Lon's Chevy Volt

The Chevy Volt definitely lives up to its hype.

I took a leap of faith last August when I put a deposit down on a 2011 Chevy Volt, sight unseen. Connecticut had just been named as one of only a handful of launch markets to receive a limited allocation of production units. The car arrived at my local Chevy dealer six months later.

Three months in, my satisfaction with the vehicle continues to grow - and it’s not just the fuel economy. The build quality easily matches that of luxury imports. The handling is tight and sporty, and, dare I say, the torque in “sport mode” will shock you.

Read the rest of my article at CTTechJunkie.com

Today marks three weeks since I took delivery of my Chevy Volt and I still have about half of the original tank of gas that came with the car.  Some have asked me what happens to the quality of fuel after sitting in the car for that long.  I didn't know the answer until I saw a press release from GM today.  

The 9.3 gallon tank in the Chevy Volt is constructed from steel, not plastic.  It's also pressure sealed to keep the gas from evaporating.  Here's more on the fuel system from the GM press release:

For the last several decades, new vehicles have been equipped with charcoal canisters to trap evaporating gasoline and then feed it back to the engine.  Since the Volt's engine may not fire up for extended periods, hydrocarbons potentially could build up in the canister, so the sealed tank contains the vapor. The extra pressure meant that a lightweight steel tank had to replace the lightweight plastic tanks used in most modern vehicles.  

Volt engineers and supplier Spectra Premium Inc. developed the tank from 1.4 millimeter thick hot-dip tin-zinc coated steel to resist corrosion from both inside and outside. Despite the strength of the tank, it has a mechanical pressure relief valve that begins opening at 3.5 psi and a vacuum relief that opens at -2.3 psi, levels that are rarely exceeded.

At some point the engine will need to run, so a maintenance mode was added.  If a driver goes six weeks without using the gas engine, the Volt's computer will turn it on for a short while to keep the engine in a healthy condition.  If the car goes without a gas stop for an entire year, it'll run the engine until the old fuel is consumed or additional fresh fuel is added to the tank.

Yet another example of the kind of engineering that had to go into the design of this vehicle.  

I'm excited to say that the car performed well, reaching Wethersfield with another 4 miles remaining in the battery.  I used .73 gallons of gas on the 30 mile trip home, which comes out to about 91 miles per gallon for the round trip.  

Yesterday I had the longest driving day yet for the new car, traveling a total of about 170 miles.  I accumulated about 25 miles of local driving before heading out to Greenwich for the evening.  I was able to get a two hour 120v charge in before the long range trip began, which added only about 5 or 10 miles of battery range.  The gas engine kicked on as expected early in the journey out to Greenwich, and would occasionally switch off when enough power was accumulated from the regenerative braking system.   Had I been at a full charge I could easily get to New Haven on only electric from my home in Essex.

Autoblog Green has what appears to be sobering numbers on early Volt sales, citing GM figures that say only 281 cars were sold in February, down from 321 in January.  Critics eager for GM to fail are trying to make hay from this announcement, but there's much more to the story. 

So far the car has delivered an effective lifetime mpg of 194. That will change a bit next week with a 150 mile round trip journey planned. Stay tuned!

So after nearly two weeks of driving around town (200 miles and barely a drop of gasoline), I finally hit the limit on the battery range and had the car switch over to the internal combustion engine.  Unlike other hybrids, the Chevy Volt's engine powers the electric motor and doesn't drive the wheels - giving it some flexibility as to when and how to use gas.  It also never lets the battery drain completely, so even when the car reports its out of juice it still has about a 30% charge remaining.  

And that's when things got interesting.  I expected the engine to run continously, but the car was much more judicious in its engine use. While coasting down a long hill on my way home, the engine shut down and the regenerative braking system poured some additional electricity in the battery.  When I reached the bottom of the hill and turned onto the next street, the internal combustion engine was still silent - apparently enough energy was captured on the way down the hill to go another quarter of a mile without having to use gasoline. It wasn't until I went up the next hill that the engine turned itself back on.

It's impressive how much thought and engineering went in to making that scenario possible.  

I have some requests for a video tour of the car that I'll post up this weekend.