GM's new Volt

Alternative energy sources
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The usual. As I have two large solar PV systems here, and my lab assistant just put one in, and others are interested in things like this, here's where that stuff goes. This is mostly for things that work now, not "gee someday a fusor will do this" -- we know that, but it's not someday yet.
The hope is to save anyone embarking on this sort of thing a lot of wasted time and money, as at least I have been off the grid since 1980 and have had a lot of practice (and made mistakes you won't have to).

Re: GM's new Volt

Postby Doug Coulter » Fri Jan 06, 2012 10:51 am

Ah yes, the battery flap. It's pretty much just an excuse for the big-oil astroturfers to come out. No, only one has fired - that was the side impact test (60 mph into a concrete pole) followed by a rollover, followed by letting the wreck sit for 3 weeks. They then crashed some more cars, couldn't replicate it. Then they crashed some battery packs alone and got one to spark 1 week after. Total fires: 1. Total fires in occupied cars: 0, despite a few Volts being totaled by owners. In other words, as rigged a situation at 60 minutes TV putting pyro into gasoline cars to show they catch fire, as they did a few years back. I knew about all this before I bought the car - I'd hope that I'm out of a totaled car before a week or three! NHSTA didn't discharge the batteries - as all first responders are trained to do (and there are instructions printed under the hood and elsewhere how). These batteries run in antifreeze for temp management. It appears what has to happen is a coolant breach, and a short in the pack - both - to get the situation. SInce they live in what would have been the drive-shaft hump in an older car, that's fairly hard to do as is - the thing has a 5 star side impact rating for good reasons.

Jerry - GM is doing that now, every cell in the pack has a PCB associated with it.

GM has sent volt owners two letters on the matter (Fedex and on expensive paper too). The first, a couple months ago, offers to buy back the car, or let you have a free loaner (like a Cadillac) till they fix it. The other one, I got yesterday, which details the "fix" if you want it. It's kind of silly - they add some metal in the hump that connects to two side-impact bars under the front seats so it can't be crushed there. Looking at the geometry, sure, but the thing is - and where it is - any crushing would have gone through the driver first...in other words, no point from where I sit. And coming up with this "fix" means now the astroturfers have something to work with, so they're cranking it up even harder.

Volt owners rejected the buyback and the loaner at roughly 100% rates. Many are talking about rejecting the "Fix" as it involves dropping the battery packs, and hardly anyone thinks their dealer is as good a mechanic as the factory - it ain't broke, so don't fix it. There is a Volt forums site out there, not GM affiliated, where we all hang out - and to be honest, it makes the Apple fanbois look like carefully considered and rational people - this car really inspires extreme reactions. I know I'm loving mine. It sure is cool to drive this thing around, silent, on power from my solar array (even in winter), and demo it for people.
Here's the volt site. Like here, they have a "whats new" button you can see the discussion on all this. http://gm-volt.com/forum/index.php Turns out a good number of owners are also solar system owners FWIW.
Some GM engineers hang out there, but it's not a GM site.


I don't know how it is overseas, but here there is STILL a huge "debate" over things like greenhouse effect and climate change with various denials that such a thing could exists, and even if it does, could man affect it. There is a huge amount of astroturfing going on about that one, so much you can recognize the personalities doing it after awhile, through their web handles (no liars use their real names? But they have distinct writing styles, gives them away).

Funny thing, when one of the "conservative" (eg right wing crazies who are actually very radical) news outfits publish that there's still "scientific controversy" about this, the scientists they trot out turn out to be mostly unpublished losers from some other field, who work for something like "the oil foundation" - eg paid shills off big-oils lunch-money. My stock trading endeavor has taught me to follow the money, always, and some on how to do that. What's funny - it's the same guys spreading all the trash on the Volt. In other words, big oil is paying them to tell lies under false identities, and they have plenty of money to do it with, obviously. It's especially rampant in the stock trading business, as there are some real serious vested interests (multi billionaires) who own wells and processing facilities for oil that aren't liquid - they can't easily get out - and they are running scared. A frightened extremely wealthy group is a serious opponent.
(I own part of a well in Kansas myself, and part of another in someplace else midwest, I get royalties - but that share is real hard to sell due to various regulations and tax issues).

I thought the climate change thing was pretty well nailed myself, by a NASA ten year time lapse of the arctic with the NW passage opening up for the first time in recorded history in the last few hears. Gotta find the link to that one again, it's pretty impressive. And if it wasn't happening - then why is there all this flap between Russia, Canada, and US over who gets the juicy new resources uncovered now that all the ice is melting? Why now and not before? Because without the ice, you can get to them now. Doh. Yeah, there's no ice melt.

