The last information I saw on this indicated that the battery would be charged to 80% during the overnight charge period. The Volt will then run on the battery until the battery reaches about 30%, at which point the IC engine kicks in and remains in use until the next plug-in charge cycle. At this point, there is little indication that any sort of on-off cycling of the IC engine (and the resultant high rates of charge) will be implemented on the Volt. Current lithium batteries tend to be very intolerant of high charge rates; perhaps this will improve as the technology is rolled-out (NiMH batteries have certainly made huge gains in this area since their introduction).

 

Only 80%? That seems kinda against the point of plugging it in and not using gas. Not to mention with the gas engine that charging it to 100% it would have to be stopped then anyways.

 

Constantly charging a Li-Ion battery to 100% and completely discharging it is a very bad thing for their battery life. If they don't stay in the middle of completely empty and full, then they "forget" and their max charging will change depending on what side of the extreme the battery spend most of its life at.

The interesting thing about the Volt is that since the motor will not have any direct driving of the wheels, you could replace the transmission with a large, relative speaking, generator and do a lot more charging than you could if there was a transmission there. Whether that is what GM does or not I don't know.

 

I belive thats what happens, there is a small engine in there attached to a power generator. The engine turns on only to charge the batteries, not to run the car.

 

I too would love GM to produce an all eletric plug-in car. But it isnt fair to compare ranges between the two cars. The Volt has an extra engine. The Volt has 4 seats.

The Telsa Roadster is a 2 seater supercar that cost $90,000 +.

 

Correct.

Also, as I've said time and again on TheGMSource.

Everybody and their mother says that it will be 2010 because GM is worried about the batteries being ready.

Not at all true.

2010 is because that is when the next generation small car architecture will be ready. So, from what I've gotten......the batteries are not what GM will be waiting on. It's the architecture.

Consider that battery packs will be available to test late this year. That pretty much sums up that it's the architecture, and not the battery packs.

 

Probably the same way as a conventional car uses it's coolant:
Heater Core for winters/Radiator for the summer.

 

Depending on the amount of heat, i wonder if they've thought of using that temperature differental to provide an additional energy boost? Although a heater/AC is going to be a must if this car will catch on.

 

I've been following GM's Zeta car development for 4 years. When the Camaro was finally officially announced and the US Zetas all but common knowledge, I figured that was the end, and that no other vehicle would spark as much intrest in me ever again. The Volt came out, and to be honest, I shruged and wrote it off as a design excercise for some future GM product. Now, even though I've always viewed hybrids as barely more than public relations ploys, the Volt has finally got me very intrested, and is the perfect vehicle program to turn my attentions to now that Camaro and Zeta is no longer news of high intrest.

What's going into the car, the problems that are being overcome with simple cost effective solutions, and the potential of the Volt to revolutionize the automobile industry and it's technology to bleed into other models makes this car perhaps the biggest automotive news since the automatic transmission, or even the Model T (if the car is profitable).

I think it's impossible to underestimate the impact the Volt will have if GM pulls if off and it does even just most of what's promised.

 

I wonder if the engine/generator rig will generate enough power to charge the car while driving, or if it will only generate enough to drive the car, leaving the battery reserve unaffected. And if it can indeed charge while driving, how long would it take to go from "empty" to "full", at whatever actual charge points GM sets on the battery?

I also wonder what kind of performance we can expect out of the Volt. It looks fast, but is it going to be? I'm not expecting a 12-second car or anything... but is a 15-second timeslip out of the question? If it's too slow to merge into heavy interstate traffic easily, I would be very hesitant to buy one.

 

Totally different application. There is a very good article in the current Road & Track describing the various bettery options Pb/acid, Ni-MH, Li-ion, etc., and the amount of charge per pound of battery weight each has along with the cost of materials. Also, in more to the point of your question, there are differnet battery designs depending on the type of power required, i.e, cell phones and laptops need low power for extended periods while cordless drills need high power for shorter periods.

 

I wonder how these batteries will respond to cold winter days? I do a lot of back country hiking and we have to use lithium ion batteries for our LED headlamps... and even then on colder nights try to keep the battery pack inside our jacket - otherwise the light output can suffer noticeably as can the life span.

So I wonder if the optimal performance will instead be achieve on moderate temperature days, now? Not too hot, not too cold.

Granted if these batteries produce that much heat then maybe super cold days will just let the liquid cooling system take a break?

 

Cant they just throw a couple of optima yellowtops in there?

 

Li-Ion seems to especially hate heat. if you leave a laptop or cell phone in direct sunlight just a few times in an enclosed car during the summer down here that battery is as good as toast. not being a battery expert or anything but i'd imagine it'd be hard to get 5 - 10 years out of a Li-Ion battery pack in the summer sun of the southern states.

that combined with the Li-Ion + h2o = explosion thing is why i'm actually very interested to see how they overcome these various issues.

 

Now you're beginning to bring up just a few of the technological roadblocks that electric cars face. You read letters from folks screaming conspiracy; that electric cars are just a simple battery and motor that we should all be driving except the (insert evil corporation name here) is keeping it from us. There are many problems that people don't really think about (like how to maintain performance after cold-soaking in sub-zero temps overnight). The manufacturers have to overcome these tough technological problems; customers will not buy a vehicle that is compromised in any way compared to the conventional cars we are used to.