Chevrolet Volt on News Night "Ethical man"

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granada203028
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Chevrolet Volt on News Night "Ethical man"

Postby granada203028 » Fri Apr 17, 2009 8:45 am

A good report including a look at GM's battery lab. I think I spotted 16KWh 400 lbs on the pack rating plate!. 88Wh/Kg.
[url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/ethicalman/2009/04/check_out_our_second_film.html#comments[url][/url]

granada203028
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Joined: Wed Apr 30, 2008 5:03 pm
Location: Bristol, UK

Postby granada203028 » Sun Sep 20, 2009 8:26 pm

The Telegraph motoring supplement also discussed the Volt or Ampera as it will be known as in Europe. Confirmed the battery is 16KWh and 400 lbs but did say "the battery only cycles half its capacity to give a 10 year/150,000 mile life". So is 16KWh really half the actual full capacity? The hidden extra size benefits power performance with lower internal resistance.

With my electric bike I have taken the same approach with its large li poly battery. I have never fully charged it or discharged it, just charging it as necessary for prospective journeys. So far no trip has used more than 1.5KWh, 20% of the full capacity.

Telegraph also commented that Vauxhall are still debating the price, to sell of lease the battery. Battery included it is going to cost over £35,000, surely a non starter and even more so in the USA.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/fra ... eview.html

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Peter Eggleston
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Postby Peter Eggleston » Wed Sep 23, 2009 8:21 pm

Not really applicable to private cars, but of interest is the fact that Smith Electric Vehicles (Tanfield) are against leasing batteries. This is because most commercial buyers lease the whole vehicle, so there is no point in leasing the battery separately.
Peter

jjmouris
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Re: Chevrolet Volt on News Night "Ethical man"

Postby jjmouris » Thu Mar 08, 2012 5:15 pm

Guys, does anybody know if there are any major differences between the Chevy Volt and the Vauxhall / Opel Ampera?

I mean to say, a Toyota Prius as sold in the USA did not have an pure EV mode where as the ones sold in Europe did. I do not expect something like that but am i missing something obvious? As far as i am aware the Chevy is not made in England where as the Vauxhall is?

Both have a 1.4 Liter petrol engine? Why is it that big? You should only need a 10KW power source to keep going for ever at 70mph. By my estimates you would only need a 0.5 or 0.6 Liter engine. Thoughts?!

Comparing the price point then. Looks like the Chevy is 35.000 GBP and the Vauxhall is 37.250 GBP. Very similar.

Making a few quick calculations, a Ford Mondeo Zetec (i don't think comparing it to a Focus is fair) is roughly 19.700 GBP. With a comfortable 2.0 Liter engine they give a 53 mpg but i doubt that is realistic. Call it 40 mpg for arguments sake. Then the cars above have a suggested 235 mpg. We will take that with a pinch of salt as well and make it 175 mpg.

As the purchase cost difference is over 15.000 GBP you would have to save this in petrol costs over a reasonable 10 year lifespan of the car. From a finance point of view it would be 15.000 / 10 = 1500 GBP per year. Assuming an average petrol price of 1.50 GBP per liter would make that 1000 liters per year but we know that petrol prices keep rising every year so this is probably not fair.

Assume now that over those 10 years we will drive an estimated 100.000 miles. This is not far from what my car has on the clock right now.

100.000 / 40 = 2500 gallon
100.000 / 175 = 571 gallon

The difference is 1929 gallon or 8680 liters.

At 1.50 GBP/liter that would be 13.020 GBP. Only about 1980 GBP short.
At 1.60 GBP/liter that would be 13.888 GBP. Only about 1112 GBP short.
At 1.70 GBP/liter that would be 14.756 GBP. Still slightly short.

Over the last 5 years the petrol prices have gone up from 90 pence to 140 pence including a large drop in the price around the end of 2008 that i doubt we will see again soon but taking it in just i case. That is still a 55% increase over 5 years. Projecting that forwards means that in 5 years we can expect to pay 217 pence per liter at the pump. I won't even mention what it could be in 10 years time.

http://www.whatgas.com/petrol-prices/un ... rices.html

Then add that for my daily work commute i don't expect to use ANY petrol with this car. Infact i could drive up to 50 miles each day without having to use any petrol. That makes for a total of 182.500 petrol free miles over the course of 10 years. Something to keep in the back of your mind.

Lastly ofcourse we would be saving the planet? Yeah whatever.

I think you get what i am saying. This aint to bad once you start to look at the numbers.

J

jjmouris
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Re: Chevrolet Volt on News Night "Ethical man"

Postby jjmouris » Thu Mar 08, 2012 9:37 pm

http://www.chevrolet.co.uk/cars/volt/

I just noticed that there is still a 5000 GBP grant on getting this car bringing the price down to 30.000 GBP. In that case it's worth getting one even at lower petrol prices as the price difference is only 10.300 GBP.

