Work-owned Volt Musings

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PV1

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:mrgreen: :mrgreen:

I'm not sure how much of an influence I was, but my workplace is starting to warm up to energy efficiency and alternatives. Over the weekend, they changed out nearly all exterior lights for LEDs, they are starting to change out the interior lights for LEDs (from compact fluorescent, roughly a 30% reduction in energy usage for ~50 bulbs), and just today brought a Chevy Volt back to the office.

Apparently, after talking to our COO, the company can get a Volt cheaper than the current vehicle of choice, a Chevy Equinox, with all the tax stuff and credits. He also mentioned that they may do the same for all project managers (about a dozen people in an office of 50) :D .

I've always though it made sense, and they are starting to see it too, that the company I work for is an electrical contractor, so we should be driving electric cars. After all, we do install charging stations.

Anyone else have a similar experience (or trying to)?
 
Well, that was short-lived. I found the Volt parked around back of the office (there all weekend), and its former driver now driving a brand-new Chevy Colorado :evil: . His commute was just about perfect for the Volt, too. All-electric with workplace charging except for about 5-10 miles (so, no wasteful maintenance run).
 
PV1 said:
Well, that was short-lived. I found the Volt parked around back of the office (there all weekend), and its former driver now driving a brand-new Chevy Colorado :evil: . His commute was just about perfect for the Volt, too. All-electric with workplace charging except for about 5-10 miles (so, no wasteful maintenance run).

Is it for sale? Someone else at the company going to drive it?
 
I got to drive it today to pick up a 55" TV. I don't think it'll be for sale for a while. It'll likely get put in the office loaner pool.

**UPDATE**

I talked to the guy who used to drive it. It wasn't his decision to get something else. The company wants the Volt in the office carpool. I guess it's not all bad, at least it'll give more people in the office the chance to try out something with electric drive. I was just hoping they'd upgrade him to a Bolt.
 
I'd certainly hope so at this point. I've talked about EVs enough around the office :lol: .

I'm still not sure if they were even serious about the Volt in the first place. As much as they used to talk about getting charging stations, I'm still stretching an extension cord from the corner of the building for the few times a year I charge at work. The Volt driver was able to snag the spot near a light pole with a plug on the backside of it, most days. Guess I'll start parking there now :roll: .

They were complaining about it not being charged. I offered to take it home and charge it up with solar power, but they said no :shrug: .
 
Road trip tomorrow. Heading 3 hours out of town to set up a jobsite in the Volt. Anything you guys would like me to report on (keeping in mind it's a gen 1 Volt)?

Among other things, I'd like to try out Hold and Mountain modes to see how they function. I'll try to top off the gas before I leave so I can get a value of fuel economy (minus any plug-in miles). The drive will consist of main roads, highway, and some mountain climbing/descent.

So far, nobody else has driven it since the other day. Lifetime stats show mostly gas driving, averaging 37 MPG over 51,000 miles.
 
That's a shame. If the batteries were filled overnight every night so each day began with a full battery, that MPG figure could easily be twice the 37 they have now

Don
 
That was incorrect. Lifetime is 53, but "this charge" shows ~37 (I'm assuming since last full charge).

Digging through the charge settings, it apparently has only been charging at 8 amps on level 1, not 12, and hasn't reached full charge anytime recently. I have it charging at 240 volts right now.
 
Starting with a full charge with outside temperature hovering just above freezing, I managed 25.4 of plug-in miles. The engine did run periodically due to the low temperature.

In total, I drove 379.1 miles, using 11.9 kWh from the wall and 10.53 gallons of gas. Overall fuel economy was 36 MPG, with speed ranging from 45-70 MPH over the whole trip (2/3 at 65-70). I had to refuel before returning home. To be fair, it does have some gnarly tires on it.

Hold mode more or less activates range-extended mode at whatever SoC and maintains it. Regenning above the set SoC will delay the engine running until it falls below the charge level. Mountain mode works very similar, except that the charge is held at half, and the engine will charge the battery up to that point, even from normal range-extended mode. Changing back to Normal or Sport mode will allow all-electric use of this charge, though the dash wouldn't change back to the battery display. However, it did after I shut the car down and restarted. Even when it did this, the car knew that the energy in the battery came from gasoline, and counted the miles driven on battery power as gas miles.

I changed to Mountain mode on the highway as the engine was running at full speed and still drawing power from the battery when climbing hills, and I didn't want to find the real bottom to battery power.

Cabin heat can come from either the engine or an electric resistance heater, apparently even while plugged in. Engine cabin heat can be enabled or disabled in the settings for both driving and charging. Electric heat is (confusingly) disabled by a "Fan Only" option, therefore making cabin heat engine only.

While overall, the Volt is an impressive vehicle, there are some things that could've been done differently (and maybe are fixed on the gen2). The mechanical engine link to the wheels causes some hesitation and sometimes feels like a transmission downshift. It takes almost a full second between flooring it and the car accelerating when linked in range-extended mode. Also, I'm not sure if it was an issue with this particular car or not, but the steering seemed to stick when going in a straight line. Minor thing, but became annoying after 3 straight hours of driving.

For everyday driving, I'll take my i-MiEV. For long distance driving, I think I still prefer the C-Max, mainly for better fuel economy and better hill climbing behavior.
 
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