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Alan Boyle / msnbc.com
A Chevy Volt tools down Interstate 5 with Mount Shasta in the background, as seen through the windshield of another Volt.
We're back on the road in a Chevy Volt, driving the second half of our 800-mile odyssey from Seattle to San Francisco — and that meant we were back on all-electric driving, at least for nine miles.
Our car was fully charged during the overnight stay in Medford, Ore., and usually that would give you 25 to 50 miles of gasoline-free travel. Chevrolet figures that most people drive less than 40 miles a day most of the time, and thus the Volt could plausibly go without using a drop of gas for days on end. Some have even talked about an issue with unused gasoline sitting in the tank so long that it goes stale. Turns out that the Volt has a special mode that will turn on the gasoline engine occasionally in that scenario, just to verify that the fuel lines are fresh and clean.
That wasn't a problem for us this morning. For one thing, the Chevy team had to upload masses of data about the car's performance so far, which drained the battery after its overnight charging. For another thing, we were heading into the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon, and that meant we had to give up some of that low-cost electric rolling to provide hill-climbing oomph.
When the Volt goes up a steep grade, it draws electricity from the gasoline-powered generator, but even then, its performance can be a bit laggy. To increase the available power for the climb, extra juice comes from the batteries. But that means more of the battery power has to be held in reserve to start with. Normally, the Voltec drive train cuts over from batteries to gas-generated power when the battery reserve is drained to 20 percent of capacity. In mountain mode, that reserve is increased to 40 percent. But you have to hold onto that 40 percent to start with.
"That's why you have to put it in mountain mode 20 to 30 minutes before you hit a steep grade," Chevrolet Communications' Adam Denison told us. A lot of that power comes back during downhill costs, when the regenerative braking system captures electricity for the batteries. In fact, we were able to return to normal mode and resume all-electric driving after we went over Siskiyou Summit.
Mountain mode is the main reason why we drove for only 9.4 miles before the Volt's engine kicked in. That's got to be one of the shortest stretches of all-electric driving ever recorded with the Volt. One of the longest stretches was reported just this week, by AOL News auto writer Jeff Sabatini. He got 57 miles on the initial electric charge. But that's OK. He was probably driving on one of those sissy-boy roads in Michigan.
Follow msnbc.com's Alan Boyle and Jim Seida as they take an 800-mile "Electric Road Trip" in a Chevy Volt ... and file their dispatches from the road. Boyle is also tweeting about the trip as @b0yle on Twitter.
Leave a Comment:
I notice all the car publications are testing on road trips. They are deliberately trying to portray these cars in the worst possible light. They don't want electrics because the oil companies don't want them.
These electric cars are designed as commuter cars. Go to work and home, go to the grocery store and home, etc. etc. etc.
If you need to make a long trip -- call Enterprise and rent a gas car. These cars are not designed for road trips and it is totally wrong to use road trips to test them.
Actually, the Volt was designed both for daily commuting and for the occasional long distance trips. That's why they added the gasoline engine and generator.
Seems this is a great test - see how it does outside it's intended purpose and if it does well, well, you won't need a rental car...
Plus, if it does even an adequate job here, suffice it to say it will be more than fine in the typical home to work to home driving...
Willie,
You are correct about the actual intent of the electric vehicle. However, I like the testing under exteme conditions, such as a long mountainous road trip. It will start to shed the true story of the cars abilities and limitations. How often do any of us take an 800 mile road trip? I drive 27 miles each way to work every day. The Leaf would work very well for me, as long as I used it only for that and the trips to the grocers or hardware (less than three miles rt.)
"...the Chevy team had to upload masses of data about the car's performance so far, which drained the battery after its overnight charging."
If that's truly the case, then there's something massively wrong either with the battery or the electronic systems.
Agreed. It doesn't take that much power to transfer data, even if they were using the wireless "OnStar" system and there was megabytes of data to transfer. Hmm, makes me wonder if there isn't a fault in the charging system or battery management.
It didn't completely drain the battery, just took an edge off. GM engineer Tim Perzanowski tells me it does take a noticeable charge because he needed to have certain systems "awake" during the upload, including the climate control system (e.g., fan and heating).
