A Volt is at Home

Now you're hypermiling! Nice work! Keep up those ratios, but more
than that, you're doing very well in energy efficiency per mile, gas OR
electric.

Here are the numbers behind the scenes as well as I can ascertain:

dist: 47.1 e 7.0 g 54.1 total
fuel economy: 416 MPG
10.2 kWh 0.13 gal
4.6 miles/kWh or 21.7 kWh/100 miles
54 MPG on gas
125 MPGe
156 MPG on electric

earlier sample:
dist: 85 e 52 g 137 total
fuel economy: 80.6 MPG (calculated)
38.7 kWh 1.7 gal (calculated)
2.2 miles/kWh or 45.6 kWh/100 miles (calculated)
30.6 MPG on gas (calculated)
48 MPGe (displayed)
74 MPG on electric (displayed)

Cheers,
Bill

 

54 MPG on gas ? That's excellent. But as we all know the EPA highway number is merely a starting point. If my lowly Civic can do over 1.35 X Highway EPA , then I'm sure a Volt can do so , to , when driven correctly. Good job , Mike.

 

Yesterday was another experimental run. I found that if we do another Saturday trip together, the Prius will be driven. The only charging station in our destination (Carbondale, IL) was at the Chevy dealer. I talked to the service manager on our way over and he said they would be happy to let me charge on their level 2 in their service bay. We were visiting our daughter so I thought that would be perfect.... NOT. My wife FREAKED. She said I was obsessing.

Needless to say, we slogged around all day on the ICE. It started off bad since it was pouring down rain on the way over and I only got a little over 30 miles out of the battery. DW was in the car so the climate control was on along with her seat heater. Lifetime MPG was hit hard also. It was at 200mpg at the start of the trip.

 

I will try the mountain out in a week or so. I've got to get the lifetime back up.

 

I agree with INATM. Not bad considering the conditions, and one could
tell from the numbers that you tried.

Curious that your electric energy usage was less than the full pack rating.
Did you not start with a full charge, or didn't use it all somehow, as in
the system limited battery usage for some reason?

re: recovering lifetime numbers - just do a little math and see how many
miles of INFINITE MPG it takes to offset the lifetime to whatever you want
it to be. You thought you might run the Prius on longer trips, so that's one
way to stay all electric with the Volt.

Have fun,
Bill

 

The Volt DTE after charge was at 30 miles the second day and has crept up to 36 miles DTE this morning. I am anxious to see if the Clipper Creek level two will change the performance any. A couple of mornings the car charge showed 1 mile more than it did at MyVolt.com. It is really cool to monitor the charge from in the house.

 

That increasing DTE gives you positive feedback on your prudent driving
style. Congrats. Your AER should be better than the nominal 40 regardless
of the car computer's DTE estimate if you keep up your hypermiling.

re: my earlier comment about pack energy usage. I was looking at the
10.1 and 10.2 kWh readings after those trips, and my mind was still stuck
on the 16 kWh or so pack capacity. I see some published usable capacity
number in that 10.x kWh range, so I guess that's normal. All's well. Sorry
about that.

Cheers,
Bill

 

No prob. I'm still enthralled with the "no gas" part of it. I will dig into it deeper. I know that 10.2 has been available, yet only 10.1 is used. Many are getting over 50 & 60 on their dte after charge. That's what I'm wanting.

 

Here are the stats from Voltstats.net this evening.

 

My wife is improving. If I can get her to use the auto on the climate control, I think it will be much better. I got in it this evening to take the pic, and the AC was set on 62°. I explained the control to her and how to prestart the car. I was 50 miles away this morning an I started it to prewarm it about 30 minutes before she left for work. The OnStar app works great on the Droid, iPhone, iPad, and PC.

The pic on the right is her trip yesterday with the heater maxed out on high for the 18.3 mile round trip to work. The pic on the left is her trip today. It was 4.5 miles longer because she got her hair done after work and also picked up food for supper. I liked seeing that she traveled farther and used less kw.

 

Nice catch on the climate control, Mike. Kudos and other encouragement
to the wife, too. And I see the 1 mpg improvement in the lifetime number.

Cheers,
Bill

 

Mike,

Congrats on the 2012 Volt! My wife and took a test drive in a 2013 a couple of weeks ago and we really liked it. We've had just one car since my wife retired, but we are about ready to add a second car and would like a plug-in.

I checked with my Ford dealer on the C-Max Energi but they have never had any in stock. The Volt is probably a better fit for me with its extended EV range given my 58-60 mile round trip to work. I'll be interested to see how your EV range improves.

 

Thanks everyone! Everyday I am more pleased with the Volt. This is my first GM purchase since about 1988.

Rick, You might check on Autotrader or at dealers for a low mileage used Volt. Ours only had 5200 miles on it and only 500 of those were on ICE. It was the end of the month and we got the 7 month old car for over $16k off of sticker and they gave us top dollar on the 08 Prius we traded in.

 

WOW!!! I just fell in the floor. My wife walked in the door after work and the first words out of her mouth weren't, Hi, How are you, or my day was hectic like usual. She walked in and the first words out of her mouth were, "I have 19 miles left!"

 

Congrats - I wish the Volt was big enough for my family.

I'm pretty sure they are using the 33.7kWh/gallon equivalency that the EPA uses. To get it down to ~210Wh/mile is very good, in my opinion.

 

I'll keep that in mind. The dealer we took the test drive at has one that they've been using for a loaner, but it's the base model. The 2 main extras I'm looking for are leather seats and enhanced safety package #1 which has the backup camera. I've really gotten used to that on may C-Max. Makes backing in a snap in the parking garage at work.