Some real Volt numbers for the curious...
 

Hey folks, I'm a long time lurker on the forum and thought I'd break the trend today and post something. I love reading all the great ideas for improving the economy of all cars out there and enjoy the heated debates that are bound to come up.

In September I bought a Volt and have been enjoying the car immensely. Though after doing a quick search through the forum I noticed a lot the same ole Rush Limbaugh being rattled around here about the Volt. Love it or hate it, your opinion is yours but I thought I'd post a link to a site that uses the OnStar diagnostics to track the real world numbers fof Volt drivers who let them know what is going on with their cars by signing up with the site. Say what you will, but the numbers speak for themselves. And even though I would have liked to see better mileage in CS(generator) mode, the overall combined mileage number is the more important one. It is completely different to drive than a conventional hybrid and will need new techniques to get the best mileage out of the generator.

Check it out! I'm sure you will find it interesting!:thumbup:

Apparently I lurk too much and I can't post a link so I will spell it out for you ,

voltstats.net

It's worth a look and there is no advertizing on it...

Here is the link:

Volt Stats! Tracking real world usage of Chevy Volts in the wild...

Thanks for posting it.
I'm of the mind set that anything that reduces gasoline use is good and although I think that most people would be able to get by with a 100% electric vehicle with a 100 mile range (less then 10% of the population drives over 100 miles per day) I see the Volt as an ok solution as well, I'm a little shocked at the price, seeing as how you can get a brand new Prius and the largest plug in hybrid kit that will give you about 35 miles of all electric range for less then then the cost of a new Volt, draw back with that of course is that Prius is not designed for sustained freeway driving in all electric mode so not everyone would benefit and a lot of people buy 100% gasoline powered cars that cost more then the Volt, so price is a weak arguing point.
The part that Chevy did get right is that the average driver drives 25 miles per day and from looking at the stats seem to show a large number of people drive in electric only mode a large part of the time.
My big question is, do you find it more annoying to plug your car in, or to go to a gas station? a gas station you only have to go to every few weeks but plugging in is best done after every trip and before the Volt was released that was the speculation of a lot of people is that no one would plug in their plug in hybrid.

120MPG and 63MPGe isn't half bad from a car that is "just a gimmick" and "a marketing trick" ;)

Your right, most people could get away with an EV 100mile range. I could, if I could get a car that could guarantee me that in the cold of a Canadian winter. The Leaf's not quite there yet but I hope it will be soon. And maybe in 7-10 years when I'm ready to replace the Volt that car will be out there. Because driving on pure electric sure is nice!

Charging is really not an issue. I'd much rather plug in every night than go to the gas station twice a week. I also installed a 240V L2 charger so every time I park in my garage I just plug it in. No fussing with stashing my charger in the trunk and the cord coils away nicely. I've yet to forget to plug-in like Mr. Cavuto seems to think will be a problem, ah to be so absent minded. LOL

I can understand the price being a sticking point for some people. It is an expensive car. BUT you do get what you pay for. It doesn't ride like any economy car I've ever driven. The Volt really is a luxury vehicle and comes with a luxury price. The biggest complement I've heard so far for the Volt came from the President of BMW North America. When asked what he thought of the Volt after driving it he said that the thought the car was very nice but he didn't understand why GM marketed the car as a Chevy. He thought with the ride quality and the fit and finish the car should be marketed as a Cadillac! It is definitely the most expensive car I've bought, but I don't regret one penny of the price. It's been worth it!

I'm wainair's HAL on the Volt stats site. I'm currently ranked a 71. I'm showing 190.9mpg right now and a MPGe of 70.26. My CS mileage is a bit low right now because when I first bought the car I was playing around with the MountainMode a bit to much and was actually burning more gas than I needed too. I know better now!

A Gimmick the Volt is not!:D

Have you estimated how long it will take for you to break even on costs compared to if you had bought a cheaper but other vice equivalent gas-only car?


And i'd also like to point out that three ER-EV's with 33 mile EV-only range will save more fuel than one pure EV with 100 mile range because most trips are under 25 miles. (Battery supply is still limited.)

Autoblog just had an article the other day that proved the Volt's 40 mile range is perfect. After the year or so they've been out, the vast majority of Leaf owners traveled 37 miles per day or less. Let me see if I can dig it up quick...