It's the same guys doing this! Having learned that, credibility of the right-wing-nuts has taken a further dive in my eyes. The other 9/10th of them are what we call "useful idiots" - they just say what their "heros" in the radical right wing tell them to with no thought involved. Our main stream media is now not so careful not to spread outright lies in the pursuit of ratings - they don't even seem to care when they get caught anymore - they are no longer even being careful to cover their tracks. In fact, Fox news (owned by R Murdoch) recently took a fight to court, and won the right to tell outright fabrications and call it news. Nuff said. I'm sure you all know about Rupert.

So the upshot is, this is more political than anything else, and there are certain interests with way too much money doing what they can to protect their own rice-bowl. What is hilarious is that this same crowd is the one decrying the loss of industry in the US, sending jobs to China and Canada and Mexico - yet when we make something really cool, even revolutionary here - it's not "politically correct" in their eyes, because it doesn't support big oil, meddling in the Mideast, and the military industrial complex that thrives off oil wars. Go figure.

Myself, I have no political axe to grind here - same as my solar system. It's about personal freedom and personal power for me, not "green" or any other agenda.

I am halfway through my second tank of gas now - at 1600 miles. The tank is 8.5 gallons. The rest was solar power, even around the solstice. It's only going to get better. Which reminds me, I've got to go plug the thing in, as I have a date tonight (haven't talked about this, but I've separated from my SO recently and am on the prowl again - hide your daughters). You know, the Camaro did draw the crowds, and the chicks, but they just talked about it. The Volt, they want a ride in... works for me!

Here's some pix of what they want to do, showing how ridiculous this all is:
http://gm-volt.com/forum/showthread.php ... attery-Fix

I'll keep the car, long story short, and probably not have this done. Too much chance of "Mr Goodwrench" screwing something up in the process, to add 2 more lbs of weight where it won't matter unless I'm dead already. NHSTA should take some blame for not discharging the pack as all first responders are trained to do in a real wreck, and then reporting this as if it was something common in real life.

The upshot is that GM is actually selling these as fast as they can manufacture them, it's hard to find one to test drive. I got on to a connection in the financial press, a car guy himself, about this, and he did a report on Bloomberg TV news last night about it and told the truth - hope he doesn't get fired over it. GM is going to give him a two week loan of one to play with and be seen on TV in...cool. Turns out my reputation as a trader had some other uses.

Gm's having a web chat on all this today at noon my time here:
http://www.chevroletvoltage.com/index.p ... -chat.html

///////

On the heat thing - one thing you can do is pre-start the car while still on the charger, to get the cabin warm off house power. You can even do this from the web - the car is 'net connected. The heat lasts a good while after that - heat generation from anything else in the car is automatically directed to the heater if it's on anyway so you only are running a fan and a circulation pump. I've also been pointed to some aftermarket heated wheel accessories - cheezy, but they'd work for me, and I might just make my out from bakeout heat tape for that part of the year.
Posting as just me, not as the forum owner. Everything I say is "in my opinion" and YMMV -- which should go for everyone without saying.
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Re: GM's new Volt

Postby chrismb » Fri Jan 06, 2012 8:20 pm

Doug Coulter wrote:I thought the climate change thing was pretty well nailed myself, by a NASA ten year time lapse of the arctic with the NW passage opening up for the first time in recorded history in the last few hears. Gotta find the link to that one again, it's pretty impressive. And if it wasn't happening - then why is there all this flap between Russia, Canada, and US over who gets the juicy new resources uncovered now that all the ice is melting? Why now and not before? Because without the ice, you can get to them now. Doh. Yeah, there's no ice melt.


Of course there's climate change. There always is.... We're in the middle of an ice age, and we're in an interglacial within that ice age. The climate is particularly variable during interglacials. Sometime soon, Greenland will be re-cultivated again for crops, just like it was 1,000 years ago. It's inevitable, just like the ice melting - inevitable.

The only surprising part of all this climate change stuff is that anyone is surprised by it! I guess it's too convenient and irresistible a lever for Government and Big-Business to miss pulling to make a new tax/profit scam work.
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Re: GM's new Volt

Postby Doug Coulter » Sat Jan 07, 2012 1:02 pm

Actually, there are short and long cycle ice ages, yeah - earth wobbles in orbit. What's messed up is that the next short cycle ice age is supposed to be starting over the next 50 years (basically, repeat the "dark ages" - but we're going the other way at present, which according to things like ice cores, has never happened - it's been like clockwork for the last 6-7 cycles, not this time.

