While waiting for my Volt to arrive, I'm trying to get my questions answered ahead of time.
I will have a situation where I will need to drive about 100 miles and be able to run on battery power (for demonstrations).
Will I be able to "force" the Volt to do this?
If not, what are my options?

Thank in advance ;-)

Chuck

Yes you can, by gaming "mountain mode".

Yes you can, by gaming "mountain mode".

Please explain just what this is?

Does the this mode run the engine all the time?

Chuck

I was giving you the phrase to search for. We've discussed it at length. It's too late for me to dig up for you. I'm busy getting things done before getting on a plane Wednesday morning to go get my Volt :)

The short answer is that it brings the engine on at about 40% SOC instead of 30%. If you go back to NORMAL mode when you get to your destination, you should have the difference in EV operation (form 40% down to 30%). That is not the purpose of the mode, but it is how you can use it.

Normally, when the battery state of charge gets down to about 20% the engine starts and maintains the battery at this level, (it does not charge the battery). In mountain mode you change the point where the engine starts to about 50% charge and maintain the charge at that level. Then when you arrive at your destination you can switch back to normal mode for your demonstration and drive around in all electric mode until the battery goes down to the 20% level.

Does the this mode run the engine all the time?

First off, there is never "engine only driving", the primary drive force in the Volt comes from the primary traction motor. Period. All the time. Granted when the ICE is running it provides the torque to affect the gearing function that the second motor provides when the ICE is off. But the ICE can't ever move the car by itself. This has, BTW, been a hotly discussed item.

That said, what the ICE does is power the generator, and the generator replaces the charge being drained by the primary motor. That means the battery can never be fully empty, so the ICE turns on to sustain the battery's charge at some point (I've heard between 20%-35%).

What Mountain Mode does is change that sustaining charge level to 45% (also open to debate, but that's the number I recall). So on your 100 mile trip the ICE will fire up somewhere around 50-75 miles from your destination and keep your battery at that normal minimum SOC (State of Charge, let's say 20%). About 20 miles from your destination change to Mountain Mode, and you'll arrive at your destination with a 45% SOC.

Change it back to Normal Mode, and you'll get about 10 miles EV driving before you reach the normal minimum SOC. Occasionally hitting Mountain Mode during your demos (or between them) and you should be able to demo all day long, or at least 'till you run out of gas.

As Chris says this has been discussed before, in a thread I started called "demo madness" (or something like that).

Wow, that's a great idea, using Mtn. Mode like that. The word has been that the European Volt, or at least the Opel Ampera, will have an option of forcing the ICE on, so that on your autobahn commute you could keep the engine on and when you reach the city you can creep around on electric. Given that the Volt is already obviously designed for people who don't mind complicated things, it's my opinion that this feature should extend to everywhere, and maybe someday we'll get a software update that will have just that. It's an especially good idea for places like the Los Angeles area, where you can purposely keep most of your pollutants on the other side of the L.A. basin area.

<snip>As Chris says this has been discussed before, in a thread I started called "demo madness" (or something like that).

A google search using: "demo madness" site:gm-volt.com
found: http://gm-volt.com/forum/showthread.php?5771-EV-demo-madness

I'm confused .. if I let the battery discharge to the level that the engine comes on. (20-30% or what ever that level is)
Now if I change to Mountain mode, will the battery get charged back to the 40% level even though it was discharged to lower level?

Will Mountain mode actually provide some recharge?

Sorry this is so rambling.... hard to put into words that make any sense ;-(

Chuck



What Mountain Mode does is change that sustaining charge level to 45% (also open to debate, but that's the number I recall). So on your 100 mile trip the ICE will fire up somewhere around 50-75 miles from your destination and keep your battery at that normal minimum SOC (State of Charge, let's say 20%). About 20 miles from your destination change to Mountain Mode, and you'll arrive at your destination with a 45% SOC.

I'm confused .. if I let the battery discharge to the level that the engine comes on. (20-30% or what ever that level is)
Now if I change to Mountain mode, will the battery get charged back to the 40% level even though it was discharged to lower level?

Will Mountain mode actually provide some recharge?

Sorry this is so rambling.... hard to put into words that make any sense ;-(

Chuck




Yes, Chuck, Mountain Mode does recharge the battery up to that 40% level or so. There's no free lunch, though, on a recent 150 mile trip I found that I ended up getting about 4 MPG less from the gas engine by "gaming" the Mountain mode.

Yes Mountain Mode sucks down gas while it charges. When I first tried it 10 days ago, when I switched from Mountain Mode back to Normal Mode it just started driving electric, but showed 0 EV range (and drove over 10 miles before the ICE engaged). A few days later when I tried it again it switched from CS mode back to CD mode when I did the MM to NM switch. So I suspect GM pushed a software upgrade over the air to the cars (which I'm totally fine with).

Yes, Mountain Mode charges up your battery above its normal charge sustaining (CS) state. Useful for EV only demos, and driving up mountains. Really a bad way to use the car for most general driving.