My normal commute is a little over 100 miles\day, mostly highway. Go on Alan, keep road testing.
(How come no one has raised the specter that the electric car push is really a secret conspiracy of Enterprise and the other car rental companies to force us to rent their vehicles whenever we want to go on vacations or long day trips. Its a conspiracy I tell you, a Conspiracy!!!!)
LOL
Over 100 miles a day?! According to the US Department of Transportation, the average driver logs a little less than 14,000 miles per year. You're doing almost double that amount! Have you considered that perhaps your normal commute is abnormal compared to most people?
I agree with Arizona Willie (minus the conspiracy theory). Where are the articles reviewing a normal commute?
Yes, the commute would be a good complement ... but my guess is that once you go through one cycle of commute-recharge-at-home-commute, the follow-on experience would be similar. And that's been done quite a bit. Not many people have done the kind of long-distance driving we've done over the past two days.
OneVoice,
I don't understand the negative comments like yours. 100 miles/day commute is far from normal -- mine is less than 100 miles/WEEK. Clearly, the Volt wouldn't be a good choice for you. A better choice for you would be a new VW diesel which give amazing mileage, especially on the highway.
I think that GM is doing something amazing by producing a car that will work for so many people: it will allow most of us to do our normal daily driving without using gasoline (at a fraction of the price, whether or not the electricity is "clean"), and still allow for occasional long trips with still great gas mileage. They should be commended, not criticize. Yes, there are compromises with this car, but somebody has to start somewhere. I would never consider a Nissan Leaf, because I occasionally need to travel to Albuquerque, which is 130 miles roundtrip from my home.
GM should have went with a small diesel engine instead of gas. They would have been much more efficient.
Think about it: Locomotives use a similar system using very large diesel engines and large electric motors at the wheels. The engines run constantly and they still get around 400mpg.
"Think about it: Locomotives use a similar system using very large diesel engines and large electric motors at the wheels. The engines run constantly and they still get around 400mpg."
similar system? not really... common locomotives have no batteries, no regeneration or energy storage capability
very large diesel engines and electric motors at the wheels? yep!
engines run constantly? yep!
get around 400mpg? absolutely not! locomotives are effectively quite efficient because of the huge load that they pull... it would take many cars, trucks, busses, etc. to haul the same payload on the road, BUT put a gallon of diesel (the "g" in mpg) in a locomotive and expect it to go 400 miles (the "m" in mpg) on it is absurd.
should the Volt have a diesel engine? perhaps... probably would have if it were targeted for Europe where it's more common... GM could also refit the Volt with a more efficient diesel if the market demands it. Yep, it would probably be even more efficient on diesel BUT the main idea is not to run the engine much at all, and in that case it doesn't matter much. It really depends on how people end up driving and charging the Volt.
Agreed. Diesels would've been a better way to go. If I recall correctly, sometimes diesels don't do so well in the cold?
In any case, I'd love to know how the Volt is working on short range commuter driving, and how convenient it is to charge your car when out of the house?
Well, it can charge from any standard outlet, although the rate is very slow. Higher power outlets can charge it much more quickly, but might require special adapters, and usually are not available to the public. Fortunately, there are high power public chargers being installed at certain locations, those locations can be found using the built-in GPS system.
Of course, plug-in hybrids like the Volt can run on gasoline when charging outlets are not available or would take too long.
Yep, with the Volt the gasoline engine is supposed to be for " emergencies " when you get caught somewhere without a recharge station or outlet or when the trip is just a bit longer than the battery capacity. Like you live 40 miles from work and the Volt goes 35. You use the gas engine the last 5 miles and < supposedly > recharge while working for the trip home. If necessary you can go home on the gas engine.
The mystery is why the small gas engine driving the generator to power the batteries to power the motor is more efficient than the large gas engines in regular cars. They seem to be reporting better ( or as good as ) mileage when running that small engine powering the generator than the large gas engines in regular cars.