Nissan claims average Leaf is driven 37 miles per day, more range not needed

Also, the pricing on the Focus EV just came out the other day. It is going to start at $39,900. The Volt doesn't look too bad compared to that.

The Mitsubishi I-miev is the only reasonably priced EV around, possibly the Leaf. Even the Plugin Prius with only 14 miles of EV range is starting at $32k.

My commute is 57km(roughly 35miles) each way so I use all of my battery range. If I'm lucky enough to be able to charge at work(only some managers are onboard with letting me use company power) I don't use gas at all. Those day's I can't I get around 120mpg combined(gas and electric). Like you say most people's commute is less than 25miles and those lucky folks drive gas free all the time. But if they want to drive to a friend cottage on the weekend they can and they don't have to worry about range.(they just feel guilty about using gas! LOL)

I haven't crunched the numbers myself but there was a study being quoted a lot a while back that was saying that the people who did the study compared the cost of purchase and ownership of a Chevy Cruze Eco at $19000, against the cost of a Volt at $41000. They based they're numbers on the average American commute, projected maintenance costs, fuel consumption costs at $3/gallon and purchase price, over 5 years. After 5 years the Volt cost $1500 more to own than the Cruze. I live in Ontario Canada. We currently have an EV Incentive program the Provincial Government offers if you buy an EV. The Volt qualifies so I also got a $8250 payment after I bought the car from the government! If you factor that in I'd be ahead $6751 after 5 years! I hope to own the car for 7-10 years so I will come out on the plus side in a few years.

I plug in my vehicle every night and go to the gas station about once a month....that would be plugging in my block & oil pan heaters:D

Daox, I'm sure the second gen Volt will surely come down in price. My guess would be the low 30's starting price. The Leaf has gone up in price over the earlier release this year as well. That I-miev is a neat little car. I wish it fit my commuting needs. I sat in one at last years autoshow in Toronto. It was a true economy car. That's not a dis, it reminded me of how spartan VW Beetle interiors could be stock. Functional but no frills. The Volt is all Frills! I like both but I could see alot of Volt owners would never think about a I-miev after sitting in one and vica verca. But as they say different strokes for different folks!

Oh and Thanks Ryland for posting the link! Cheers!

Ya gotta keep those diesels warm! :thumbup: My last car was a cdi smart and I plugged it in every night it was under 40F. It made a noticeable difference in mileage.

Since you own a volt does the volt keep two separate odometers one for gas miles and one for electric? Despite all the press I would own a volt if it weren't $39k :) Would be a neat piece of machinery to own despite its limitations.

What we really need though is an ecomodder to analyse how to get the CS mode the most efficient, maybe make a joystick like the honda insight to control or FIX the CS mode output to whatever load/RPM is most effiicient.

Or possible modify the ECU for eco driving.

I am told a few frugal drivers have figured out how to make mountain mode work more efficiently than CS by engaging it early on long trips and really watching their throttle.

Which is ok for those people who do exactly the same thing, day after day. But though my average is well under 100 miles per day, there are a lot of days when I don't drive at all, some when I drive 10-40 miles or so, and a few when I drive more than 100 miles.

Have you driven the Volt in the Great white winter yet? I know one of the selling points of electric drive is the torque at 0rpm. How is traction on both wet & snow covered roads?

Don

wainair -

Great thread! I went to the last page to see the worst MPG. 43 MPG at 23.5% EV mode is decent. For my commute I would *hope* that I could get about 50% EV mode, which comes out to about 71 MPG. The reality would probably be closer to the California guy at 40.8% for 55+ MPG. Not too shabby.

CarloSW2

wainair, GM's lawyers will be contacting you about referring to the volt as a hybrid, and for reporting less than 230 mpg :)

REAL numbers? How do you confirm the electrical input? How do you confirm the fuel input? I wouldn't trust what the vehicle tells you, needs independent verification, no?

Don't you mean OUR lawyers DCB?

regards
Mech

In mouton mode, does the engine stay at a steady speed or does it change speed with change in vehicle speed? I ask because early on they were talking about having the engine start up and run at a fixed throttle so that the whole gasoline drive train could be optimized to that engine speed but they wanted it to "sound" like a standard gasoline car when the gasoline engine started, reving as you speed up and so on, but in mouton mode the gasoline engine and electric motor are working together so I have to wonder if the engine is then running at it's ideal speed.

