I like my Chevy* Volt a lot, it's probably made by normal working stiffs like me who work normal hours under a fairly pleasant boss in Detroit, they probably even can take days off from time to time vs. a mad robot man with a digital facsimile of Joseph Stalin's brain implanted in his head, with a flamethrower
*no other financial association or interests to disclose
Do you mostly charge your Volt from the AC power line, or from its gas engine? I park my Prius on the street and so far there's no high-current AC outlet at work, so it's easier to just charge it with its gas engine.
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Thanks,
- Win
Power line, the basic "charging infrastructure" you get with a purchase is a cable in a compartment in the back that you can just plug into the car on one end and a 120 volt outlet on the other. On the dash display you can select 12 amp charging or 8 for older wiring systems, either way it'll take overnight to fully charge that way.
A full charge overnight at my overnight off-peak electric rate is around
50 cents or so. It also does Level 2 charging off 220 volt 40 amp chargers like the ChargePoint ones around, those are usually rated for 6.6 kW per port but the Volt's internal charging circuit tops out at around 3.8kW. It'll fully charge up in around 3.5-4 hours depending on season off that.In summer a full charge is good for about 70 miles of range in 35-50 mph driving, in winter in New England it drops significantly you only get maybe 40 on a good day.
The best way to charge it up fast is coasting down Mt. Washington in low gear, it'll charge up to half full in about 15 minutes that way, unfortunately not every destination is at the bottom of Mt. Washington.
You can charge the Volt's battery with the gas engine too but I almost never use that feature - what's the point in doing that with a series hybrid? You just lose energy in the conversion from fuel to generator to battery and back out to the motors, it's more efficient just to burn the gas and have the engine spin the generator and send the power directly to the wheels which is how the drivetrain works all the time when the battery is depleted.
The Volt is a true "split personality", the gas engine drops out of the picture entirely in "EV" mode and you can take it up to the limited top speed of ~100 mph on electric power alone.
speaking of electric, VW just brok the overall record on Pikes peak in an electric car
Quote from the replies:
" razrblck
37 minutes agoOn Mars. It's totally happening next year, promise. "
My first laugh today :-)
Sometimes I think Musk is losing it, but SpaceX still seems to be going strong.
His solar-city works not so much.
The list of comments has grown so I can't find it immediately, but I liked the one where it's noticed he runs Tesla like a 1 year old tech startup seeking Series A funding but it's a 15 year old company with a $50 billion market cap.
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