The Chevrolet Volt entered mass production on November 11th, the first 350 cars began shipping to customers on December 13th, and on December 15th the first owners began to take possession.
Sixteen consumers, including me, have been driving saleable Volts as part of an advisory panel for over a month. These car are performing beautifully though some minor quirks have sometimes appeared. Part of our job as advisers has been to help point these out.
It turns out some of things I have noticed and reported on here have been acknowledged and engineers have continued to tweak and improve.
For example, I noted early on the brakes seemed to be less intense when moving at low speeds such as when edging into parking spot. Last week engineers came out to my home and upgraded some of the car’s software responsible for controlling the brakes.
Vehicle line executive Doug Parks explained that GM has “tweaked the brake calibrations to smooth out the pedal feel throughout its travel.”
I had also noticed the charge port door didn’t seem to close as solidly as I would have liked. Parks said the “charge door mechanism (has now been) improved on production cars for better latching.” In fact he noted GM engineers have made significant changes from the test car I am driving. ”We completed lots of little tweaks here and there and the production cars are even better,” he said.
Vehicle line director Tony Posawatz also advised me that the full production car people are now receiving will be noticeably improved and refined from the captured test fleet version I am driving now. ”We still feel there is a lot of work to do,” said Posawatz. ”There’s always fine tuning of the process whether a physical change or a process change at the plant, that’s just the way things work.”
GM plans to be “very very responsive” to customer feedback says Posawatz, and in fact GM engineers will be “on-call” through the holidays to field any concerns from the first drivers. ”If we do get feedback from the field we will look at it to see if we can address it,” he said. Change that could be implemented may include “software upgrades, physical changes, etc.”
Posawatz expressed gratitude for the 4-year marathon effort we’ve made here on GM-Volt to promote and contribute to the car, and admitted GM has monitored the site closely and incorporated many of the ideas expressed here into the car.
Thanks to all that have contributed, our car is finally in customers hands.







