Finally replaced our 2004 Prius with a 2013 Volt

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Originally Posted by rmay635703

Unlike the prime the volt does track electric and gas separately

Much better, especially considering the Volt was only available as a PHEV, while the Prius Prime had the regular Prius as a counterpart to provide at least some baseline to estimate efficiency while running without external charges.

[Daox]

Well, the first 'mods' for this car are actually going to be on the house side of things. This is the current charging setup. It works, but it certainly isn't tidy or amazingly weather proof.





So, the first step was printing out one of these. Its just a J1772 plug holder and a wire wrap.





It'll mount to the side of the house something like this.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Daox

Well, the first 'mods' for this car are actually going to be on the house side of things. This is the current charging setup. It works, but it certainly isn't tidy or amazingly weather proof.

If that outlet is on its own circuit, you can convert it to 240v just by swapping the breaker.

Not sure if your EVSE needs any mods or not to accept 240v. I know the Chevy Bolt EVSE requires no mods.

[freebeard]

Why not put it on one of the newel posts?

[Daox]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

If that outlet is on its own circuit, you can convert it to 240v just by swapping the breaker.

Not sure if your EVSE needs any mods or not to accept 240v. I know the Chevy Bolt EVSE requires no mods.

The Volt EVSE does require internal mods because some of it runs on 120V. I have the video earlier in this thread that shows how to do it, and I'll get to that at some point.

Originally Posted by freebeard

Why not put it on one of the newel posts?

That is a good idea and it very well may go there. I just wanted to get a shot of it.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by Daox

The Volt EVSE does require internal mods because some of it runs on 120V. I have the video earlier in this thread that shows how to do it, and I'll get to that at some point.of it.

Looks slightly easier than modding a Leaf EVSE. Leaf uses ring terminals instead of directly soldering to the board, but requires tearing out the built in varistor and replacing it with a janky 2 varistor setup wired in the plug itself.

[Daox]

Is there any benefit to using a scangauge with the Volt?

[rmay635703]

Originally Posted by Daox

Is there any benefit to using a scangauge with the Volt?

Yes, but…
I would strongly recommend getting an antique windows 2000 laptop and the OBDII dongle so can can reset CEL and reprogram flags set in EV modules.

The Volt can be amazingly resilient and then something minor bricks the car (like using the wrong antifreeze or having a coolant sensor wire coorode or having not fully topped off battery coolant)

If you check out GM-volt forums you will find that previous owners had to use dashdaq because the scamguage would randomly trigger a cell. (No idea if this issue was affected by the year of the car or the software revisions provided by GM)

https://www.gm-volt.com/threads/scan...ry-amps.16224/

I never was brave enough to sort it out.

There is also a my green volt app that can let you look at stats under the hood.

The Volt is very strange in how it runs the motor making hyper miling on gas at times challenging. (It easily unlocks the motor from the simulated direct drive mode). It also runs hard then shuts off cycling in certain cases making your pedal inputs not match economy.

Sorry I don’t have a good answer to this.

[MetroMPG]

Originally Posted by Daox

Well, the first 'mods' for this car are actually going to be on the house side of things. This is the current charging setup. It works, but it certainly isn't tidy or amazingly weather proof.

Just have to say: those are VERY funky railings!

[Daox]

Originally Posted by MetroMPG

Just have to say: those are VERY funky railings!

Haha, yup!

No major updates. Just posting that the lifetime mpg has indeed increased, and more than I would have expected! When I got it, it was at 63.3.