The Volt Recharges My Batteries
I’ve been fascinated by the Chevy Volt since the day I heard about the concept.
Which is this: it’s an electric car without the short range of electric cars.
Usually, when your electric car’s battery dies, you’re dead on the road. You have no choice but to tow it, or wait hours for it to recharge.
General Motors’ concept is to equip the Volt with a tiny gas-powered generator that can power the electric motor even after the battery’s dead. It’s sort of like a reverse Prius: instead of having a gasoline-fed car assisted by a battery, it’s an electric car assisted by gasoline.
It’s a huge gamble and a huge challenge. Three years ago, I interviewed Bob Lutz, General Motors’ vice president of product development, about how difficult the Volt project was. Especially developing a battery that can last 10 years (it’s warrantied for eight), work in blazing heat and freezing cold and have enough capacity to power the car for 40 miles a day on electricity alone. (That, says G.M., covers the driving needs of 82 percent of Americans.)
Otherwise, though, Mr. Lutz’s 2007 vision remains largely intact—including the part about releasing the car before the end of 2010. G.M. hopes to deliver the first orders in December to people living in seven areas: California, Washington, D.C., Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Austin, Tex. In the next 18 months, it will expand availability to the rest of the country.
This last weekend, I spent three hours driving the Volt through New York and Connecticut. The driving entailed things as diverse as the snarls of New York Marathon traffic chaos, highway pedal-to-the-metal stuff and suburban side streets.
The car is a good-looking compact, although it’s much more conventional-looking than in early prototypes. But inside, it’s pretty radical. The center console is hard plastic, with touch-sensitive words like Time, Config and Back. It’s very techy (and very confusing).
The battery is an enormous, 300-pound, T-shaped affair on the floor. It’s disguised by central storage consoles, but it goes all the way to the back of the car, even separating the back seats. In other words, this car seats four, not five.
The instrument panel is an LCD screen, complete with a green leafy ball that rises or falls depending on the efficiency of your driving. Brake or accelerate too hard, and the little orb leaves its comfy center zone. The screen also clearly illustrates how many more miles you’ll get out of the battery—and then, once it’s exhausted, out of the gas generator.
When you get home, of course, you’ll want to plug the car in overnight to recharge. For $500, plus installation, you can get a 240-volt recharging stand installed in your garage; it rejuices the battery in about four hours. Or you can plug the car into a regular outlet, which takes 8 to 10 hours. The special charging cord has a built-in flashlight that helps you see as you plug it into a socket just ahead of the driver’s door.
I won’t kid you: it’s a fun and fascinating car to drive. It’s not what you’d call a dragster; the Volt goes 0 to 60 miles per hour in 9 seconds. But it’s incredibly quiet, even when the gas engine kicks in. And as with any electric, accelerating is a blast. The torque is completely different from a gas car. The push back into your seat is immediate.
Once I’d used up the battery, the gas kicked in. What’s a little weird is that you can hear the soft sound of the gas engine running even after you take your foot off the accelerator. That’s because the engine runs to produce electricity, not to turn the car’s wheels. It’s a little power plant that runs independently of your acceleration.
The Volt recharges its own battery when you brake, thanks to regenerative technology that translates the car’s momentum back into electricity as you slow down. On a Prius, this kind of brake feels no different from conventional ones; on the Volt, I could sense a difference when the regeneration was taking place. There was a slightly different feeling when the regular friction brakes kicked in, which happens when you brake hard.
A few other cool touches: in the top center of the dashboard there’s a bright indicator that lights up green when the car is charging and flashes when the charge is full. It’s placed there so you can peek out your window or garage door and know, just by glancing through the windshield, the status of the charge.
This is cool, too: you can monitor the car’s charge on an iPhone app. You can even warm up the cabin using the app, by remote control, so that it’s toasty on winter days when you’re ready to drive. (A button on the keyless entry fob can also trigger the warming-up.) How does that work? The Volt connects to the cell network. It comes with five years of free OnStar, the service that connects your car to GM operators for roadside assistance and things like remote door-unlocking.
I have no idea if the Volt will take off and become popular. If so, it will take years—both because of the initial price and because of the low production (10,000 cars in 2011). I also have no idea what the Volt’s true miles-per-gallon rating is. It’s such a departure from regular cars, and even hybrids, that the Environmental Protection Agency hasn’t yet figured out how to measure it. (On battery power, the M.P.G. is nearly infinite. On gas, it’s around 35. On average, it’ll be—what, 75? 150?)
But I love the concept, I love that it’s stodgy old General Motors that’s zigging in this direction and I love that it finally brought this thing to market. I guess you could say that the Volt electric car has me energized.
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/11/the-volt-recharges-my-batteries/?ref=personaltechemail&nl=technology&emc=cta2
