Volt Birth Watch 145: Another Meaningless Test Drive
The Chevrolet Volt’s engineering team has given journos seat time in development mules. While this proves that the Volt exists, no car hack has been allowed to put the most important metrics to the test: range and recharge times. In fact, the makers of GM’s plug-in hybrid Hail Mary haven’t allowed a single scribe to drive the car in “range-extended mode.” For the euphemistically averse, that’s the bit where the Volt switches from battery operation to gasoline-powered battery operation. Writing in the Irish Times, automotive correspondent Chelsea Sexton (I’m female!) tried to rectify this sin of omission. She encountered little of CEO Fritz Henderson’s stack-o-bibles promise of transparency. In fact, this is genuinely funny stuff, in a “there goes a billion dollars of my tax money despite the PTFOA’s pre-C11 assertion that the Volt is a waste of money” kinda way.
I also failed to talk the guys into letting me drive the Volt in range-extended mode—I’d hoped to put to rest all the conjecture that because no one’s been allowed drive it that way, there must be something wrong.
Alas, Weber was typically insistent that it just wasn’t ready. I finally pinned him down: “What is so wrong with this car that you won’t let anyone drive it with the engine on?” He paused and admitted: “Well, when the engine comes on, you can hear it.” I kept waiting for more, but that was it—the big mystery.
In terms of investigative journalism, that’s your lot. The rest adheres to the TSWCOT (The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow) meme that we’ve read until our eyes began to bleed.
Eventually I was chastened by my own admiration for the position he took. While there’s a point where you have to stop engineering and start building, Weber’s statement is indicative of the attention to detail being paid to the Volt.
That said, some of the other folks working with the other Volt mules “happened” to drive by a few times in range extended mode—the thing is already Prius quiet. And because the generator operates within certain distinct “power bands” depending on the driver’s right foot (more power requested, higher the band—if the request is at the lower end of any band, the extra energy is fed back into the batteries), any detectable sound should directly correlate with attendant ambient and road noise. I can’t speak firsthand on the power of the generator but time, and my next test drive, will tell.
As I’m still typing, I must not be holding my breath.
[Thanks to PaulieWalnut for the link.]
More by Robert Farago
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Allowing a test drive of the range extended mode before it's fully developed would be suicidal. Everything on the Volt has to work and work like a normal car. Assuming they get the bugs worked out, I still think the genius PR move would be to offer the first test drive to Farago. As for "power bands", the generator must spin at an rpm necessary to produce enough current for demand. While three distinct power bands may not yield as high fuel efficiency as running the ICE at a single optimum RPM, I'm sure that one of the three power bands is the optimized RPM, and the other two are still benefiting from running at a steady RPM when in each band.
"Wouldn’t it be most effective to set up the engine for a single power setting and, when power is needed, start, idle for however long necessary and then to got full power? If it’s tuned across several power ranges, is there any efficiency advantage over the way the Prius uses its ICE? And the Prius sends power directly to the wheels, so the Prius doesn’t have power conversion/storage losses." No, because the loop efficiency of storing energy into the battery and then using it later in the motor is typically only 60% (Prius claim) to 80% efficient overall, so you really want to power match reasonably well. Idling the engine is the worst possible thing to do.