I think you have to suspect that doubling and tripling the greenhouse gas content of the atmosphere since before the industrial revolution probably did have some effect - and that's what we've done. For CO2, it was ~100ppm historically. Last I heard, about 20 years ago it was ~340 ppm. Not enough volcanoes to account for that, not even close, but if you add up all the stuff we've burned - in fact quite a lot of CO2 has gone missing - oceans and places like that have been eating some. Add in some methane (which is really pouring out of the thawing tundra now, on top of the cows) and freon that wipes out the ozone and allows more sun to get to earth....not so good if you didn't want a change. I'm not one that believes all change would be for the worse, myself, but some is for sure - causing migrations of diseases and such - already happening. Trees have issues adapting fast. Whole systems are having issues - coral reefs due to too much UV and too acid an ocean (that CO2 again).

The really scary ones are the jet stream, and the gulf stream. I live because of the former - it's where the rain goes. You do from the latter - else you'd be frozen solid most of the year. These are not super stable currents, and if one moves a couple hundred miles -- England freezes, or American no longer has water where the crops are grown. We've built cities everywhere else - so we can't just easily pick up and move all that. Those are the real deals. Ocean rising a bit - well, most people don't have to live in the coast. Whole ecosystems collapsing - might not be so nice for our part in things. Earth, and life survive fine no matter what, it just might get a lot less friendly for humans. Anyway, both those currents are driven by temperature differentials between places on earth - and those differentials are being reduced at the fastest rate ever recorded (with ice cores and other tech, we can look back pretty far - and trapped bubbles give us historical CO2 and other atmospheric composition).

The thing is - there really is no disagreement on this (nothing serious, just questions of how much) between real climatologists, or for that matter, as far as I can tell, outside the USA much at all. Just astroturfing by vested interests. The Sheeple aren't bothering to educate themselves (not as much fun as some reality show on the telly), and frankly both sides are bending the truth quite a lot for political reasons and money - extremists who've found a way to get attention - and income.

I saw a cool interview on Charlie Rose with Elon Musk (of Tesla motors and SpaceX fame) and Bob Lutz - the car guy behind the volt. Bob is a "denier" and Elon is on the other side. I though his response was best.
We're doing one hell of an experiment with the planet, one we can't be sure of hitting the "restart game" button on - no matter what you think here. Sounds like a reasonable position to me - and there are only a very few wackos that think fossil fuels are endless - and even deny that origin - obviously math challenged or have never busted up a chunk of coal and looked inside. And we actually do know what the climate was like when all that carbon was last above ground - dinosaurs, middle of the US underwater...and so on.
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Re: GM's new Volt

Postby chrismb » Sat Jan 07, 2012 6:57 pm

I did make a submission to the recent EPA investigation into whether to regard 'CO2' as a 'hazardous pollutant gas' (for the purpose of regulating tailpipe emissions).

My point was missed for all the 'lefty' over the top reactions piling in that swamped the public 'call'. And when I mean 'lefty', I mean much of this has been hijacked by people who think Big-Brother Government is best, and 'AGW' is the way to bring that power into being.

But let's not drift into politics - I'll stick with the EPA point, and to-do-with-cars: The point I submitted was that it doesn't make the blindest bit of difference what the cause is, nor how big a stick Big Gov equips itself to 'deal' with the issue, because if the engineers today are given no targets or punitive targets, they'd STILL want to try to build a car that can do 200mpg. Makes no difference whether there is or is not AGW to them. Similarly, the average Joe feels the cost of fuel in his wallet and would love to do what you're doing. There is a ready market there, and it doesn't at all matter what the cause and 'tax-effect' is.

So, I'm flat out unconvinced by AGW, but what the heck - we'd come to the same conclusions on what to do next anyhow, just like any sensible person would. The use of punitive taxes to 'deal' with 'it' is just 'punitive taxes' and they serve no real purpose. There is no function between Gov action, or inaction, and CO2 emissions - everyone would want to reduce them simply because it represents a pure cost and waste of essential resources, and sticks-and/or-carrots ain't gonna change a thing. It's all in the land of politico-spin and serves no purpose I can see.
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Re: GM's new Volt

Postby Doug Coulter » Sun Jan 08, 2012 4:42 pm

As I've probably said elsewhere (quoting Issac Asimov) - a fire eater will eat fire - even if he must kindle it himself. Like you, I don't see the point of the politics, this isn't that type of issue at this point, but many fire eaters see some fire to eat, and collect money around - which gets us to politics again. And sure, the lefties are all for big brother government until they find out they aren't big brother - only a few get that status, and it ain't gonna be them. Like they say in the trading business, look around the table - if you don't know who the mark is, you're it. They are as duped by the process as any other sheep, and in this case, self-duping, what's called "useful idiots" by those in actual control.

