2015 Chevy Volt owner - Any questions for me?

[kohnen]

Folks,

I own a 2015 Chevy Volt (1st generation range-extended electric car). I'm also an electrical engineer, so I have some insight into how the car works. Feel free to ask any questions and I'll try to come up with answers worth at least what you paid for them.

 

[SatinSilver]

How long will you keep it and is the second gen that much better?

 

[kohnen]

Originally Posted By: SatinSilver
How long will you keep it and is the second gen that much better?

I usually keep cars to 100-200k miles. One of the reasons I got the Volt is GM liquid cools the battery and doesn't charge or discharge the battery too much. This makes it last longer. GM hasn't had to replace worn out batteries. (Defective, yes, but not worn out).

I don't know if the 2nd generation Volts are much better - I haven't tried one. Other folks say they are but I don't want to put myself in the position of coveting a new Volt this soon.

 

[SZR48207]

What are the temps of the liquid cooling system for the battery? Does it rely on the AC system to provide the heat exchange, since I don't imagine a Volt has a radiator and fan like a gasoline engine?

 

[goodtimes]

Did you apply for the PGE $500 rebate? If the first owner didn't, you may qualify if you have PGE, What oil filter will you use? I noticed the 12 cent/gal tax hike on gas also means a $100 per year license fee on EV vehicles since they use the roads but don't use gas. I don't think the Volt will have to pay it as it does use gas and I think it will require a smog test. Not 100% sure though.

The new model is nice, but I bought a used 2014 instead this year. I want a CD player, and CR gave the new model a much worse than average reliability rating in it's first year while the first gen was average. The first gen has a German Opel designed USA made engine and a Japanese transmission.

 

[oliveoil]

What is the oil change interval (OCI) on your car? I understand it's not very often per the OLM.

 

[kohnen]

Originally Posted By: Reddy45
What are the temps of the liquid cooling system for the battery? Does it rely on the AC system to provide the heat exchange, since I don't imagine a Volt has a radiator and fan like a gasoline engine?


The Volt has 3 liquid cooling systems. The first is a regular system for the engine, it can get above boiling (I think it has a 20 psi cap on the system).

The second is a cooling loop for the power electronics. It uses a radiator too, to keep the electronics below I think about 140F. This loop is not heated or cooled in any other manner.
.
The third loop is for the battery. It tries to keep the battery below 85F if I recall correctly. It uses a radiator when a radiator would be effective. It also can use the car's air conditioner to cool the battery if needed. This loop also can heat the battery using a resistive heater. If the temperatures are too cold, the car can fire up its engine to create enough heat for the battery.

All 3 loops use 50/50 Dexcool and water.

The Volt has a 1.4 liter engine with radiator and fans to match.

 

[kohnen]

Originally Posted By: goodtimes
Did you apply for the PGE $500 rebate? If the first owner didn't, you may qualify if you have PGE, What oil filter will you use? I noticed the 12 cent/gal tax hike on gas also means a $100 per year license fee on EV vehicles since they use the roads but don't use gas. I don't think the Volt will have to pay it as it does use gas and I think it will require a smog test. Not 100% sure though.

The new model is nice, but I bought a used 2014 instead this year. I want a CD player, and CR gave the new model a much worse than average reliability rating in it's first year while the first gen was average. The first gen has a German Opel designed USA made engine and a Japanese transmission.


I'm in So Cal Edison land. No electric company rebates for me.

Oil filters that will work: PF65 (oem recommendation), M1-101, XG3387A, MicroGreen 200-6
Oversized: M1-201, MicroGreen 300-6

Right now I have a MicroGreen 200-6

Don't know how much registration will go up for my Volt when Jerry's law kicks in.

One reason I got the last year of the first generation is it is better debugged than a new design. I think the engine is US, the battery cells are Korean, the battery is assembled in the US, and the transmission is US.

It's been reliable, but a bit wonky - computers occasionally rebooting, the key fob doesn't work 1% of the time (No big deal, there's a backup method to start the car). Overall, I like the car.

 

[kohnen]

Originally Posted By: oliveoil
What is the oil change interval (OCI) on your car? I understand it's not very often per the OLM.


OLM determines the oil change interval. If you run it mostly electric, then the OLM only decreases by about 1% per week. This is to make sure that you change the oil at least every 2 years.