There are a lot of us who don't drive over 100 miles per day for months at a time, I do every few months to ironically go to an electric auto club meeting, but that is about it, I've pretty much convinced my parents to buy an EV when they get the chance because they stay within 30 miles of home year round other then Christmas and for that we take my Civic because it's bigger then their car.

I have to wonder how the Volt's use and electric to gasoline ratio will change over time, if people will try to move to a life style and driving habit that lets them only use the electric mode or if they will revert back to gasoline use for one reason or another.
I'm also impressed that there are people who have over 20,000 miles on their Volt in less then a year! I could not imagine driving that much in a year, but I guess that is why some people buy new cars.

Yes the Volt keeps an overall odometer reading and an EV odometer. It also has two trip odometers so you can use one day to day and the other to monitor your fuel mileage if you like. Did I mention my first tank lasted over a month! :D

I'm sure once more Volts are on the road someone with programing chops will get in there and play around with the systems to eek out some more eco performance. It's just a matter of time.

I haven't driven the Volt in the snow yet DonR but I say bring it on! I put snow tires on all my cars because I commute at weird hours when the roads aren't always plowed the best. Plus the car has the full alphabet soup, abs, dsc, esp, ect... :D and it is a heavy car. That is the one time I'll be happy that the car is heavy is in the snow. As long as I maintain a reasonable speed I'm sure it will handle all nature can throw at it!:)

That's a good healthy bit of skepticism dcb!:D There are some guys who have actually been measuring the Kilowatt usage with Kwh meters between the plug and the charge cord. You might be surprised to know that the onstar readings are very accurate! You have to remember us first adopters are like a huge test fleet for GM. They are monitoring how the cars are running and how they are being used. They are really working hard to perfect this serial hybrid, er, I mean, ER-EV technology and I think they are doing a great job so far! ( you don't think the lawyers caught my slip do ya? )LOL

Thankfully they didn't fake an acceleration noise with the car! One of my biggest pet peevs of most CVT transmissions is the fake gears they program into them. No, the generator revs according to how much electricity is needed by the electric drive motor and to maintain the appropriate amount of charge buffer in the battery, independent of speed or acceleration. Generally speaking the revs follow behind the demand but sometimes it can rev up when demand is low to maintain the battery at 20%soc or it might not rev up if you have built up some battery charge with regenerative braking. The car won't let the battery fall below 20%soc to protect the batteries longevity. It really is a smart system, that's why I call my car HAL!:D

And of course the generator never comes on if the battery is not depleted. It will run at all speeds in EV mode if the battery has charge.

There was much hype about range anxiety with the Leaf but there is another anxiety you don't hear much about that is rampant in the Volt community. It's called Gas Anxiety. That's when your driving your Volt and you find yourself going out of your way, doing all you can, to not burn gas. Sneaking your charge cord into unsecured grounded plugs for a kilometer or two of juice. Trying to eek out that last EV mile by not using your brakes and only using the aggressive regenerative braking of Low. I suffer from it a quite a bit, some have it more than others. It's a burden every Volt owner feels at one time or another! LOL:D

I think I read that the average Volt driver is making a tank of gas last more than 1,000 miles? Which is pretty good, since what does the tank hold, like 8+ gallons?

It seems to me that a majority of people who would buy a Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt, etc. are already commute conscious, which explains why the average driving range is well under 100 miles. One of these cars would be perfect for my current region, but if I moved back to Northern California, a car like the Leaf would be almost unusable.

That is a function of the Electric portion.

If you look at the link in post 2, the bottom of the table "Fleet" Total: says

%ev 70.4
MPG 35.89
MPG(+e) 121.27

It is disingenuous to compare electrically assisted miles to MPG, you don't get out and push normally (well, I do actually, but that is another matter), but you are mixing energy sources and not accounting for electrical, so saying average MPG is 121.27 is a farse, there was something else contributing to those miles that has been conveniently omitted from that figure.