The cost of 8680 liters;

At 1.10 GBP/liter = 9.548 GBP (slight loss of 752 GBP)
At 1.20 GBP/liter = 10.416 GBP
At 1.30 GBP/liter = 11.284 GBP
At 1.40 GBP/liter = 12.152 GBP
At 1.50 GBP/liter = 13.020 GBP
At 1.60 GBP/liter = 13.888 GBP
At 1.70 GBP/liter = 14.756 GBP (yup, 4456 GBP saving)

:D

DuncanB
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Re: Chevrolet Volt on News Night "Ethical man"

Postby DuncanB » Tue Apr 10, 2012 7:54 am

jjmouris wrote:Guys, does anybody know if there are any major differences between the Chevy Volt and the Vauxhall / Opel Ampera?

I mean to say, a Toyota Prius as sold in the USA did not have an pure EV mode where as the ones sold in Europe did. I do not expect something like that but am i missing something obvious? As far as i am aware the Chevy is not made in England where as the Vauxhall is?

Having put my money down on one of them I have a pretty good idea of the differences.

Both the Ampera and the Volt are built on the same Detroit-Hamtrack production line and shipped over. They have identical drive trains and even the insides look identical. Performance figures are also identical.

The main difference is the banana shaped front light assembly on the Ampera giving it a distinctive look. Also the Ampera is available in a wider range of colours in the UK than the Volt: there are 7 Volt colours in the US and they're only importing 4 of those for the Volt but all 7 are available for the Ampera. The Ampera has 3 trim levels: the mid range level 'Electron' has the same features as the UK Volt (leather seats, parking sensors, reversing camera); the top level 'Positiv' adds the satnav and Bose stereo which are also available on the Volt for the same price increment but without getting a different model name. The Ampera is £2,250 more expensive than the equivalent Volt but later this year there will be an entry level Ampera with cloth seats and without parking sensors or camera that will (they say) be priced at the same £29,995 OTR as the Volt. Both course charge identical supplements for any colour that isn't black.

The other significant difference is that the Volt has 2 UK dealers and the Ampera has 20 (both number may grow over time but those are the initial figures). I decided that having the nearest dealer 100 miles from me (Cambridge Chevrolet) rather than 30 miles away (Swindon Vauxhall dealer) was worth the £2k saving. Also unlike a lot of the reviews I actually prefer the Volt's looks though I would have liked a wider choice of colours. My Volt should arrive sometime in May.

Both have a 1.4 Liter petrol engine? Why is it that big? You should only need a 10KW power source to keep going for ever at 70mph. By my estimates you would only need a 0.5 or 0.6 Liter engine. Thoughts?!

Maybe to keep going that's all you need, but you also need to be able to accelerate up to 70mph in the first place, also you need power when driving uphill.

The way the Volt/Ampera works is that it has two motor/generators and one ICE. Under normal battery conditions the main motor does everything up to about 60mph at which point the second motor is brought in to reduce the rpm of the main motor back down into its most efficient range.
When the battery is depleted the ICE drives the secondary motor as a generator and the main motor continues to drive the car from the resulting electricity: there may be some slight charging of the battery in this mode if it gets too low, but basically it aims to sustain the charge but not increase it.

The fun starts when you accelerate above about 60mph in this mode as again it brings the second motor into the drive system only now that motor is directly coupled to the ICE so actually the ICE is providing power directly to the wheels. Someone on one of the US forums recorded all the motor states over a range of conditions and rather strangely (I thought) when accelerating from 90mph to 100mph the main motor was actually running backwards generating power for the secondary motor: so both ICE and secondary motor were providing torque on the same shaft.

I think the bottom line is that if the ICE and generator were completely separate from the wheels they could run at a constant speed and then a smaller ICE might be sufficient, but because the two motors are used together in varying speed combinations that means the ICE also has to vary its speed so it has to be bigger than would otherwise be the case.

Edit to add: I think you're right to take the 235mpg with a pinch of salt, but not necessarily the way you think. The actual figure is about 56mpg combined when running purely on petrol and infinite on battery (since the official figures ignore the electricity costs). That means if you only ever drive on battery you can get mpg figures in the thousands: there's a leader-board at voltstats.net which shows at least 20 Volt owners with better than 1000mpg, but they still come in about 90mpge when you account for the electricity. On the other hand if you consistently drive way beyond the petrol range you'll get a much lower figure.

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Kevin Sharpe
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Re: Chevrolet Volt on News Night "Ethical man"

Postby Kevin Sharpe » Tue Apr 10, 2012 5:49 pm

Kevin Sharpe - Founder and Patron for UK registered charity Zero Carbon World. Founder and Chairman Mainpine Group. http://about.me/kevinsharpe


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