I assure you - as a BITOG member, this is torture.

 

[Cujet]

I regularly get to drive Tesla's and occasionally the Volt, Leaf and others. I'm absolutely convinced modest electric cars can make sense for most owners.

Knowing your Volt has limited EV only range, what do you consider as a minimum range to be practical? A friend's Leaf gets 75 real world miles and they have to plug in at work. As it cannot complete a day without a charge. I understand the Volt can go any distance on gas. And that most Volt owners use very little fuel. Yet I see a Leaf owner with range limitations.

Would you prefer more battery and less engine? Possibly 75 miles range and a tiny range extender engine like the BMW i3?

By the way, for various reasons, I very much like the Volt, but dislike many aspects of the i3. The i3 is not my idea of an ideal car. The picture is just for laughs, nothing more.

 

[JHZR2]

What percentage and range of state of charge does the battery use? What was the new and current ESR?

 

[kohnen]

Originally Posted By: Cujet
I regularly get to drive Tesla's and occasionally the Volt, Leaf and others. I'm absolutely convinced modest electric cars can make sense for most owners.

Knowing your Volt has limited EV only range, what do you consider as a minimum range to be practical? A friend's Leaf gets 75 real world miles and they have to plug in at work. As it cannot complete a day without a charge. I understand the Volt can go any distance on gas. And that most Volt owners use very little fuel. Yet I see a Leaf owner with range limitations.

Would you prefer more battery and less engine? Possibly 75 miles range and a tiny range extender engine like the BMW i3?

By the way, for various reasons, I very much like the Volt, but dislike many aspects of the i3. The i3 is not my idea of an ideal car...


The minimum range for an EV with an engine is in my opinion, enough to cover your daily commute with some margin. When I worked for a large engineering company 33 miles away, burning gas was a daily occurrence. The place has thousands of engineers and only 4 charging spots. I could get a spot if I showed up by 5:00 AM. I can charge at home, so the minimum range for me is enough to not burn gas for my daily routine, even if I can't charge at work.

For me, my wife and I like to take road trips. No EV only will soon work for us. There just isn't a mature fast charging infrastructure in place that rivals gas stations for convenience.

The i3's engine is far more of a limp home device than the Volt's engine. If the i3 runs out, you only get 70 miles of underpowered range. If the Volt runs out, you get 300 miles of less underpowered range, but if you switch to Mountain Mode, the car half charges the battery so mountains aren't a problem. We've driven to Vegas and been able to drive past traffic all the way. In an i3, the trip would be miserable.

Another aspect of a car is emergency range. My daughter was unexpectedly admitted to the ICU because a routine surgery went wrong. A moderate range EV would have been a disaster but I just got into the Volt and went to the hospital without worrying about range.

BMW claims that they can't have an AM radio in the i3 because the drive train causes too much interference. The AM radio in the Volt works fine. I can pick up Denver from Fullerton at night no problem.

 

[kohnen]

Originally Posted By: JHZR2
What percentage and range of state of charge does the battery use? What was the new and current ESR?


I believe the battery is rarely charged above 85%, and rarely discharged below 20%. There is a little bit of head room to permit regenerative braking of a fully charged battery, and if you run out of gas, the car will let you use some more of the battery to limp to a gas station.

The 2015 total energy is 17.1 kWh, and I can use 11.1 kWh of that.

Not positive what you mean by ESR (Equivalent Series Resistance?). The max power I can put to the wheels on battery only is 108 kWh, but I don't think this is limited by the battery's internal resistance. The battery has 288 cells, each group of 3 is in parallel, and 96 of these groups are in series. Each cell triad is 3.7V nominal, for 355 Volts nominal. Those means when pulling 110 kW, you're pulling 310 amps or so.

 

[L_Sludger]

Originally Posted By: Cujet
I regularly get to drive Tesla's and occasionally the Volt, Leaf and others. I'm absolutely convinced modest electric cars can make sense for most owners.

Knowing your Volt has limited EV only range, what do you consider as a minimum range to be practical? A friend's Leaf gets 75 real world miles and they have to plug in at work. As it cannot complete a day without a charge. I understand the Volt can go any distance on gas. And that most Volt owners use very little fuel. Yet I see a Leaf owner with range limitations.