But looking at what the engine uses without borrowing from the electrical system gives us something then to compare to when you are choosing a vehicle for long trips. i.e. if you are like many of us and don't mind multiple vehicles, you can easily find a $1000 beater that will beat the pants off a volt MPG wise on long trips (something over 40 miles), looks like 36mpg is all you have to beat to come out ahead there. (well and the $39,000 you save by not buying a volt)

No you wont get a $7500 check of taxpayer money for buying it, and no you probably are not making $170,000 like the average volt buyer, BUT I bet you won't be afraid to *MOD* it :)

Anyway nice to see ~35MPG from the gasser in actuality, that is what we were predicting early on.

I managed to get 1212 miles out of my first tank and I hope to be able to keep up the trend.

dcb there is a kilowatt cost there. The mpge value is the mileage on pure electricity. I personally don't know the equation the EPA used to figure out that number but it is out there in the vapours somewhere if you want to find it. A full charge on the Volt requires 12.7kwh of energy so at the national average of $0.11/kwh a full charge would cost $1.40. In my area we have time of use billing and the off hour rate is $0.05/kwh so my full charge costs me $0.63. You can enter your time of use schedule into the Volt and it will only charge when the best rates are available. To offset my extra energy consumption with the Volt I went around my house and replaced the most used incandescent bulbs with new LED bulbs. As a result I have actually seen my hydro bill go down! So personally I consider my electric consumption for the car as "free" because of the steps I've taken in my home to compensate. I consider the combined mpg to be the mileage I'm getting from the car. 173mpg.:)

There are also those who have the money and space have put in solar arrays to generate electricity to put back into the grid. They say they drive for free on electricity but personally I don't have that kind of money to drive for free. My income is much lower than the claimed average Volt owners wages. I'm responsable for keeping that number low, Jay Leno makes it much higher! :D:LOL

The second gen Volt's should get much better CS mileage. GM has taken alot of flack for the CS mileage and has said they will better it in gen2. They explain that they didn't want to develop an engine specifically for the generator when they were engineering the Voltec drive system. So they pulled the Cruzes 1.4L motor off the shelf and used it. Though if you look at the system there is no reason why an adventurous ecomodder in the future couldn't swap out the 1.4L motor for something else. Not me though, I'm a chicken!

If you are regularly doing long cross country drives there are better choices out there than a Volt . A TDI comes to mind right away or even a Prius. The Volt is designed as a luxury commuter for those with a commute of less than 60-70 miles. Above that there are cars that can beat the Volts efficiency. But where the Volt shines is if you do have that lower mileage commute and you don't want to have that second long mileage backup car for the once or twice a year long haul, the Volt can still do that long mileage trip in comfort with a reasonable mpg.

That is the case with nearly every EV driver and why people asking where we are going to get the extra electricity from is so frustrating, replacing the 3 most used incandescent bulbs in your house with CFL or LED's will lower the average persons electric bill even after home charging of an EV, our homes waste so much that finding ways to off set EV charging is cheap and easy.

Specifically there is an energy cost there. And using dollars to compare electricity at the wall to liquid fuel is not a good basis for comparison. You
*could* say it is, but then why shell out $40k for a car if money is a concern. Tracking fuel and KWH together but separately is only fair.

How much less would it cost if they left out the fart box that so many consumers don't want? (and which makes the "Volt" title even more suspect).

How much sooner could it have been to market without the ICE and all the EPA regs and etc? Isn't the appeal of an EV it's simplicity? What consumer wouldn't want to have options? GM wasn't listening.

lol I know exactly how you feel. I have a plugin kit on my Prius and feel the same... Its as though I feel the hand of defeat as my engine kicks on when I didn't expect it to.

Yes, virtually all Volt drivers are charging the battery daily, and so the ~8+ gallons of gas in the tank last for over 1,000 miles on average.

Of course the electricity costs something, and of course it should be counted in the overall MPGe. The EPA says the Combined mileage is 93MPGe, so I'm sure that by using a Volt with a large majority of the time in EV mode, that this will easily raise the overall efficiency.

What is the useable capacity on the Volt battery pack? Is it ~12kWh? If it drives 40 miles on that, and if you use the EPA's equivalency of 33.7kWh/gallon, then the Volt gets 112MPGe in EV mode. If you drive it 50 miles then it gets 140MPGe, and if you are a leadfoot or it is *really* cold and you only manage 30 miles, that equals 84MPGe.

