The Follies and Foibles of the Chevy Volt
I first wrote about the fast-failing fortunes of the Chevy Volt for PJ Media on April 21. Since then, despite bizarrely optimistic GM and Obama administration spin, the Volt appears destined to go the way of the Edsel and other epic automotive failures, despite Mr. Obama’s recent claim to have saved the auto industry. If the Volt is a harbinger of salvation, the industry might be wishing Mr. Obama didn’t bother.
The Volt is a very heavy, needlessly complex compact hybrid with a battery range of 25-50 miles. Many misconceptions about its drive mechanisms are still floating about — apparently abetted by GM — but the fact remains that when the Volt’s battery-only range is exhausted, its weak onboard gasoline engine, which requires premium fuel, directly drives the vehicle. A full battery recharge takes up to 12 hours on 110 volt house current, but about five hours with a special, high voltage charger, an option available at only $2000, not including installation. All this for around $41,000 minus a federal tax credit of $7,500.
Having sold only about 6,000 Volts, GM has been trotting out some rather confusing public relations blurbs:
[Volt] Production was only ramped up to full speed in early September and now stands at a rate of 150 vehicles per day. Many of the 2,367 cars produced during the month are still in transit to dealers and buyers and, as of today, there are only 884 cars in the pipeline that are available for retail sale.
[GM] Spokesman Chris Lee says GM still will add 300 workers at the Detroit-Hamtramck plant — but not a second shift — by the end of this year to make more Volts.
A production rate of 150 Volts per day equals 54,750 Volts per year, yet GM is selling only a fraction of that. It seems that the demographic of buyers ready to snap up a Volt at any price to enhance their green street cred, or simply to add the latest technological toy to their collections, has been exhausted.
Sales are stalled far below GM’s optimistic projection of 10,000 U.S. and 60,000 European sales in the Volt’s first year. The 12,000 Volts General Electric promised to buy, as well as a non-specific number of Volts Mr. Obama promised to buy, have apparently not, as yet, materialized, despite rare sightings of Volts with government plates. Volt sales have essentially stalled, a fact even GM has been forced to admit because of the unfortunate tendency of the Volt’s $10,000 (GM has suggested replacement costs as low as $8,000) battery pack to more or less spontaneously combust.
The fun began in June when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) conducted Volt crash testing. Three weeks later, a damaged Volt’s battery spontaneously combusted, touching off several nearby fires. Several congressmen, including Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), recently sent a letter to NHTSA Administrator David Strickland demanding to know why the NHTSA kept this under wraps until a second test in November produced the same results. Only then did the NHTSA make public the problem and launch a “formal safety defect investigation.” The NHTSA has conducted at least three more tests on Volt battery packs, each with pyrotechnic results that set GM spinmeisters rotating at warp speed, so fast they’ve had difficulty keeping their stories straight.
It’s a very sorry tale. The weight and complexity of plug in hybrids means they’re very poor electric vehicles and very poor petrol vehicles because each power plant is lugging around the excess baggage of the other.
The other takeaway is that without infrastructure EV’s don’t work. It would be like handing gasoline petrol cars and telling them to go find their own gasoline. It’s dumb.
The US is a long way from having a workable alternative to liquid fuelled combustion engine cars and this thing isn’t the answer except for a very few people in big cities with too much money: how crony capitalism gets to bail this out when there are plenty of worthy alternatives that can be financed profitably with VC funds, is beyond a joke, it’s the scandal of our era.
You are wrong on this:
The volt and it’s drivetrain, like most things mass produced will get cheaper over time.
If they succeed in this, and the system, assuming safety and cost issues do get resolved,will result in huge savings of gas us by the USA. Being more independent of foreign oil and energy independent is the single most important thing we can do for our Liberty.
You criticism is reflexive against the administration, who I like even less than you. They like it so you oppose it. Think of the volt as Obama’s stopped watch- the only thing he may be right on.
Can’t wait for the volt to come on more cars, to drive in a my 75 mpg Tahoe without using a drop of gas……. What joy!
The mission is freedom, the automobile is ultimately an engine of freedom and capitalism. Give me my nuclear powered battery charged volt, freedom and clean air. So who is closer to Teddy Roosevelt on this issue, you or me?
uh, no.
Hybrid technology already is in full operational use by Honda and Toyota. The Prius, Civic, and Insight (plus a scattering of others, including nearly all Lexus models) hybrids sell millions a year worldwide.
This technology has existed now for over a decade, by your logic the price would have come down now to where these cars can compete without government subsidies but it hasn’t.
A Prius or Civic costs, without the subsidies, so much that noone would buy one (better performing cars costing the same are widely available). With the subsidies they’re affordable, but people buy them in lue of not cars of the same size, but in lue of smaller cars they’d buy otherwise at the same price the now subsidised hybrid demands (this excluding the same small group of ecofanatics now buying Volts, and government agencies wanting to show how “green” they are).
