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
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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.