Below is Volt chief engineer Andrew Farah explaining how the Volt will behave at and beyond that level.
How will the vehicles propulsion system work when you get to the customer depletion point?
When you get to the customer depletion point, the engine will come on seamlessly as its supposed to. But when the engine comes on to spin the generator, it does so with the idea that were generating electric energy to drive the wheels, not to charge the battery. People say the engine comes on to charge the battery, but thats not what really goes on. The engine comes on to make enough electric energy to turn the wheels, because the wheels are always turning electrically.
I've never been big on hybrids or electric cars (in the sense of looking into them, not against owning them), but wouldn't it make more sense to make this into a hybrid style "charge the battery" as the engine kicks, not just "drive the wheels" only? I mean that as drain to CDP, then use the engine to drive the wheels with whatever is needed, and charge the battery with excess. Increase the size of the generator if needed (if all it can provide is just enough to keep the car moving at speed and not an ounce more, that would seem like an engineering error).
Chevys site doesnt, at least not bluntly, say the overall range of the car, gas and electric included. I saw a few people say 340, so I'll go with that. If you can go 340 miles, fill the tank, then do only 300 miles. Assuming 80mph the whole time, under 4 hours of driving solid before you fill up again. So in that 4 hours, if it could fully charge the battery, while under power for movement, in say an hour, then do full electric like a hybrid can, you should be able to go nearly (including initial 40mi), 420 miles or so. Wouldn't that hold more sense then waiting to plug in (and in cali that might be bad in the middle of the day) every day. If you do short trips, and only use electric, plugging in is great. But for longer commutes, and not being required to plug in to get the benefits of having an electric capable vehicle, it would be more helpful.
If I remember reading right somewhere, its a 12gal tank. So 340/12 = 28mpg in a perfect world. Many prius users claim 45-50mpg average over 20k miles or so. Should be a 11.9gal tank. So, perfect world again, around 535 continuous miles on nearly the same tank size. Just seems to be a bit off to me personally.
Note: Its 5am, ive been up 4 hours on 3 hours sleep, so I may be a ways off or just not grasping why its such a big deal, but it seems logical that a prius is a better choice then a volt when comparing what kind of mileage you can get out of a car. Screw all electric if I can only make 340 miles between it and the gas engine, when for less money you can get another 200 miles for the same amount of gas.
Just throwing it out there.
--pyr0