On the other hand, I have actually followed the money to the deniers - and it's real as can be, considerable, ongoing, and all coming from the fossil fuel business and going to otherwise out of work "scientists" who work for places like "the oil institute". Funny thing that. With this many trillions at stake, you'd better believe these guys will put in lunch money to forestall an outcome that's bad for them. An oil well isn't exactly a liquid investment you can sell off quick...

Over on the volt forums - a good percentage of people are doing the solar thing with them...now that's revolutionary. The difference between 20 mpg (Camaro) and 40 (Cruze) is good, but the difference between "any" and "none" - now, that's really something.

And as you point out - we all want that for other reasons anyway, so what's the fuss?
Posting as just me, not as the forum owner. Everything I say is "in my opinion" and YMMV -- which should go for everyone without saying.
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Re: GM's new Volt - SNOW!

Postby Doug Coulter » Sun Jan 15, 2012 2:58 pm

Well, this turned out to be a non-event. We got about 3" of fine powder overnight, finally, so I got to see how she works in snow. I don't have the Eskimo snow vocabulary here, but it was medium slippery for walking, even if that was over rough gravel or grass underneath, so a fairly decent test was possible. I first tried going up out of my usual parking spot, which gives me about on length on kinda-flat, then about 1 length on a steep (~40 deg?) slope up to the road, and you have to make a hard right coming off the slope - this is about where you're going to lose it if you do. Long story short, nope, zero issues. Then I tried to go to the corner and back. There's another steep hill on the way there (that first quarter mile usually takes one mile off my estimated range, which I get back going down hills shortly thereafter). This hill has been the bane of winter here, as it's also a tight turn, so you can't really get enough of a run to take the top without sliding off in the middle - and the penalty for that is...errrm (pun alert) steep. 6 foot deep ditch on the outside, cliff on the inside. So I've made it partway up numerous times in lesser cars and worse conditions, with a nail biting backing back down trying to just stay on the road at all for another attempt, or the give up drive back home. Again, no issues here - the Volt just gobbled it up, though I did do the ideal runup on it - habit, to get a near zero side Gee on the banked turn.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vr8krYzS18

I was then going to try "twirl the car" as I've never gotten this thing really loose and it's good policy to learn how things go before you need to know in an emergency. Sadly, no joy there - in the church parking lot, I just couldn't get it loose. It just slowed itself, did selective braking and so on, and I just went in a circle like I would have on dry pavement, only slower. No donuts, no rear end kickout, nothing, boring, and by the time I realized I was just going to have to turn the traction control off, I'd pretty much wiped out the parking lot of virgin snow to play on. Another time, perhaps. On the way back, I tried sport mode full throttle on the still covered road, and again, nothing spectacular - I might have turned the front tires one whole extra rotation total in a zero to 40 blast. I then tried a panic stop. I did lose a little off to the side the road was sloped toward, and the braking was "weird" - you could definitely feel it doing it's ABS thing in some sort of computer panic - but the thing by golly stopped, and stopped HARD. So now I know I can take this out in the nasty to rescue people rather than having to fire up the truck, unless they need pulled out of the ditch. The advantage of course is that the Volt heats right now, no wait for warmup in the cabin.

Also found this neat vid about the drivetrain. That engineer chick ain't too hard on the eyes either.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9-9atMw6Zs
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Re: GM's new Volt - sense of humor

Postby Doug Coulter » Mon Jan 23, 2012 3:04 pm

A sense of humor is a terrible thing to waste. I got some flame stick on decals from here: http://www.drtorch.com/TraditionalFlames.htm# - cheap and good service, and put a couple on the Volt. These are removable (I tested) I suppose if you don't let them sun bake on there too terribly long. I'm trying to figure out which one might go best on the gas cap (need to find a lightning bolt for the charge cap) and the hood, but you get the idea. Forestall the silliness by taking it head on.
Frontflames.jpg

These were Dr Torches #24's. $3 a pop, not too bad for a good joke.
The other side:
FlamesLeft.jpg
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Re: GM's new Volt

