The greater profits on luxury vehicles may allow it to make money on electric cars sooner than if they had to compete at mass-market Chevy prices. Analyst Lindland echoes Posawatz's thought.
That spoke to several factors: lack of infrastructure, range anxiety even among dedicated EV drivers, and the confidence of having a backup gasoline engine if needed. Volt owners, it turned out, were more than willing to drive electric as much as they practically could—and hence discover they covered fewer daily miles than they believed, just as usage data predicted.
Perhaps GM is looking further down the road. With mass-priced mile battery-electric cars coming by or so—on which it says it can make money—why should it spend the money on a plug-in hybrid to serve as an electric car when it can provide an actual electric car?
This speaks to the conservative approach taken by GM battery engineers, who provided liquid cooling and heating not only for the motor that powered the car, but for the battery itself. Stories of Volt battery degradation outside of the odd manufacturing flaw are essentially nonexistent.
Nissan took a more cost-effective approach with its Leaf battery, which is passively conditioned, meaning it simply sheds heat into the air. In the hottest climates, or under repeated extreme use, Leaf batteries notably lose capacity over time—far more capacity than do Volt batteries. This author recalled being asked by Silicon Valley venture capitalist in whether Chevy had any dealerships on the San Francisco Peninsula there were five.
He knew the locations of his Audi, BMW, Honda, Mercedes, and Toyota dealers, and of course Tesla, but had never registered Chevrolet—and never remotely conceived of owning one. But those owners were very, very different from traditional Chevrolet car buyers.
And while some of them migrated to Bolt EVs, it remains unclear whether the brand kept many or any of them over the long term. Reductions in battery cost far quicker than expected only a few years ago mean that tradeoff may no longer be necessary. To be fair, GM almost surely lost money on every Volt it sold, so it had little interest in attracting limitless customers.
Indeed, the Volt sales rate settled in at about 20, units a year. It takes years for the impact of any innovation to be fully felt, appreciated, and assessed. But the Volt can be said to have had several lasting effects. It went a long way to rehabilitate GM in the eyes of electric-car fans and advocates after the EV1 fiasco. Coming to market in the same month as the Nissan Leaf, it demonstrated that not just one but two global automakers were committed to vehicles that plugged in.
Nine years later, it may be hard to remember how esoteric and futuristic EVs were then—but the Volt was one first step in normalizing them. Finally, GM learned a lot from the Volt. Let's compare a hot climate like Phoenix, Arizona with the cold of Anchorage, Alaska.
So in the absence of a quality thermal conditioning and cooling system, all batteries will lose more life in Arizona versus Alaska. TD: The image and performance of electric cars has changed quite a bit over the last five years.
In your opinion, why have certain hybrids become so fast? Because not too long ago they were well known for being underpowered and almost asthmatic? Hybrids like my once-prized Prius built a following—right up to the point when gas prices went into a free fall. If that early generation hybrid battery of mine had lasted beyond , miles, I would probably still be driving it today. So might other Prius owners who have returned to driving cars with conventional powertrains.
Belmer says he's able to get about 9. Here's hoping this ol' Volt has a couple hundred thousand more miles to go! And congrats to Belmer for this amazing achievement. Oh, one more noteworthy mention. This ,mile Volt is still sporting its original brake pads. Home Chevrolet Volt News. In fact, a loss of battery capacity that warrants the need for battery repair or replacement due to normal wear and tear from regularly driving your Chevy Volt is very, very unlikely.
Reps from Chevrolet have even stated that the only batteries they have had to repair or replace in Chevy Volts have required repair or replacement due to a crash or other damage—not because of wear and tear leading to a loss of battery capacity. Chevy Volts come with limited warranty coverage that Chevrolet provides on every Volt they sell.
This limited warranty coverage does cover battery repairs and replacements for up to 8 years from the time you purchase your Volt. If your Chevy Volt is out of warranty, its battery repairs and replacements will no longer be covered and you will have to pay for a battery replacement yourself out of your own pocket.
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