You can expect tremendous bad mouthing of electric vehicles. Why? Because they don't burn gas ( much ) and they don't need oil changes every 3 months. Service for electric vehicles is ( should be at any rate ) much less and much cheaper than servicing regular gas vehicles. Battery service not included in that statement cause no one knows how much ( if any ) maintenance will be required for the batteries.
But with electric cars the oil companies are going to be BIG LOSERS and so are the SERVICE DEPARTMENTS of the DEALERS.
Dealers make most of their money from service. Public pressure is gradually forcing a change to electric ( at least for most commuting ). And it should. We have already used up half the oil in the world. We need to preserve what is left for uses that electric isn't likely to be practical for ... such as aircraft and farm machinery. Think about it. In only 125 years we have used half the oil, and 3rd world nations, especially China, are developing huge appetites for oil as we have transferred most of the worlds manufacturing to their cheap labor centers.
Something's gotta give.
I may be a typical driver or I may not. I don't believe anyone has x-referenced employer addresses and employee addresses via their w2's, so this is just a USDOT guess based on poling numbers. Numbers that are probably biased towards people who live in cities, rather than suburban or urbanites like me, but the specs I've seen published talk about the mileage that a typical worker would experience on a typical commute to and from work and a typical cost to recharge overnight in a typical outlet. If you factor in other ancilliary trips before or after work, all of us drive more than the USDOT average and probably more often than we realize.
I want to know exactly how good the mileage - gas mileage - is when the battery has run out. I can borrow my 9yr old's calculator and "figer" out how much gas it'll cost me to drive. Just how much does it cost to drag around a couple hundred pounds of lead once the juice runs out. This especially concerns me given the statement in the article that says they get better performance using the engine to assist at high speeds and up hills. We may be taking away from Big Oil, but are we then turning around and giving it back to the local electric company (aka Big Coal), and paying a premium for the privilege to do so.
To begin with, the batteries are LiIon, not old fashioned lead acid. The car is designed to do most of it's local driving using cheap electricity from the outlet, using hardly any gas for unbelievable fuel economy. But when the battery gets low, the gasoline engine kicks in and provides most of the power needed, and when in that "range extender mode" it acts like other hybrids, getting between 28 to 44 mpg, depending on driving style. That "range extender mode" fuel economy is a bit better than other standard cars, but a bit worse than some other hybrids.
Upshot - The Volt is best suited for people whose typical daily drive is less than 50 miles, but that take long trips on rare occasions. The "not quite as good as a Prius" fuel economy during occasional long trips is acceptable since it gets "much better than a Prius" fuel economy for everyday local driving.
Of course, some multi-car households will instead decide to get a pure electric for everyday local driving, and use their "other car" for those rare long trips.
This is an interesting test, but it's a test of the vehicle's ability to do what is supposed to be the exception.
The intent of the car is to run on a pre-charged battery most of the time, but the engine allows it to be your primary (or perhaps only) vehicle, whereas an electric-only car would leave you having to rent at times, force you to have a second car, or else rely on the generosity of others.
I suppose that part of what you've proven is that it gets pretty good gas mileage in it's "alternate duty" role. If I could plug in at the office (36 miles from home), I could theoretically use the Volt in electric only mode, but probably not during the 9 months of the year where air conditioning is required. In any case, showing that you can take an 800 mile trip in the Volt is evidence in its favor.
Do the math. To fully charge the battery (10kwh worst case) x cost per KWH ($.08 to $.12 check your electric bill) or $.80 to $1.20 to go up to 40 miles. Premium or not it looks like a better deal than gas or diesel by a lot. The new cost of the Volt is high even with the tax credit....check the lease offer. Betting that will come down a lot over time as the risk goes down with experience. The numbers are good enough for me....now I don't have to pay some two bit dictators for oil...... priceless!
Ok, so, look at the economics. Say it costs $1.20 to charge the battery and gas costs $2.70 a gallon. If the "target" consumer commutes 20 miles each way, then he\she would save $1.50 per day driving the volt instead of a 40mpg gasoline only vehicle. The only real differences here are 1) Savings of $300/year ($1.50 x 200 workdays), 2) Greater carbon footprint from burning coal instead of oil. and 3) us spending tens of thousands more dollars to buy one. Have I missed something?