[ad#post_ad]Recently there has been a lot of Internet controversey with at least a dozen articles covering a story out of the Telegraph in England. Of course, GM-Volt.com was the first to notice this claim and publish it, all the other sites followed.
The author, Andrew English, claimed the 65% calibration version Ampera/Volt prototype seemed to have a flat torque curve at high velocity. He wrote that an engineer claimed GM was planning to correct this by connecting the gas engine driectly to the drivetrain. I had checked in with Rob Peterson who said the claim was untrue and unfounded, and is not the case. Rob explained to us the Volt uses clutches and a planetary gear system to maximize performance and efficiency.

Despite this, English published a second report called " Volt Shock ."

In this repert he outed his source. "We are considering driving the wheels directly from the petrol engine," said Andreas Voight, an Opel project engineer. There are a number of different ways we could do it, but the whole thing is subject to some intellectual property rights negotiations so I can't say any more," said Voight. "You will see an announcement this autumn."

While that story may be shocking, it remains untrue. Sam Abuelsamid from Autobloggreen determined Voight is simply a technician whose job (?former) is to simply shuttle cars for journalists and who has no actual knowledge about Volt engineering. Know the type?

Another bad piece of journalism came out fo hybridcars.com , who won't even publish authors' names. The anonymous author claimed an "exclusive" interview with Rob Peterson. In that interview Peterson's comments were taken out of context and distorted to make it seem the Volt would act like a parallel hybrid in range extended mode. Peterson was simply saying it was theoretically possible but the author left out the part where he said it wouldn't. Anything is possible.

What many authors don't know is that the Volt has two electric motors that can act either in parallel at times, in other cases one acts as the traction motor to drive the wheels and the other acts as a generator. The system uses 2-mode technology to determine which configuration is optimal for that driving moment. It never, however, includes a direct ICE to wheel configuration. For more deatils see my post with Volt powertrain engineer Alex Cattelan.

Finally to put this all to rest, I asked Volt vehicle line director Tony Posawatz if any of this rumor was true, if the ICE ever drives the wheels.

"No." said Posawatz. "I don't know how those folks got so confused."

Got it?

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