[AFPhys]

Oh, I agree- I make it a habit to be wrong daily just so I don’t get out of practice.

That said, the load a battery-operated space heater required to keep a car heated in zero-degree weather is definitely not insignificant compared to the load place on the battery by the motor. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that the battery would be completely drained by the heater (and fan required) alone within 30minutes at temperatures well above the low temperatures experienced in over 25% of this country, in order to gain and maintain a cabin temperature of, say, 60F. There has been many a day that my car which generates tremendous waste heat has been hard pressed to accomplish that feat.

Certainly somewhere this has been investigated, and the answers pretty well understood. There are not going to be any breakthroughs available to accomplish the heating- it has to be raw power, or super-insulation required. Like an electric-heated home, an electric-heated car is likely to require major insulation, which eats up both weight and space.

As I said, anyone in a cold weather considering buying such a car must SERIOUSLY consider the question of heating the car in cold weather, and survival for some period of time in the case of sliding off the road into a ditch or snowbank in a rural area.

[ColdWater]

Certainly somewhere this has been investigated, and the answers pretty well understood. There are not going to be any breakthroughs available to accomplish the heating- it has to be raw power, or super-insulation required. Like an electric-heated home, an electric-heated car is likely to require major insulation, which eats up both weight and space.

I think the IC engine on these cars is about 110 hp. Enough to keep you warm.

[ColdWater]

Volt Mule Winter Testing Has Been Successful

March 23rd, 2009 | Posted in: Engineering, Production, Prototypes

Spring is here, and the 30-odd Chevy Volt mules have passed through their first winter with flying colors I am told.

GM has tested the cars extensively at the Milford Michigan proving grounds, the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan, and Kapuskasing, Ontario. Ten vehicles visited Kapuskasing and a few visited the upper peninsula.

The focus of the testing at the UP was more for chassis control development including stability control and braking. Battery work was not the primary task, as the lab environment is best for subjecting the battery pack to temperature extremes. Indeed those packs have been undergoing arduous temperature exposures for more than a year, with no problems identified.

In Canada, the focus of the testing was the propulsion system. The cars were kept indoors overnight, and then they were evaluated to see how they started and how they ran after a cold soak.

According to Voltec team leader Greg Ciesel, temperatures the mules were exposed to were “very much below zero,” and even at the Milford proving grounds “we got to probably minus 10 or 15 degrees F.”

Voltec spokesman Dave Darovitz said “Cold weather vehicle response depends on multiple factors including temperature, battery SOC, battery preconditioning (if plugged in) and if the vehicle was stored inside. Another factor is FMVSS defrost requirements, which demand more heat then we can supply electrically and cause the gas engine to turn on.”

He confirmed that testing was successful. “The cars performed as we expected under cold weather conditions,” he said “We still have some work ahead of us, but are encouraged with the operating conditions of the mules under very cold conditions.”

Volt lead engineer Andrew Farah gave an example of how a certain problem was discovered and fixed during the cold weather testing.. “We ran into some issues, we found out that we had a problem with one of our powertrain mounts,” he said “Why, because the car was going though some abusive driving…they told me we broke a mount. We did some analysis and we found things we knew about but we hadn’t gone far enough, it was an ‘aha’ moment and we fixed it.”