kwh used/mileage and adding it weekly.

I used the 33.7 kwh = 1 gallon of gas factor to add the fuel log entry, somebody with an EV please check my fuel log and let me know if I figured it right. Or if there's an easier way to add to the log weekly

Looks to me like I doubled my "gas" mileage when I traded in the Insight for the Volt!

[Ecky]

This is a repost from another of my threads, but I realized going electric wouldn't be cheaper per mile where I live due to the cost of electricity.

Doing a bit of math, I realized that electricity may actually be more expensive per mile. With my 90 day average of about 80mpg, and gasoline at $2.20, I'm paying about 2.75 cents per mile.

The Nissan Leaf is EPA rated for ~30kwh/100miles. 1kwh costs about 17 cents here (24/7), which would make driving a Leaf ~5.1 cents per mile. Even if a Leaf drivetrain in my Insight was good for 33% extra range, and I got 50% more than that by driving technique alone (similar to what I'm getting in my Insight), which I think is being very generous, I'd still be at ~2.6 cents per mile on electricity. Add a 10% AC-DC conversion loss and we're at 2.8-2.9 cents per mile. Certainly I wouldn't have a 2.5 quart oil change every 10,000 miles, but the weight of the batteries would probably make me go through tires more quickly.

[samwichse]

Originally Posted by cowmeat

I used a tenth of a gallon the other night just to warm up the ICE, I doubt that going long periods without using it would be good for it

The Volt should do this automatically as needed, so you can probably just let the car do its own thing:

"The engine management system also monitors the time between when the engine runs and will periodically prompt the driver to run past the 40-mile electric range before recharging. If the driver doesn't force the Volt to run on gas, the system will eventually start the engine to consume some of the aging fuel and circulate the fluids within the engine. Once this maintenance mode is complete, the engine shuts down until it's needed again or enough time has passed."
Chevy Volt's "maintenance mode" will burn gas to prevent aging - Autoblog

[cowmeat]

Car gave me another courtesy mile of EV range today, I started out with 42 miles of range showing this morning on the way to work!

Last night on the way home I used "normal" mode instead of "sport" mode and saw an increase of 16 mpg from the night before!

[NoD~]

Why you gotta be getting all "better than us" with your plug-in hybrid? You guys are slaughtering us in the Hybrid Top-10 list!



Congrats, that's a cool upgrade. Co-worker keeps talking about buying one of these, maybe I'll show him this thread and convince him further.

[KFM]

Originally Posted by cowmeat

Electric companies charge different rates at different hours of the day so I'm charging my car at night, when the grid sees the lowest usage and they charge less per kwh

During the day at peak usage the electric is a lot more per kwh.

Also, I read somewhere that finishing the charge just as you're getting ready to use the car will keep the big battery at a proper operating temperature

Below is the rate chart at Lakeland Electric, the rates vary A LOT!. So charging the car, running the dryer, etc . . . are way cheaper late at night

Gotta add in the fuel charge for LE so it ends up being almost $.07/kWh for off-peak and $.18 for on-peak. Still, they're amazing rates. I love the Shift to Save program, but I end up paying more in taxes than the actual amount of energy used.