Example (this from Europe, similar examples no doubt exist in the US as well):
A Civic hybrid costs after subsidies about 27000 Euro. A Civic sedan (the car it’d compete with without subsidies) costs 35000+. Without subsidies that hybrid would cost around 45000. At 27000 it competes with far smaller cars like a VW Polo or Peugeot 307 (think VW Beetle in size).
Given that choice, which’d you select, especially taking into account that the hybrid is excempt from road taxes?
Of course the hybrid needs about 7 liters/100km of unleaded fuel, that Polo needs 5 liters/100km or less, thus be more energy efficient (less CO2, the holy grail of green subsidies).
There are no federal subsidizies for the Prius any more. It’s possible some states offer subsidizies for the Prius but not mine. The subsidizies were limited to an amount of cars (I forget the exact number) that Prius sales exceeded long ago. From what I recall, early Prius models were sold by Toyota at a loss but that isn’t the case any more.
We need a breakthrough on storage technology.
Battery technology hasn’t improved much in over a century. Look at the quantum gains in other technolgies over that time and measure them against battery tech. There is no reasonable expectation that batteries will be anything but marginally better for the forseeable future. Therefore the EV is a waste of time and a dead and.
Mike, I was afraid of that.
And better in several ways, not just one.
-Energy storage capacity
-Weight
-Cost to performance (both charge and longevity) ratio
And probably most importantly in terms of electric vehicles being a long term solution as you’ve pointed out before:
- Materials in abundant supply to support large quantities of vehicles unlike the limited rare-earth materials currently used.
Efficient and cost effective bulk storage of energy in a form that can be tapped on-demand as electricity will never happen. The laws of nature conspire against this. We were given a gift (large stores of crude oil and natural gas buried in the ground) and as free and intelligent humans are wont to do, we figured out the best way to use it to advance mankind. We continue to use it better and more responsibly as we advance and lately we are taking the same approach to our relatively new knowledge of nuclear fission. Why do we let these Luddite liberals play with our lives and the lives of our children in this manner?
Even with that, i.e. some type of super energy storage device at the Star Trek level, two problems have yet to be addressed.
First, any storage device that can pack a high energy density is liable to be a hazard if that energy is released in one lump, accidentally or otherwise. (Examples; early types of cell-phone batteries that could explode if installed incorrectly, or the old tinfoil-across-both-terminals-of-a-9-volt-dry-cell stunt.) The energy density needed to make a vehicle like the Volt competitive with an IC engine of comparable BHP (the amount that actually reaches the road) is most likely in the “potential bomb” category.
Second, even if that problem is solved (which I suspect would require Scotty’s understanding of advanced physics, never mind Steven Hawking’s), there’s the fact that all batteries do is store energy; they do not create it. The electricity to charge them has to come from somewhere else. It’s amazing how many “green” advocates don’t understand this.
The next time some eco-evangelist waxes lyrical about his or her Volt, ask them if they know how their electric company generates the KWH they use to recharge it every night. Hint; roughly 75% of electricity in the U.S. is generated by coal-fired plants, with oil accounting for about 10%, nuclear and hydroelectric about 13% between them, and solar and wind about 2%.
Electric vehicles are not “zero-emission”. They just hide the emission better than an IC engine, by moving it somewhere else. And modern IC engines’ emissions consist mainly of CO2 and water vapor; the same cannot be said for a coal-fired power plant.
For real fun, ask the eco-type, “So, since you drive a Volt to help save the environment, you must be in favor of nuclear and hydroelectric power, right?”
If they were consistent, they would be. As for how to cope with their likely actual reaction, an old Toureg proverb comes to mind;
“Tell the truth, but keep one foot in your stirrup.”
clear ether
eon
Most ‘greenies’ have no understanding of the energy density of liquid fuels and the implications of such. If they ever got their cornucopia of utopian wishes, they’d die freezing in the dark wondering what happened.
Two words: “energy density”. Take that and run with it.
What happens when Bolivia and China jack up the price of their lithium? Can you make a battery from a wind farm?
The Volt, Solyndra, and about a dozen other solar panel manufacturers that are going out of business show that the Obama administration really has a knack for picking “winners.” In fact, I’m not sure the government has picked one winner in this entire mess, unless you probably count those stupid windmills that are manufactured by General Electric but are now being made in China. Even with the windmills, the government does not want to admit that they only work on a very small scale, but they still can’t power a town, let alone a small or major city. And they have to be positioned in the right part of the country for them to work. So I’m not seeing a lot of success for all of the BILLIONS of dollars invested in these “green” programs. But, of course, isn’t it comforting to know that YOU are the one getting stuck with the bill for all of this? What say we let the free market determine winners and losers. If the idea is a good one, people will rush to buy it. If it’s not, it will die, like the Chevy Volt. Now that was simple. Pity Obama doesn’t get that.
