The DevilDog Weekly Update

[Haywire]

Well, tomorrow marks the first full week of ownership and I have to admit, I really love the car! I do have some reservations though and sometimes I get a bit of buyers remorse but the car is growing on me. My plan is to document the good and bad that I noticed each week with my car, which I've nicknamed DevilDog. I'm hoping that some in the community may be able to point out what I'm doing wrong so I can make better use of the car. I'll only update this thread so as not to flood the forums with new ones each week.

So, let's begin with the bad:

Up here in Jersey, it's been cold the last couple of days. I know the battery does not do well in the cold but I didn't realize it was so bad. During the first few days of the 1st week, I was still on vacation so it didn't matter as much as I wasn't doing my daily commute. However, the last couple of days, it's been around 30F or below. Yesterday, for instance, I started my commute at about 6:30 and the temp outside was hovering around 28F. The ICE didn't come on which was good; however, I only got approx. 28miles into my commute before it switched to gas. Now, some of this is my fault and it would have been around 30 miles if I hadn't run it for 5 minutes before jumping into it. I'm starting to wish I had the 240V charger so it would just drain from the house. Right now on the 120V, it uses some house and some car so when I jump in, I only have about 95% battery if I precondition. Today, the temp was around 19F. This time around, the minute I woke up, I preconditioned DevilDog for about 10 minutes and the let the car recharge so it was full before I started my commute. The ICE turned on a couple of times during the commute using up about .3 gallons. This time around, I was able to get to work with 7 EV miles left (mainly cause the ICE turned on several times during the commute). So, for the total commute to work there and back, I got 30.3 miles EV and 32 miles gas using a total of 1.02 gallons of gas. I got out of the car at the end of the day slightly disappointed cause I was hoping I could get around 40mpg when using gas. Maybe I have high expectations but I was hoping to get a bit more efficiency out of the car. And I tried to be as conservative as possible with my driving. I took off slow, drove under 50 most of the way, tried to coast as much as possible, used L drive when I could and used the cruise control on the open road. I even kept the climate on ECO and at around 68F with low fans. I know the cold affects the car but I wish it didn't affect it so much. Any ideas on what I could do better? I'm thinking of just driving in D tomorrow and stop with all the switching back and forth between D and L. We'll see how that works out.

Another thing I noticed is that the screen in the center console that shows the efficiency might have a software glitch. When the ICE turned on during the commute home, I was watching my fuel consumption. At one point, it showed the gallons consumed at .93 gallons. About 10 seconds later, I looked over and it suddenly jumped up to .96. I didn't gun it nor d I do anything differently. I noticed it again several minutes later where the consumption shot up dramatically from .98 to 1.01. Can't figure out why it's happening either.

And finally, when the ICE turned on on the commute home, the noise difference is very noticeable. At approximately 45 MPH, it sounded as if the car was trying to shift between gears as in a regular gas car. Kinda like when you get to the high end of the RPM before you shift to the next gear. Not as loud but still up there. Eventually the noise went away but it was a little disconcerting. Once I threw it into cruise, the noise disappeared and for the rest of the commute home I didn't hear it again. Maybe I'm just freaking out cause I'm used to how quiet it is!

So that was the bad. Any suggestions or ideas to increase efficiency would help out tons! I've been digging through the forums for efficiency tips and I've been trying them all out. Still don't understand the MM trick very well but I need to reread some of the other threads to maybe understand a bit better.

Now for the good.

I love that the first half of the trip to work I don't use gas. This pretty much cuts in half my gas bill each month. I work on a military base and I was scouting the area yesterday searching for an outside outlet near my building. No such luck yet but I'm still on the lookout. My only concern is just plugging in and the MPs towing the vehicle since I don't have official permission. Today I called some people who manage the facilities on base to see if I could plug into some outlets that the RVs use on the campground close by and they told me a) this is the first time they ever encountered a case such as mine and b) no because the outlets are only zoned for RVs. So that kinda sucked cause I was hoping to get to and from work on all electric. I'm going to still try to work some angles. I'll let you know how that works out.

I definitely feel as if the car has made me a better and more responsible driver. I NEVER used to drive the speed limit to work. NEVER! The last couple of days I've been at the limit or slightly below. I coast as much as possible. I don't jump the gun from the line and I don't aggressively brake. The car is like one big game and I'm trying to win.

