I'm Back with a VOLT!
 

Yep, I'm back.. with a 2012 Volt.. Hate the color, the wife likes it, but its low miles and a Volt. Here is a photo. Now what to do with it?? :)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/130510...posted-public/

I'd say find an outlet to plug it in, then drive it.

That sounds a little complicated for my tastes!

I guess that my plan for now, but I want to mod it
 

Yeah thats kind my plan for now.. but I do want to mod it, I can see many mods even on its already maximized design. Full wheels covers, and more mods like a "cookie duster lower air dam" cold be easy gains.. Sadly the dealership replaced the tires with what I would not ever consider for a ECO car, so ill run them out but will go max pressure. However mostly its the "nut behind the wheel".. The volt has many interesting features I have been messing with so far, like "Mountain mode", It recharges the battery while driving to 1/3 percent. Even with a depleted battery I was able to switch modes on the 70 mile drive home and beat the EPA ICE estimate of 36mpg using "mountain mode" and turning it on and off and not to mention using the low mode of the drive train, I can tell already Hyper mileing this vehicle is going to be interesting. She is fully charged now in the drive way, my first all electric drive will come tomorrow running errands in town. One of my other motivations for the Volt is a backup power generator when the grid goes down to power the furnace, and refrigerator. Many others have done this on the Volt and Prius but it will be one of the mods I make to the vehicle. Not to mention the other reason I got a Volt is my state offers 0.02 cent electric vehicle charging arrangements. That is about .32 cents per day to fully top off the battery or about 38-43 miles of driving and my commute is within that range. Ideally I can convince my employer to charge my vehicle and they would pay tat tab but it really doesn't really matter at that cost.

Does it have the wind buffeting kit for the side mirrors? Hard to tell from the picture.

I haven't bothered making any mods on my Volt yet other than adding some rain guards to the windows. I didn't see anything that I could really improve on easily.
The air dam is already so low I cringe every time I drive over something laying in the road, I'm not sure you'll see any gains lowering it without replacing it a lot, and the first time you jack the car up you'll find that the underside is really clean , no belly pan required.
I just air the tires up to max pressure and drive mine, and the real the gains I see are from learning to drive it more and more efficiently

My commute to and from work is a little over 38 miles and I make it daily on EV power, with between 8 and 12 miles of range to spare. Depending on your commute and driving habits you'll be able to get about 45-50 miles of EV range in your 2012 Volt

I charge mine at work every day, dropping my energy costs to zero. You should definitely see if your company will let you charge yours there

I just bought my 2012 in late December, sort of got forced into buying another car but that's another story.

I do like the car a lot, only mods so far for me have been grille block, 1200 lumen LED backup light, and antenna whip delete.

What is your commute like? Will you be driving on gas much?

Congrats man. I love that first gen Volt. My daughter wants one, but I don't have the cash so she'll get her own car when she gets a job some day! Hahaha.

There is a thread on here titled something like learning to drive the Volt. Look for it with the EM search function top let corner of this page. Lots of tips IIRC.

james

My commute is 60+ all the way but currently with the cold temps in MN my EV range on electric covers my commute exactly, 32 miles.. Once it gets warmer I wont need the heater running, and should easily have excess EV power.. but after asking my employer today, my employer allows me to charge at work via 110v.... so I at least get a free ride home :) Heck if I work 9 hours I may just charge at work.. totally free to me commute.

My air damn has been thrashed by the previouse owner and removed.. Ill replace it.. Also running max PSI in the tires.

But yes its the nut behind the wheel mostly. I already drive in L mode just to save the break pads... its a wierd adjustment to drive, let of the gas and its slowing at a pretty fast rate.. but I can see how much wear and tear this saves on the breaks.

The worst part is its actually a fairly fast car when you get on it.. and silent.. so weird of a sensation being tossed in to the seat with just a slight whirring sound.. 148HP with nearly 300lbs of toque... its no Tesla, but I can totaly see the attraction to electric for a performance car.

Question: What does a Volt actually get at 70 mph on the highway in standard hybrid mode? (similar to a Prius).
Seems like everyone interested in what they get on the highway.
For the most part, don't forget that the regen brakes still aren't very efficient, and don't forget to neutral coast to get some big numbers. DWB driving style will really boost your numbers up in hybrids and EVs. (Driving Without Brakes). Most people forget how they hypermiled non Hybrids and tend to use the regen brakes as a crutch which results in lower numbers. For the most part only use regen when you HAVE to stop (stop and go traffic, coming to stop sign too hot, etc...).
Yeah for the most part work with what you've got. Air the tires up to 51 psi, make some wheel covers, remove the upper antenna stick (I still get signal without), remove the passenger mirror (if you've driven a 90s car equipped w/o), remove passenger wiper, take some weight out here and there etc... Anything that is free and fun to tinker with would be cool.
But number one is learning how to drive them correctly is what I keep figuring out. It always takes me a while to catch on to the quirks.

In sub 50F weather, winter blend gas, 87 octane and not premium... i see roughly 33-36 mpg at 70mph in charge sustain mode.

Not great at all.

On the other hand, on the 1 or two days it has been 60F+ outside with light winds, driven at 60mph, again with regular 87 octane winter blend I have seen 45mpg over about 30 miles of straight highway. The car will "pulse and glide" with the generator. It drops to its lowest output and if it still overcharges the battery, it will shut down and run on battery until the pack drops below a specified threshold.

Gas only mpg will most likely be lower than a prius in every driving scenario, but the fact at it also has roughly 9.5 kwh of EV range means it is on par with the prius in most situations.