If you drive 40 miles a day for 18 days, and then drive 350 mile on 1 day (40 miles on electricity and 310 on gas), you would use ~228kWh = 6.77 gallons + 8.5 gallons used for 310 miles (~36.5MPG in charging mode) that totals 15.27 gallons equivalent used to travel 1,070 miles = ~70MPGe overall.

The fart box as you put it :p was the easy part, it was off the shelf. I would have liked a pure BEV but at current battery tech levels it wouldn't have met my needs. I know I couldn't do my commute in a Leaf. I don't know what the deal is with the EPA. I find they contradict themselves so much I try and ignore most of what they say. The car itself gives you a readout of kw's used and you can check the mileage on the trip odometer so you can figure out your miles/kw if you want. I still don't understand the mumbo jumbo they have concocted with the MPGe. It seems to me to be a dumbed down number with too many variables built into it to make it of any real use when trying to describe the Volt. I think GM learned the limitations of a pure BEV with the EV1 and they wanted to address the range issues in the most cost effective way they could and the result was the Volt. They do say they are going to be releasing a BEV version of the Sonic called the Spark in 2013. It will be much less expensive. Maybe that is more up your ally?

And I do think there is a cost issue there in that the car is still very economical, it's just that your paying up front. I'd much rather give my $40000 up front to a company that is investing in EV technology and building plants in North America than buying a smaller less expensive ICE car, paying out more and more over the next five years in little bites to OPEC producers who don't reinvest in our economies. I say five years because that is the break even point they say that the Volt's savings will have paid for the added expense of the car. Also to me it is just as much about where my money is going as to how much of it I'm spending. I'd rather have it stay in the North American economy than to go overseas to gold plate some princes Porsche in the desert!;)

Well explained Neil!:thumbup: Though I'm still just concerned about my petroleum consumption as most of my electricity in Ontario comes from Hydroelectric plants and a smidge of Nuclear. So still all I'm paying attention to is my overall mpg. In the future I'm sure I will pay attention to the mpge figure more as we all become more energy aware!:)


PS. just as a side thought, the MPGe might give you and efficiency reading but it doesn't really help you if you are trying to figure how much a car will cost to operate.... at least not like how mpg works. For that I would rather have a miles per kilowatt figure if I were buying a BEV, to be able to more easily compare cost and efficiency between different models. I still don't like MPGe.

Right, 228kWh X $0.12 (which I think is the US average?) = $27.36 / 760 = ~3.6 cents per mile
8.5 X $3.449 (what I paid yesterday) = $29.32 / 310 = ~9.5 cents per mile

Total cost is $56.68 / 1,070 = ~5.3 cents per mile

I look at it buy this. for numbers sake take the volt at 40K and then new focus that comes in at 20k. how much fuel and maintance coast will it take to make up 20K? Last i did the math on my end I would have to keep it for about 250K miles. and most people will sell a car way before a car gets that high.

So is the volt a good car? yes for some people. but for 40K no its not. the volt is a 30k car at best. if i was going to spend 40k on a car I would get an Audi, BMW, Merc, or sports car. Sorry you dont spend 40k to save gas. you save 35K and buy a 5k car at best.

You spend more to be an early adopter.

I wonder if people would go for buying say, a $10 lottery ticket with a 0.025% chance of winning a Volt.

One thing I've failed to understand about the Volt is the high price. The most expensive Prius (list on the Toyota website) is just under $30k. The Volt has a bigger battery, but a much simpler driveline. It should at a minimum be a lot closer to the price of the Prius than to the price of a new Corvette. If I sound bitter, yeah, I'd have loved to have bought one, so don't think I'm hating on the vehicle itself.

I would love for someone to come out with a mod for an extra battery pack and plug-in capability for my Sonata hybrid. It does pretty well on mileage and on the long trip to the in-laws' last weekend we got 45mpg and it was quite happy doing 65mph in EV mode. Just wish I could plug it in, and have more cowbell. I mean battery :)

I would suggest starting a thread about that right here on ecomodder.com and doing it yourself with the help of other members.

Yeah, I don't want to hijack the OP's thread. I blame lack of my morning coffee at that point for the lapse :)