In keeping with an Obamanistic approach to the truth, GM recently claimed “sales of the Chevy Volt are on fire.”
* snicker *
Look at it as an alternative energy source; plug it in, light it up, and roast marshmellows in the warming glow of the flickering flames.
I beleive the fumes are toxic.
What produces electricity to run these cars that go 25 miles on a charge? Coal.
Thus we have to mine and burn more coal to run these so called eco saving vehicles. 10 hrs plug in…how much in is this going to up your electrical bill?
Right, David. About 45% comes from coal, 23% from natural gas, and 20% nuke. The energy has to come from somewhere. And there is a loss of energy between the power plant and the car’s battery, so there’s that.
Yet they sold 683 Volts this month. 683 knuckleheads.
Make that “683 taxpayer subsidized knuckleheads” …
Volkswagen currently has three different diesel models getting over 40 mpg today. While diesel fuel is somewhat less available than ordinary gasoline, it will be along time before we will have the equivalent from the grid. And who knows what the carbon footprint of the Volt truly is anyways, I doubt anyone does.
Unfortunately, where I live (DC) diesel fuel is more expensive than even premium fuel, negating the greater fuel efficiency.
If you were stuck driving in DC or N Va traffic, imagine what a hybrid diesel would get. Someone should build that car.
While a diesel hybrid sounds like a natural, it might not be very easy to achieve. A hybrid like the Prius and the Hondas frequently starts and stops the gas engine based on the power requirements at any given moment. Diesels have high compression ratios that might make the frequent starts hard to achieve, or at least hard to achieve smoothly. You might be able to do it with an alternate hybrid technology, perhaps one where the diesel engine runs continuously (like a diesel electric locomotive) with supplemental power from batteries to aid in acceleration, climbing hills, etc.
Dear Larry J, Publius and Raymond in DC:
Good points all. Diesel fuel is more expensive primarily because despite being a less refined form of fuel than gasoline–which one would think to therefore be cheaper–it carries a much greater tax burden than gasoline. So we have diesel engine technology that can currently achieve as much as 50 MPG while burning quite cleanly, yet it’s not economically feasible by government design. One might almost think all of these federal regulations, taxes, subsidies and mandates really don’t have anything to do with producing the most fuel efficient vehicles.
Diesels are also not good for on/off driving as in gasoline powered hybrids. Once shut off, their glow plugs must reach adequate temperature before the engine can be started, which takes several seconds at the least. They work most efficiently when running constantly, which is why long haul truckers often leave their engines running where it makes sense to turn off gas powered vehicles.
At the moment, most diesels are not–due to the higher price of their fuel–choices superior to high mileage gasoline powered vehicles in their respective classes. No money will be saved by their somewhat greater mileage. Their engines may indeed last longer than gas engines, but this may be their primary real advantage.
What rubbish, Jaguar have just released a model with a 2.2 litre diesel engine that turns itself off at traffic lights, then turns itself on when the brake pedal is released. I’ve test driven one, and there’s no problem with undue vibration or difficulty starting the thing.
“(1) Even with a $7,500 government (taxpayer) tax subsidy, the average Volt still costs about $33,500, not including fast charger ($2,000).”
$33,500 will roughly buy one an Audi A4 Quattro with the base “Premium” package. That’s a heck of a lot more car than the Chevy Volt – and there’s no government subsidy involved. Which do you think will sell more cars this year? (A rhetorical question, I know.)
What’s unfortunate is that the more obvious alternative to gasoline powered automobiles is being overlooked – natural gas. Supplies are plentiful and becoming more so – and those supplies are right here in the US. The required changes to the car to get them to run on NG are minimal, and the existing infrastructure won’t require a radical and expensive overhaul to support NG cars. Note that even IRAN is changing its vehicle fleet to exploit their existing NG resources and thus make them less vulnerable to a cutoff in refined gasoline they now import.
Natural gas is good for fleet vehicles with their own refueling and maintenance facilities, buses/taxi cabs/corporate fleets, where the drivers have no maintenance responsibilities except operational safety. Refueling natural gas personal vehicles in service stations will not be as easy as refueling with gasoline. Fuel safety in accidents poses another problem. Lastly, do-it-yourself motor work will be a lot riskier.
Mike wrote about the lack of technical advances in battery tech. This is true. Moreover China now is putting a “strangle hold” on all the rare earth materials needed for battery production. They have the largest supply of these materials on their soil. THEY want to corner the battery market for these hybrid/electric cars.
Has anyone thought to ask what happens to the mileage of the Volt, or of any electric car, if you run the heater full blast on a cold winter day, or the air conditioner on a hot summer day?
