General Motors’ shift from an internal combustion engine-producing company to one that makes electric motors is sputtering. EV sales are up, but growing slower than expected. The company’s next-generation Ultium platform, in particular, isn’t meeting expectations. GM’s new electric trucks and SUVs seem perennially delayed — or full of buggy software.
I think I have an easy solution to a lot of these problems: bring back the Chevy Volt.
Remember the Volt, GM’s scrappy Toyota Prius fighter from the mid-2010s? The company was lauded when it first came out in 2010 as a prescient bet on vehicles with electric powertrains. And it was undeniably a very good hybrid. The first-generation model got 36 miles of electric range before the gas kicked in, while later versions would get a whopping 53 miles of electric range.
Was a fan of the Volt when it first came out, but since buying a Bolt a year ago, I’m a full electric convert. Unless you do a lot of road trips, I think a pure EV would be better for most whose daily drive is usually <100mi (for the 1-2 big trips we do, a rental works better anyway). A big draw for going fully electric was practically no maintenance, zero trips to the gas station, and more cost effective to charge (we have solar). A PHEV still has to contend with some of these.
The other benefits were just icing on the cake, such as one-pedal driving, no noxious emissions, and federal/state incentives (tax credits, carpool lane access, discounted tolls, utilities rebates, etc.)
But I can still see the appeal especially if one doesn’t have easy access to a L2 charger.
Plug in hybrid is going to be my next car. We live 100 from the closest EV charger. I’ll of course put a charger in at my house, but even the closest Walmart is a 30 mile drive one way.
I cannot justify an electric vehicle right now purely because I’m going to rely on only my house to keep my car charged. The day we get a L2 charger anywhere within a 10 minute drive of my house, I’d love to make the switch.
Honestly, it sounds like you do a lot of driving and a full-electric car would save you a lot! I can understand not wanting to put all your eggs in one basket charging at home, but if you also have an ICE car you won’t be totally stuck by an extended power outage or whatever. Give full-BEV some thought. Eventually you realize you don’t need to charge anywhere but home, aside from road trips and rare power outages. The only times I use public charging within 50 miles from home is when it’s free (who am I to turn down free juice?) Plus, as far as power outages go, an EV is an asset: my car doesn’t support vehicle-to-load (V2L) or anything, but I have an inverter I can plug into the 12-volt battery that can run a fridge for a few days or so.
Fwiw, after two months of owning an EV, with a L2 charger at home, I’ve used an outside charger only once, and it was 110 miles away. I also converted to an induction stove this year, so the stove circuit cost about the same as the charger circuit (plus the charger was $500) … both are 50a
So far, the range thing is a real issue. My car supposedly has a 330 mile range under ideal conditions, but they never are. In the cold, with pre-heating and a loaded up car, and my son the speed-demon driving, 110 miles was 52% of the battery. If you do consider an EV and live where there is winter, my experience is to expect only 2/3 the advertised range
Which is my concern. In the middle of nowhere where I’m at we regularly go to that city with a charger 100 miles away. It’s where hardware stores, furniture stores, cheaper groceries, clothing stores and pretty much anything else you can’t buy at a gas station are. If we go in the winter, unless we go to the mall where the charger is and deliberately walk around every. Single. Time. We won’t have the range to go to that city and drive to every store we would usually go to.
Yeah, I’ve been living in an urban area long enough to forget what that’s like. Certainly it’s tougher where things are spread out more.
I always thought the Volt was the smartest hybrid implementation.
I’m guessing that updating the batteries while leaving the rest unchanged could really boist those already great range numbers. It could essentially be electric for commuting, hybrid for travel.
This is exactly how I use my volt. It’s the perfect car.
That’s how every PHEV works…
I’d like my next vehicle to be an electric one, and a used Volt was the main one I was considering. I hope GM brings it back.
The Volt did nothing wrong.
Didn’t it catch fire on occasion?
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40ish mpg on gas, 5mi/kwhr on a nice day with no AC. I love my Volt.
Eh GM ditched CarPlay/android auto so pretty hard to consider any car they build as a serious option
Subaru also started adding seat heating controls and other “previously a knob” items to their shitty large and laggy screen.
It’s like they are on a race to alienate consumers with dumb decisions. Previously you could rip out the garbage they put in and called infotainment, now you are stuck with it since it is “part of the car” and serves some function not available otherwise…
Oh wow. We got the first ascent which was visibly bigger in size than the following models. They made the screen bigger which doesn’t seem like an upgrade. They made a pretty good user friendly console and a good driving assist with Eyesight. They shouldn’t “update” those.
My issue with the Volt is just that is was really crappy to be inside. It was a terrible Chevy interior combined with lack of space due to them trying to fit batteries into a platform that wasn’t designed for it.
Yes, it was great on paper. But when it came time to test drive one I was really turned off.
Chevy should indeed bring back a PHEV option because they’re just the most sensible choice for the most people until the charging infrastructure gets better. But the Volt kinda sucked so they should do something better like the Bolt.