The quietness of the car is both good and bad. The other day I remote started the car, walked inside to grab my jacket and then walked back out. When I walked up to the car, I didn't know if it was even on. I had to put my hand on it just to see if I could feel a vibration.

Well that's about it for the first week. Again, feel free to suggest what I can do better.

P.S. As the forum doesn't have a general discussion section, I figured the best place to put it was newcomers because I am still a huge Volt n00b. Feel free to move it if need be. And if you guys don't want to hear my weekly update, just tell me to clam it and I'll happily oblige

UPDATE: See new entry below for more good and bad.

[DonC]

You might want to use Mountain Mode rather than Normal Mode both coming and going. In MM the engine will come on with about 15 miles of range left. For you there would be two benefits. One would be that the transition may not be as noisy. Second would be that you might get a few more EV miles. Coming home you could run the gas engine and heat the car up. Then when you're fifteen miles or so from home switch back to Normal and turn the heat off. Since ancillary loads really suck down the battery you'd have more battery left for propulsion.

You might also try not pre-conditioning the car. If the temp is under 26F the engine will come on when you first start the car, which means you'll have plenty of heat. Then after the cabin is warm and the engine kicks off you'll switch back to the battery with a full charge. Again you might get more EV miles. Plus you'll be warmer. The bottom line is that heated seats would be really nice!

I wouldn't worry about the gallons used varying. The sensor is probably not that accurate so it's not going to be completely smooth to the hundredths of a gallon.

[jeo]

I want to comment, but a disclaimer that I am not yet a Volt owner. I've been monitoring the forum comments and questions to do my due diligence before making a decision. From what I've read for a couple of months is that there is a lot time and effort expended learning about the vehicle. Not surprising of course ... it's a new car, but also a new car experience totally.

But it seems a point, worrying too much about 3 miles per charge here and there is pointless. Expectations is of course the game here ... and frankly from what I can tell, you can expect 25 to 50 per charge. Spend lots of attention and focus and you might be able to hit the high side more often.

I can imagine spending as much focus driving an ICE only vehicle, and though yes, you might be able to squeeze a few MPG overall here and there, temperature, terrain and driving habits all apply in very similar ways. The effort and attention to the ends of the scale would for me, quickly runs out of steam and I expect I'll just get in a drive.

I'll be interested to see some of the Volt owner comments to your post.

[smurf12345]

Congrats on the car. I just got mine on Friday and my experience echoes yours so far.

[Haywire]

You might want to use Mountain Mode rather than Normal Mode both coming and going. In MM the engine will come on with about 15 miles of range left. For you there would be two benefits. One would be that the transition may not be as noisy. Second would be that you might get a few more EV miles. Coming home you could run the gas engine and heat the car up. Then when you're fifteen miles or so from home switch back to Normal and turn the heat off. Since ancillary loads really suck down the battery you'd have more battery left.

don, so let me reiterate what I think you're saying. In the am, start the car, hop in, and throw it into MM. On the way home, at about 15 miles out, go back to normal. Is that correct? Does MM burn more gas than usual? Any cons to MM?

Thanks a ton for the suggestions! Gonna try them out tomorrow.

[saghost]

Another thing I noticed is that the screen in the center console that shows the efficiency might have a software glitch. When the ICE turned on during the commute home, I was watching my fuel consumption. At one point, it showed the gallons consumed at .93 gallons. About 10 seconds later, I looked over and it suddenly jumped up to .96. I didn't gun it nor d I do anything differently. I noticed it again several minutes later where the consumption shot up dramatically from .98 to 1.01. Can't figure out why it's happening either.

That's normal. The Volt only tracks fuel in ~.03 gallon (about half a cup) increments (which is much finer than any other car I can think of.) So every update is .03 or .04 gallons. It's accurate at the instant it flips - it truncates rather than rounding I believe from what I've seen - and thereafter is somewhere between that increment and the next one.

Welcome. It's a heck of a car, and sometimes a heck of a confusing car. You may want to consider adding yourself to voltstats.net - one of our members put together a website that uses OnStar's protocols to pull detailed usage data from the car. So far there are about 300 cars and close to two million miles in the tracking database - it gives us and other people an idea of how the Volt is being used, and is a handy way to track your own consumption/performance with little to no effort.

[Matt979]

Seeing this post it was definetly good that I did not buy this car in the middle of the winter I would feel the same way. I live in illinois and have had the car since the 18th of September.

The two main things that I learned that helps with range.