Remember heat is free with any internal combustion engine, but air conditioning puts a significant load on any type of car. I wonder if you only get 10 miles per full charge on the Volt if you run either.
My co-worker bought a Nissan “Leaf” for which she waited one year from the date of purchase. She paid about 32K and got an 8K “rebate” (subsidy). She had to agree to an internet hook-up to monitor her power use, etc., when she charges the car at her house. She had to install a special electrical circuit, internet, and charger in her garage.
Within a few months of driving it the heater quit. She took it to the dealer and after 4 weeks they still had not fixed the heater. Finally Nissan flew a team of technicians and engineers to Portland, Oregon from Japan to figure out why her heater won’t work. I assume they required per diem and expenses, no to mention the cost of air fare and the consumption of jet fuel to get them from Japan to Portland and back. It took 3 more weeks to get the heater fixed, during which she drove a conventional gas powered car on loan from Nissan.
It’s hard to figure out how the “leaf” is green. But, then again, I’m not a liberal.
Dear Occam:
You’ve hit upon one of the many fundamental problems with the Volt and similar vehicles. Before the first Volts were released for sale, Chevy was trumpeting a 50 mile range which was soon shortened to 40. Real world experience, in normal driving, reveals it to be much more like 25 miles, which for most Americans, won’t guarantee a round trip commute to work.
One of the interesting effects of physics is that cold greatly diminishes battery capacity and performance. There is a reason GM only leased its EV1 electric of the past in hot climates, and only released the first Volts in such places. In truly cold climates–much of America for at least part of every year–Volts will have virtually no all-electric range, and attempts to keep the battery warm will only add to the cost of operating the vehicle for virtually no all-electric return. When operated with its weak gas engine–some people still can’t get it out of their heads that it doesn’t somehow generate electricity to run the Volt; it’s just a gas engine that directly drives the vehicle when the battery charge diminishes too much; it’s essentially 1930′s submarine technology–the Volt’s mileage is actually worse–and more expensive–than a great many conventional vehicles.
Using such frivolous accessories as the heater, air conditioner, turn signals, head and tail lights, stereo, power windows, etc. will also greatly decrease all-electric mileage. A visit to the Stately McDaniel Manor electric vehicle archive (https://statelymcdanielmanor.wordpress.com/category/electric-vehicles/) will provide articles that explore these issues in much greater depth.
Has anybody else seen the rather bizarre Volt commercials in the last few days, with the assembly line running down Main Street, etc? The voice-over telling us that the Volt is what America needs today? It’s a little creepy.
Coal is mined and transported, about a 5% loss of energy, then only about 65% of the energy makes it into the electricity, line losses are another 5%, charging another 5%, then on use in the car it is around 95% efficient. So around half of the original energy is wasted. It is just that major grid electricity costs around 20% of the available energy cost of an IC engine.
We are already facing limits on our electrical grid, aggravated by the O”Man wanting to kill a lot of old Coal plants. It is time to invest in America again.
It is probably good to keep building windmills, solar panels, electric cars, hybrids, some fast trains, and the like to mature the technologies. But with most Crash Courses, the product is usually only wrecks and wrecked bank accounts.
To increase its sales, GM should consider an extra cost option for the Volt. That would be a hitch on the back bumper in order to pull another car for when the Volts’ batteries run out. Gee, if the second car was a Prius, the customer could get 2 subsidies.
One other thing that will really make the electric car useless. The Luddite peak oil and peak natural gaas theories are already discredited. We have plenty of oil and gas and coal too. It is being made artificially expensive by government but it is abundant. After all is said about supply, I think the abiotic oil theory might be valid.
To contribute to these educated comments, I would add that any wreck involving an electric vehicle must be treated the same way as a downed power line. Touching any conductor on the vehicle may kill you. Any groggy person existing the vehicle, who puts one foot on the ground may die. This is equally true for anyone who rushes to help. Insulated gear is mandatory. In extremis, jump in and out of the car, without touching the bare ground. Do not make a circuit with your body.
The dominant safety characteristic of hydrocarbon fuels is that they can be sensed, seen, smelled and take a finite amount of time to release their latent energy. Such is NOT the case for electricity (and also natural gas). Their rate of energy release is far faster than human reaction.
If reason was permitted in this PC world, there would be mandated warnings welded on all EV exteriors. But this will not occur until some liability lawyers become wealthy.
I expect that one of these days it will happen.
Some liberal loon in Congress will introduce legislation that will require all electric vehicles to be equipped with a wind tubine on the roof so that as they drive down the road the wind will drive the turbine that will keep the battery charged and the EV will run forever.
Someone (with some real brass) should make the attempt just to see how many nutjobs would sign on as co-sponsors.
Another Obama/Lib/Dem/Soc failure-imagine that?
Get a VW diesel and move on…
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