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Absolutely. I have a 2016 Volt and I love it. I’ve gone 4200 miles between fill-ups; I charge at home and only fill up when I go on a long trip or the car decides the gas is too old. I get all the benefits of an EV, all the benefits of a hybrid, and all the benefits of a gas-car. Plug-in hybrids are a better way forward than full EV’s.
I have a 2014 bought used in 2017 and it’s been a great car. Oil change every 2 years and gas for road trips or every few months. Day to day driving rarely runs the engine. I just wish it had 3 seats in the back instead of 2.
That would be cool, but since GM have decided they are no longer including Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, any renewed Chevy Volt would just worthless pile of steel, lithium, and carbon. Might as well have the factory dump them straight into a landfill.
I’d prefer to buy a vehicle without these things.
Well you wouldn’t want GM’s alternative. They are killing these features so they can charge you a subscription for shittier versions of things you already get for free on your phone, like GPS navigation.
The way the Volt was originally pitched gasoline generator, fully electric drive train should be the way it is brought back. I’m fully convinced the reason GM made the change to hybrid drive train for the volt is because you wouldn’t have to pay gas tax on the gasoline and the government made a request.
Wait, what? AFAIK the Volt was always a serial hybrid (gas engine charges batteries, which powers the motor that moves the car). And I have no idea what kind of government request was made here that wouldn’t apply to other PHEVs or fully-electric cars
The volt is a traditional hybrid where both the gasoline engine and electric motor can both power the drive train. Before the initial production year GM changed it from the gasoline generator electric drive train to the traditional hybrid. Sorry for the late reply, I had to find a source:
https://jalopnik.com/chevy-volt-engine-wont-recharge-batteries-while-driving-5054642
Also, it was just my theory on why it was changed via government request. It was about this time the government bailed out GM
That was published 2 years before production started.
Skimming through another article, it looks like the gas engine does power the car, but only at high speeds when electric efficiency goes way down and when the battery runs out. And it does charge the battery as well by spinning the motor (turning it into a generator) at the same place the power gets sent to the wheels. https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid-electric/a6179/chevy-volt-hybrid-drive-system/ (Ctrl+F “series hybrid”)
Ultimately, the parallel/serial hybrid question seems to be answered best with “it depends” but the whole “government wants the gas tax” theory seems to be blown by the fact that the car can run on electric-only just fine in the correct circumstances.
2 years before production started
Yes, as I said, it was originally hyped to be all electric drive and the gasoline engine was just a range extender to charge the batteries only. It was never supposed to actually turn the wheels on the car directly. I was actually exited for all electric drive in a car, but was bummed out when GM changed it before it started production. You should check out Edison Motors who are implementing this concept in their work truck and semi truck applications.
The problem with taxes is that any gas or diesel purchased not for directly powering the drive train for a vehicle operated on a highway isn’t subject to fuel taxes. It’s why refrigerated trailers, off road farm equipment, and generators aren’t subject to regular taxes meant to pay for roads. It’s also why untaxed fuel is dyed so if you’re caught using untaxed fuel for propulsion on a highway you’ll get a pretty big fine. If the gasoline engine is just a generator for making electricity, you could argue that any gasoline purchased for the Volt would not be subject to road taxes.
Eh, the spirit of the car being very usable on electric-only is still there. The engine does charge the battery, but I’ll grant that I learned that it’s not its only purpose as I thought. But the lack of gas tax theory is a huge stretch to be honest. Even if you manage to make the legal argument that it shouldn’t be taxed, it’s pretty easy to then say it’s an electric vehicle and subject to those registration fees (albeit at the state level, and not all states have that yet). Plus, how many people have easy access to dyed non-road fuel? Especially unleaded? I’m not driving half an hour away to save a few bucks on a tank of gas.
Farmers get dyed fuel delivered to their farms all the time. It’s a pretty standard operating procedure. All major chain Truck stops have the option at every pump to pump untaxed fuel (for refrigerated trailers), though most of those pumps aren’t dyed. Older truck stops have a separate pump specifically for dyed diesel.
Also the electric drive train ice range extender doesn’t get energy from one source. That issue has not been addressed tax wise.
Right… All sparsely-populated areas with demographics that have almost no interest in anything but a pickup truck or maybe an SUV. And again, doesn’t most of that heavy equipment using all that fuel run on diesel? The Volt certainly doesn’t.
They can’t just turn the Volt tap back on. Suppliers aren’t supplying the parts anymore, GM likely doesn’t have the dies/stamps anymore, it’s all gone save for low volume replacement parts. They’d have to design it new from scratch. And that is a 4 year process, from design concept to production.
Know what else they can do in 4 years? Ramp Ultium. And that’s what they’re going to do.
You’re not wrong, it’s just not as simple an idea as one would think.
You don’t think they could make a die in 6 months with cad drawings? It’s not like they’ve forgotten about and deleted all relevant documents about a vehicle they designed.