You'll see it does that at stop lights when you coast to a stop. It's one of the things I used to like about my G1 Insight too.
The ICE will run for a couple of seconds and then shut off as you're slowing, and as you take off you'll be on EV power until the ICE kicks back in, so as you're getting up to speed you aren't burning gas

When I'm coming up to a light I know will cause me to stop I coast down in "D" most of the way then switch back and forth between "L" and "D" to get the longest coasting distance and most regen possible. If I time it well I never hit the brakes or come to a full stop
Before climbing a hill I slowly gain speed and then bleed it off as I come up the front side. As I crest the hill I throw it in "N", and down the back side of the hill I'm in neutral picking up speed until the hill bottoms out.

I wonder why the Volt gets "such low" highway mpg. Did GM go with a relatively inefficient powerplant? Is it the tires? How efficient is the 1.4? I seem to recall reading that the related hybrids (Malibu?) had higher combined ratings on gasoline.

Yes, but I have seen it do this on the highway with the cruise control set. When the battery gets above it's CS threshold it shuts the engine off and cycles back and forth between ICE and battery depending on SOC.

Again, I believe this is a rare occurrence. I don't recall if I was drafting at the time or not.

Thermal efficiency is only 10% less than the Prius (35 vs 38.5). For the most part its because:
Drag area is: 23.7 x 0.285 - 6.7545sqft
Prius DA: 23.4 x 0.25 - 5.85sqft.
So the Volt has on top of 10% worse thermal efficiency, it has 15.5% more drag, and weighs 24.6% more (3790 vs 3042) and required wider tires to drive like a normal car etc...
Big bummer with the V1 Volt is it also recommends Premium fuel while the Prius will run on regular.
So its like its a huge car but has the same interior space as the prius but one seat less.

The Volt fuel economy is all over the map
In many ways the 1st gen Volt is like an Insight

1. Only OEM tires return EPA
2. If it’s not 80F your fuel economy suffers
3. If your trip isn’t long you get low MPGs
4. Wrong oil drops mpgs

Many GM cars get terrible winter FE and I believe not enough effort is placed on cold running , emissions requirements paradoxically double fuel consumption during the first 5 minutes of engine use during very cold temperatures.

The Volt is ideal if you live in Florida or Cali and drive under 40 miles at a time for most trips, you would quite literally almost never use gas

Looks like the only thing currently in my favor is long trips...

Yup, that's me! :thumbup:

I changed the oil at the first of the year, and it's sitting at 99% oil life right now

It’s not just the Volt, many newer cars including the Prius tend to get lower than expected “cool weather” economy.
Even my Cobalt is like that.

I own a volt and have found the best way to improve fuel economy is to optimize my trip for max EV miles

Small changes make big differences in EV range, my EV range virtually never drops below 50 miles,
This more than offsets the winter hit and makes the summer gain amazing.

At my peak during spring, summer and fall I consistently get 68-72 EV miles and 40-50 mpg off the gas pig alone, but I do hypermile a lot.

The summer gain makes up for the terrible winter driving.
But I still think it’s rather sad that my economy is cut in half or more during specific winter drives.

Converting today's electric usage to gasoline equivalent, I got 48.3 mpg over 118.8 miles.

Unfortunately, electricity here costs the gasoline equivalent of $5.40 per gallon. :(

16c/kWh? That's 5.5c/mile? Do you have average monthly billing or do you get the peaks and lows month to month?

It really depends on where you live in Vermont. In Burlington proper it's 10 cents for the first 100kw, and then 15 cents after that. Outside of the city, ~16 is often either the fixed rate, or tail block price. Many areas don't have any on or off-peak pricing.

A quick google search reveals Maine is paying ~14 cents, NY 15 cents, NH 17 cents and Mass 18 cents.

One bright spot, Burlington's grid is entirely from renewables, and Vermont has no fossil fuel power plants. I guess you have to pay for your electricity not to come from dirty coal. I'm very content with my 60-100mpg on $2.50 gasoline for the time being.

Yeah Europe has started to figure out the same thing. Have a grid composed of mostly renewables and shunning coal is pricey and not feasible. Here in AR we have a lot of hydroelectric, nuclear, and natural gas power plants and our electricity in my town that buys energy contracts is only 0.08749c/kWh on average from the last 12 billing cycles. Gas has pretty much sat at 2.150 for the last year. Also every kWh is the same price, no graduated billing system.

I don't mind paying more for clean residential electricity, but I can see it being a problem for businesses looking to be competitive. That doesn't seem to have stopped companies like IBM/Global Foundries from investing in high tech industry here, though. Looks like 7nm wafer retooling is ramping up at the local fab.

I'm going to school for mechanical engineering right now and this year we've focused on thermodynamics and power productions and it seems like all the renewable stuff is cool but there are quite a bit of renewables that are a waste of time and tax payer money (cost of implementation, low efficiency, low returns, high cost of maintenance/ownership). Typically, people who can afford it and are well off are fine, but its poor people that really feel the hit dis-proportionally compared to everyone else. Best example: Germany being a pain in the ass to non renewables and charging huge tax rates. Can you imagine paying 30c/kWh for electricity just for the sake of being green?
https://www.reuters.com/article/germ...-idUSL8N1MZ30X

Understandable. Vermont seems to be doing fine though. Admittedly our 16 cents is a far cry from 30.

True. And I'm sure your wages there are very different from home state of AR. The land of the cheap down here. lol

We already have universal healthcare for anyone under 133% of the poverty line, as well as expanded food stamps, heating assistance, renter's rebates and a few others. We're tied for second place lowest unemployment in the country right now, as well has being #1 for lowest crime. So, whatever we're doing, it seems to be working. :)

We do something similar but we still have a problem with meth heads shooting each other. Oh... Arkansas ;)