Chevy Volt coasts closer to reality, first bona fide model now in production

[GXT]

Chevy really will need to educate people on how the Volt works and the Prius works. The Voilt system should sell itself once they understand the differance.

If GM really explains it (i.e. doesn't just PR it), I believe people will end up with the Prius or the Insight (or perhaps even a diesel). Overall they are the right solution for the times whereas the Volt's founding principle was not to be the right solution but rather to out-PR the Prius.

For those who drove the Mule in the press they have claimed it nothing special and it drives like a normal car. That is the best compliment this kind of car can get. To drive an Prius in a mode where it gives you fiull savings it is not driven like a normal car. It is like Hypermiling a gas car to keep it in electric power. The Volt just stand on it.

Please be fair.

Those who drove the mule DID NOT get to run in generator mode. GM does not want to show this yet. That may very well be very different than driving a regular car (perhaps evem worse than the Prius). The Insight, on the other hand, besides the engine stopping and starting at stops, is identical to driving a CVT car. And you don't have to plug it in or drive with the AC/heat off.

Also, expectation is that a Prius or an Insight on the highway will get better-than-Volt MPG without any hypermiling. They get 50 MPG without any special effort, and that was the city number quoted by GM years ago for the Volt before they increased the Volt's engine's size by ~33% and de-turbo'd it.

Edited June 7, 2009 by GXT

[hyperv6]

If GM really explains it (i.e. doesn't just PR it), I believe people will end up with the Prius or the Insight (or perhaps even a diesel). Overall they are the right solution for the times whereas the Volt's founding principle was not to be the right solution but rather to out-PR the Prius.

Please be fair.

Those who drove the mule DID NOT get to run in generator mode. GM does not want to show this yet. That may very well be very different than driving a regular car (perhaps evem worse than the Prius). The Insight, on the other hand, besides the engine stopping and starting at stops, is identical to driving a CVT car. And you don't have to plug it in or drive with the AC/heat off.

Also, expectation is that a Prius or an Insight on the highway will get better-than-Volt MPG without any hypermiling. They get 50 MPG without any special effort, and that was the city number quoted by GM years ago for the Volt before they increased the Volt's engine's size by ~33% and de-turbo'd it.

Please you be fair.

The car in generator mode will run on the same electric motors the car runs on in battery mode. You will have a engine that runs at a constant RPM to provide the electric that should be as much or more than in battery mode. GM's point is how the car drives in electric mode as the engine generator mode is a non factor. The Prius is hard to keep in electric mode and often youre driving style has to adapt to it where the Volts system will work with your present driving style.

The key here as stated before this is not about the Volt vs Prius or Insight. This about selling a new way to drive that will advance with the second and third gens of this system. The Pruis and Insight systems have a limited growth to them but with the Volts system the afvancements of batteries is on the fast track and GM has a drive system already that drives like a normal car.

The Prius is a car for the moment but the Volts system is one that will be better system in 5 years as it has more room for growth.

In a few years the Prius will be to the Volts system like the Malub Hybrid is now to the Prius today.

Edited June 7, 2009 by hyperv6

[GXT]

Please you be fair.

Alright, let's do this.

The car in generator mode will run on the same electric motors the car runs on in battery mode. You will have a engine that runs at a constant RPM to provide the electric that should be as much or more than in battery mode.

First off, the ICE DOESN'T run at a constant RPM, it runs at one of three different RPMs. Not only that, the Prius has a CVT so it too COULD run at a constant RPM. There is nothing special there. Also the Volt's generator is NOT capable of producing "electric that should be as much ore more than in battery mode". That is one of the reasons why the Volt hauls around all that extra unused battery... as a reserve to make up for the inability of the ICE/generator to provide enough electricity under hard driving.

GM's point is how the car drives in electric mode as the engine generator mode is a non factor. The Prius is hard to keep in electric mode and often youre driving style has to adapt to it where the Volts system will work with your present driving style.

It isn't a non-factor. The harder you drive the sooner you will be on the ICE. The harder you drive on the ICE the more gas it will use.

Rearding the Prius, what you have said doesn't in any way contradict what I said. You can very easily get very high MPG with a hybrid. If you want to change your driving style you will be able to do even better. The Volt will face a similar situation.

The key here as stated before this is not about the Volt vs Prius or Insight. This about selling a new way to drive that will advance with the second and third gens of this system. The Pruis and Insight systems have a limited growth to them but with the Volts system the afvancements of batteries is on the fast track and GM has a drive system already that drives like a normal car.

The Prius is a car for the moment but the Volts system is one that will be better system in 5 years as it has more room for growth.

The Volt is a stopgap for a full EV. A full EV was what Lutz wanted in the first place before he was forced to compromise on the Volt because of cost and lack of battery tech.

I said it before and I will say it again... add bigger batteries and electric engine to the Prius and you essentially have the Volt. There is nothing proprietary or special about the Volt.

An Insight will return 40MPG+ even when flogged as hard as possible by C&D. It does it for half the price of the Volt and with 1/27 of the battery. It is widely available years in advance of the first Volt. As soon as you take your Volt perhaps 30 miles on the highway with the AC on it will get no better (if not worse) fuel economy than the Insight. Before the Volt is for sale the Fit hybrid will be on sale at sub Insight pricing.

In a few years the Prius will be to the Volts system like the Malub Hybrid is now to the Prius today.

In a few years there will be well over 2 million Prius on the road and, according to GM, just over 10,000 Volts. And yet Mitsubishi has already leap-frogged the Volt with a full EV. Don't you see? GM's Prius-Envy caused them to make the WRONG decision yet again. If it was a good idea, someone other than BYD would already have done it.

For the record (From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2009060702616):

"In early 2006, Lutz decided that GM could no longer afford to be without a dramatic response to the Prius and other competitors' models. He walked into the office of Jon Lauckner, vice president of global program management and director of the corporation's advance design, and said he wanted a "game-changing car" capable of reestablishing GM as the worldwide technological leader.

Determined to leapfrog the Prius and all other hybrids, Lutz proposed a purely electric car, powered by lithium-ion batteries, which would have a range of 150 miles or so before needing to be recharged. He was an ardent believer in battery technology, following a three-year stint as the chief executive of a battery company during the 1990s.

It was not the first time someone at GM had said he wanted an electric car. The last such effort at the Technical Center had not ended well: During the '90s, the automaker spent more than $1 billion developing a small two-seat electric vehicle known as the EV1, using heavy nickel-lead batteries before concluding that it was cost-prohibitive for consumers and scrapping it to the disgust of fervent EV1 fans and environmentalists.

Lauckner, who had carefully studied the EV1 and thought that the car would have been wholly impractical with nickel-lead batteries, saw similar problems with Lutz's vision of a car intended to go far on lithium-ion batteries. "Too expensive," said Lauckner, who made clear that with all the batteries needed for a vehicle to travel about 150 miles, Lutz would merely be making another battery-heavy, cost-prohibitive car.

Known in GM corridors as "The Wizard," Lauckner immediately had two suggestions: a smaller battery pack that would at once make the car affordable while guaranteeing the typical American worker a ride long enough for a round-trip commute each day; and a modest gasoline engine that would kick in only if and when a driver ran down the battery power. The engine would have an entirely different use from the standard internal-combustion engine, generating electricity to power the electric motor and, in the process, extending the vehicle's range.

"