Postby Joe Jarski » Fri Feb 10, 2012 6:30 pm

I was at the Chevy dealership today picking up some parts and took a Volt for a spin. That thing sure feels space shippy inside. The instrument panel, starter and all that stuff feels strange... Not to mention how quiet it is.
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Re: GM's new Volt

Postby Doug Coulter » Fri Feb 10, 2012 8:27 pm

I hope you got a chance to hammer it in sport mode + L on the shifter. L in this car has nothing to do with gearing, but with regeneration - the car hardly needs brakes in that mode except at stop signs. Take your foot off the "gas" and it just stops - recharging the battery with the energy. I'm getting rust on my rotors! In fact, this leads to a product idea for these. I've had "issues" with some idiot on their phone not noticing I'm stopping in that mode - it doesn't turn on the brake lights. So I dreamed up a concept of having a replica stoplight hanging in the back window, hooked to an accelerometer. Red lights up on decel, green on accel, and yellow on accel in any direction (use a 2 axis sensor). Plug it into a power jack - cool for any car.

One thing that takes some getting used to, but it cool, is how it's "always on the torque peak". No shifts normally (you can sometimes feel it if the IC engine clutches in at over 50 - it's like turning on NOs), it just friggin goes, no delays at all. It can be pretty interesting to just put the hammer down and go 0-90 or so - it just keeps accelerating hard the whole way and can kinda get ahead of you - nothing like the Camaro of course, but pretty doggone good. At first, you don't realize how fast it is without all the sturm und drang from a noisy engine to cue you in. But if you "just happen" to get into a go with a normal sedan, it becomes obvious quick how well it'll do.

Sport mode just remaps the throttle so it feels more peppy - full throttle is the same in any mode. To get a burnout, you have to turn off the traction control (overhead button). The car won't deliver full torque till about 20 mph, so a left turn shows it best - right near the end, the front tires light off - and stay lit off, sweet. Normal mode, in D is the most like a "normal" car - it coasts more when you let off the throttle, and creeps when you take off the brake - it's obviously mainly for newbies to the car. Everyone who has one winds up in sport mode, in D for high speeds where you're probably better off coasting more(?), and L for around town, but again, those aren't gears - they are mappings. I just drive it in low all the time. At 60mph+, though, it brakes pretty hard when you lift.

Mountain mode just sets the threshold where the gas engine comes on to "45%" of battery, so you can reserve some for climbing mountains - in full throttle you can wind up using all 3 motors - the IC engine, and both electric ones (this is pretty sporty!). I have been using it right around that charge threshold to get the engine to run on purpose as I leave the house. This gives you heat that doesn't cost electricity. Once the coolant loop is hot, I switch back to sport mode - it'll stay hot for a good while, and for once you got every single bit of goodness out of the gasoline - shaft power (either direct or into the batteries) and the waste heat for the cabin. I've recently found that you can force engine run (at least at less than full charge) that will also charge batteries - even sitting in the driveway - and heat things up too - for me, it's way worth burning a cup of gas to keep my charge intact in the morning when I don't have spare solar power to "precondition" the car cab with electricity. You can indeed do that with it plugged in (just start the car and turn on the heater) but the electric heater heats the coolant loop...and it eats a ton of power doing that (several KW). That's what "normal" people do - just start the car with it plugged in to heat it up, so the heat comes out of the wall socket, more or less (the heater can actually draw much more power than the wall socket can provide, though, so it takes awhile to catch back up to full charge after that).

Yeah, it's space-shippy. Kind of fun, that. The stereo kicks pretty good, a bit of a peak in the higher midrange, but I can stand it. I've burned a bunch of USB sticks with content to put in there, kinda by mood, and just put them on "random" - works for me. I hate Sirius myself - too expensive and terrible fidelity compared to the other options. I've also burned some CDs with mpegs with a few albums apiece that I toss in the tray behind the shifters so passengers can see something they might like.

I put HID headlights in mine - real photon torpedoes. I might to some of the other lights as high power leds, dunno. One of the guys on the Volt board has them, and they look cool - particularly the backup and license plate lights. The inside lights are incandescent, which works well with that GM "theater lighting" fading up and down. Only the one in the cargo bay might want to be brighter.
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Re: GM's new Volt

Postby Joe Jarski » Sun Feb 12, 2012 8:05 pm

No, I didn't get a chance to wring it out. I was short on time and we were getting the first of several inches of snow. I just put it in whatever the normal drive mode is - didn't go very far. I want to go back and try it again and figure out where all of toys are on it.

The sort of "linear" acceleration without any shifting throws off my perception of speed. It does seem to handle pretty nice, but that needs some more testing in dry conditions too. ;)
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