The Volt does use a 4 cylinder gas engine. 1.4 liters.
Posted on 02/19/2012 12:09:07 PM PST by Brookhaven
What a coincidence - that's how our academic and bureaucratic masters see it, too.
My friend has a Volt. He actually went to Michigan to buy it, because they initially weren’t sold in Indiana.
He loves the car, now realize that he is a “techy” person and really appreciates the complexity.
His daily commute is about 20 miles round trip.
I know for sure that he went at least 5 months without buying gasoline. After a year of ownership he’s more enthusiastic than ever.
Then again his wife buys a new Vette every year so he has that to drive if he wants to do burnouts.
It brings to mind the Volt commercial were all the small appliances are powered by internal combustion engines. With the implied "oh, this is awful, lets' replace all these messy ICEs with a nice clean Volt."
Powered by coal.
BTW, I do think that Tesla has the best approach to car batteries given the current technology. Leveraging the volume production of rechargable AA's was way smart.
The Volt does use a 4 cylinder gas engine. 1.4 liters.
My son and I built a 1970 Vega Kamback with a 350 cu. in. V-8 with about 300 h.p.; the dang thing was never engineered for such power (although Chevy did make the V-8 Monza on the same chassis). Acceleration was awesome, but the handling, steering, and brakes really were not up to the task. The cost of totally re-engineering the car was prohibitive; I took it apart and sold it.
I’m sure the hot rodding was worth the experience.
But you’re right, they build Corvettes that have the chassis dynamics to complement the power.
I’d agree with that. They both suck, batteries suck worse.
The Volt only seats four people while the Prius seats five.
There is a Plug In Prius being introduced at a better price point than the Volt.
My point was that Chevy is doing some financial gymnastics to be able to lease a $42,000 Volt for only $369 a month with nothing down. Mercedes gets $349 a month for their new $34,000 C250 with $4000 down.
Something is rotten in Denmark because Chevy is pocketing the $7,500 Tax Credit (that we all pay for) to make the lease deal work at that price.
Government Motors strikes again.
So, he mostly runs in electric drive and recharges at home or work?
I kept asking this question and never get an answer, maybe your friend would tell you. How much does charging his Volt add to his electric bill?
They also do it because gearing for such a beast would be a nightmare; electric motors have the ideal power curve for a locomotive because they deliver maximum torque at zero RPM.
He does most of his recharges at work. They have a couple charging stations, likely added with “stimulus money” LOL.
I’m sure if you look over here:
http://gm-volt.com/forum/
You’ll find plenty of info.
To me there’s no $$ savings in the Volt, because the capital cost is so high. You buy it because you enjoy the technology (like my friend), or you’re worried about a fuel shortage (like 1973-74) and must have mobility over relatively short distances.
But the laws of physics still make PV panels a non-starter. In mid-lattitudes at noon the total energy received from the Sun is roughly 1,300 watts per square metre, so even if a 100% efficient PV panel were developed (the best are <20%), it would take a panel of at least 300 square feet to meet the needs of the average home. If you wanted to run your home 24/7 from solar, count on a panel at least five times that size plus a couple of tons of batteries.
Actually if you look at the powertrain history of mine haul trucks, you’ll see that torque converter / powershift transmissions have moved up the size range displacing diesel electric drive at increasingly large sizes.
In 1980 almost all mine haul trucks over 90 tons capacity were diesel electric. Now CAT uses torque converter / powershift all the way to 400 tons capacity. This configuration is more efficient, and CAT has spent the capital to design, develop, and tool up for mechanical transmissions in this “mega” size category.
Which conveniently falls at the point where you need to put down $10,000 for a new battery.
Oh, I agree.
All I’m pointing out is that some progress has been made in raising the efficiency of PV cells. As you point out, the current commercially available cells are running < 20% efficiency. Look where they came from tho - back in the 70’s, they were just a bit over 2%. Right now, a Boeing subsidiary (Spectrolab) is developing PV’s with efficiency over 40% for space applications. They’re obviously still expensive, but in the grand scheme of solid state development, the crush on margins is ruthless. Ergo, in the last 40+ years, we’ve seen an order of magnitude improvement on PV cell efficiency.
There hasn’t been anywhere nearly the same percentage improvement made in batteries.
Both technologies are not going to “solve” anything anytime soon, individually or together.
The only technical error in the article is it overstates the amount of “gas” the Volt battery has. The Volt’s battery has about 10.5 useable kW. One gallon of gas has 36.6 kW.
Regardless, the Volt is a re-volt-ing display of heavy handed government causing miss-allocation of resources.
That’s an awesome random bit of trivia applicable to the topic at hand.
I love Free Republic for stuff like that. I bet you never see anything similar at DU, for instance.
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