cts | Volt a Day | Answers to Old Questions October 02, 2010

Apparently my post on the capacity of the fuel tank generated some interest in the comments over on GM-Volt.com. That’s a site which has been going for over three years with a post-a-day. I feel like such an amateur. (More on that site in a separate post, I’m not really trying to do anything comparable.)

One of the comments on my tidbit mentioned a page of questions, many of which have already been answered. I tried to answer the remaining set from my recent visit to Detroit.

May I see under the hood? If not, why not?

I saw it. It’s very, very clean. Similar, in some ways, to the EV1 engine compartment. I see some of the same bright-orange, high-voltage hoses that I saw in the EV1. It had the clarity of the Prius hybrid setup, the pieces visual separate from one another. What are you hoping to find when you peek under the hood? I wish I knew more about cars so I could have poked a little deeper. I was hoping to see the same sort of heat pump that my EV1 had, but no luck. If it gets cold the ICE will be kicking on to generate some heat.

No. It holds 9.3 gallons, as reported in my scoop post. I couldn’t find any reference to a “spare” tank section. I would think that since it is a pressurized tank they would get a fairly accurate number for what is in there and they would use the software to create your “reserve.” The G1000 avionics suite does this same thing with your airplane’s fuel, showing a dashed range-ring on the moving map for where your reserve starts and a solid ring for the dead-empty range.

I don’t know who these people are who need 700 mile range cars. For me 250 miles would be fine. And the idea that a car needs to be everything to everybody is not helpful for a 1.0 car. Let’s get the Volt into the hands of tens of thousands of people who can use it. Then we can start wondering what the next Volt-platform vehicle should be. I’d like to see a minivan. I’d like to see a two seater sports coupe. There are a lot of people complaining that GM is ignoring the middle of the country on their latest tour for demo rides, but the truth is that the current Volt, the first Volt, is going to work best in really dense urban areas, or small suburbs where people don’t drive that far.

I couldn’t tell, because I didn’t have enough space to get it up to 80mph. But I can say that it definitely felt like better performance than my Prius. You really don’t want to drive an electric car over 70mph. Those pesky laws of physics extract a huge penalty every time you add another 1mph. Keep your battery alive, drive sixty-five.

This is just software development. I can’t remember which Volt team member was explaining it on Tuesday morning, but they used the words “pedal map.” They said that initially the Eco mode (I believe that’s now called Standard mode) limited the peak power draw. So if you were in Sport mode you could draw full power from the batteries and if you weren’t, it was something less. They decided that was a bad idea, why punish the people trying to save the environment, and it is now mapped further down the pedal. So in Sports mode acceleration just takes less pedal travel. He didn’t mention it being activated automatically and it sounds like that feature vanished in favor of simplicity.

Although part of our test drive took place on Black Lake (67 acres of blacktop in one big square), we were not allowed to slalom or put it into a skid test. I was disappointed, although I will admit that it had rained all morning and it might not have been the best idea (or most illuminating test drive) anyway.

Meaningless now that they are taking orders.

July 27 2010

Yes. That would be the Mountain mode. When selected it will start the generator to start topping off the batteries.

There was no spare tire. Instead there is an “inflator.” I am not sure what that means. Inflation will be monitored by the car, so when your tire inflation is low, you’ll know it (that’s important for keeping your mileage peak). Not only that, the car will tell OnStar about the tire pressure, so you’ll get an email about it (I believe you get a monthly report).

No tire options appeared to be available.

If there is, it was not mentioned and not obvious. (I use active noise-canceling headphones while flying, I am familiar with the effect.) I would be surprised if it was necessary. The drive and ride were extremely quiet.

No variations like this appeared to be available. Since the cars are being manufactured in smaller batches at Hamtramck, I would be surprised if in the first year they did anything like this. I will say that the performance is controlled by software, so creating a “sport” version shouldn’t be difficult. You would sacrifice range, in that mode, obviously.

I seriously believe this is the wrong question to ask.

Standard. There were very few options. The car appears loaded. Heated seats were an option and there were a few accessories (cargo net, for instance). But even the accessory list was pretty limited.

We were not briefed on this, but it appeared during my test drives that the RMPs were very constant.

I was sad to see that the heat pump (found in my old EV1) was no longer under the hood. When heat is needed the ICE will fire up.

Appeared to be all side windows and rear window, but I couldn’t tell on the windshield.

Not discussed during our presentation and not seen at the manufacturing plant.

There is a little tutorial that can display on the screen for the driver. It’s cute. And there are range tips that display on the touch screen (probably pages from the manual). But the entire manual is not there (I can’t imagine why it isn’t, that seems trivial). We were asked whether we thought it would be smart to have the manual on a Kindle in the glove compartment and everyone said “No.”

Not in the first year model. The body is set. We saw them being welded together. There are no sunroof roofs in evidence in the plant.

I would bet that it has to do with the volume of the build runs at the plant. They keep the options limited when they are doing these smaller production runs until they meet the initial demand for the car and figure things out. That’s not a surprise to me. The Cruze seems like a mass market car, so they will roll out of a single plant in a variety of configurations right away.

I believe there were five options for the trim and interior colors. Some were unavailable with particular options (no black finish on the center stack with the cloth seats, for instance).