Would you prefer more battery and less engine? Possibly 75 miles range and a tiny range extender engine like the BMW i3?

By the way, for various reasons, I very much like the Volt, but dislike many aspects of the i3. The i3 is not my idea of an ideal car. The picture is just for laughs, nothing more.

I have an i3. Would you believe that I took an 1800-mile round trip road trip with it?
(I wouldn't recommend doing that)
I can't wait for my lease to end. Neat car but I'd rather not deal with the payments. Oh, and it's been very unreliable.

 

[kohnen]

Originally Posted By: L_Sludger
I have an i3. Would you believe that I took an 1800-mile round trip road trip with it? (I wouldn't recommend doing that)
Ug! At 70 miles per tank, that's about 26 stops for a tiny tank of gas. The Volt would be 6 stops for gas (300 miles per tank). These are rough numbers, but a road trip with the Volt is just like a regular road trip with a regular car. Except, sometimes you get lucky and the hotel has free EV charging (this happened to us on our trips to Vegas and Scottsdale AZ).

 

[Cujet]

Originally Posted By: L_Sludger

I have an i3. Would you believe that I took an 1800-mile round trip road trip with it?
(I wouldn't recommend doing that)
I can't wait for my lease to end. Neat car but I'd rather not deal with the payments. Oh, and it's been very unreliable.


I'd love to hear about how you managed that trip. That can't be an easy thing in such a car. I drive and fly all over the place. Often well over 1000 miles in each direction.

I'd love an EV, and, "I think" one with reasonable range (say 150 miles) coupled with an emergency engine for, you guessed it, emergencies... would work for my uses. It would use electrical power 100% of the time, but put me at no risk of being stranded.

It seems that at this point, electro-chemical energy storage is not likely to be able to deliver 600 mile highway range, as might be used in a day of highway driving.

As much as I love the Tesla Model S, my friends P-85 left him stranded. He had a long day trip on the Florida back roads, which are quite high speed roads. He was, for what ever reason, unable to charge the car while at a business meeting. He then set off on the trip home and made 2/3 of the way back. Ending up just South East of Okechobee, in the middle of nowhere. Granted, it was a test of ultimate range, and he finds the entire story quite funny. But he did end up on the back of a flatbed.

 

[kohnen]

Originally Posted By: Cujet
...I'd love an EV, and, "I think" one with reasonable range (say 150 miles) coupled with an emergency engine for, you guessed it, emergencies... would work for my uses. It would use electrical power 100% of the time, but put me at no risk of being stranded.


For me, the Volt does exactly what you're asking. It has a "reasonable" range (~40 miles) which covers my daily needs almost every day. If I want to take a road trip, I just burn gas.

The gas engine in a Volt isn't even an "emergency" engine, it's an engine that's there and ready to seamlessly take over when the battery goes flat. There's plenty of power to run the car (because the car still uses some of the battery for extra power as needed). If I'm going up a mountain, I put it into Mountain Mode - this keeps the battery half charged so that I can go up a long steep up-grade without slowing down.

For me, having an engine always on standby means that I don't need as much EV range.

 

[MCompact]

An i3 REX has proven to be the perfect DD for my wife; she has a 22 mile round trip commute to work so even with the 110v EVSE the car is always fully charged by the next day. We also use it for short trips at night and on weekends, the result being that our gasoline bill has dropped by over $210/month. With the i3's dead cheap lease payment the car is more than paying for itself.

 

[exranger06]

Have you had any problems filling it with gas? I used to occasionally drive a company car Volt, and every time I tried to put gas in it, the gas pump would shut off immediately as if the tank was full. I went to several gas stations and had the same issue at every one. I had to add gas very slowly and let it trickle in, and even then it would still constantly shut off.

 

[kohnen]

Originally Posted By: exranger06
Have you had any problems filling it with gas? I used to occasionally drive a company car Volt, and every time I tried to put gas in it, the gas pump would shut off immediately as if the tank was full. I went to several gas stations and had the same issue at every one. I had to add gas very slowly and let it trickle in, and even then it would still constantly shut off.
Never had a pump problem. As you know, to put gas in, you have to push an open fuel door button, and the car's computer will open the fuel door. I've had times that I had to push the button a few times and wait for it to open. Once open though, never a gas nozzle problem as you describe.