The cabin heater kills the range sub 40s both in Comfort and ECO, if you use it make sure to keep the temp 70 or below, use heated seats more and as said in other posts pre-condition and then FAN only as long as possible when on electric, once you run out of range then comfort mode, same if the ICE comes on due to temperature. If you use fan only remember to leave the circulation on AUTO or your windows will fog up fast. If you do above you should be able to easily get 30+ even on the coldest days.

Drive a little slower, speed makes a big diffrence specially if you go above 60 mph. The car is also a dream to drive in the 40-50 mph range.

Also take it from me dont worry about the short range, before you know it the temps will go up above 50/60s and I easily had 40+ and even 50 miles range on most days even running AC on comfort. (AC draws much less than the heater) We had a day here in the 50s this week and it was so cool to have all that new "free" range to play with, it was time for sports mode and pedal to the metal again.

Two postives of having shorter range in the winter, atleast for me

1. Gas prices are lower in the winter
2. You drive less in the winter

[Haywire]

Time for another update!

So, it's been about three weeks since I got my beautiful car and as each day passes, I come to love it more! Let me start by saying that as of this post, I have approximately 750 miles on the car (I drive approximately 60 miles a day during the week). As with the original post, let me start with the bad and then move on to the good.

As for the bad at this point, they're really only minor. Last week I started experimenting with MM. Today I was playing around with it some more and I noticed when I switched from Normal to MM and there was under the minimum electric charge required, it would switch to gas right away, the icon for the gas tank would be front and center and the battery charge icon would go to the background. However, the battery icon showed 0 miles left when in fact it had 8. Don't know if this is a software glitch or not.

I do wish the heater didn't consume so much energy cause I've been going heatless (on some days) and I'm damn near an icicle by the time I get to work. I only did it a couple of days though cause I wanted to see how far I could get on EV during cold temps (20 - 30s).

And that's about it so far for the bad. Now for the good.

I BROKE 40 Miles EV! Last week we had a freak day where it was in the 50s. Without and trickery, I was able to pull off 42.1 miles on battery. I was so damn proud of myself when I pulled into work and still had 12 miles left. That was definitely a proud moment for me.

I found and got permission to use a 110V outlet that is in a parking lot near my building. At first, I thought I wasn't going to be able to use it cause every time I plugged in, it would charge for a minute or so and then the outlet would pop and I would have to reset it again. Fortunately, I used this wonderful community as a resource and figured out I could just hit the orange button on the charger and it would bring it down to 8amps allowing me to charge. I don't get nearly as much as I would on 12amps but something is better than nothing. It gives me about 12 miles to go home with so I'm nearly all electric.

I've been playing with the L and D modes a lot lately trying to get as much range out of it as possible. I read somewhere that someone asked for a brake light for when you throw it into L and use it to slow down or aggressive regen. A few commenters said it made no sense and that the decrease in speed is minimal. I beg to differ. If I'm in traffic or on the highway and I throw it into L when I see a red light or a slow down in traffic, there is definitely a noticeable difference in speed. Hell, you can even feel the car be affected by the decrease. I watch the odometer and it drops quite a few mph in a relatively short time. And there has been a couple of times when a tailgater doesn't notice that I'm drastically reducing speed because they don't see the brake lights. Now, back to switching between the two, I just hope it doesn't affect the car in any way. I find myself using L instead of the brake a lot so I'll just quickly switch from D to L and then finally apply the brakes for a full stop. I'm just nervous of any long term damage.

Another thing I've just recently been experimenting with is MM. I know I read it somewhere but I never really paid attention to it but MM recharges the battery! Of course, the downside to this is the MPG in MM is cut nearly in half. The other day on my first day of experimentation, I was about 25 miles away from home. I was close to empty and I was afraid I wasn't going to make it to the gas station so I put it in MM hoping it would help. It actually started sucking down the gas at a faster pace. After about 10 miles in MM, I put it back in Normal hoping that what little charge I had left would get me to the gas station. The gas meter was still active but I noticed that the ICE wasn't running even though the gas icon was front and center. The console showed that it was running on battery. I figured it was the charge I may have received during regen but it lasted a good 5 miles which got me to the closest gas station. After I filled up, I put it in normal and lo and behold, the battery said I still had 5 miles. That's when it hit me that MM regenerates the battery. I did it again today just to test my theory and to see if I could use even less gas. I had about 12 EV miles left for the ride home so once I used it up and the ICE started running, I threw it into MM and kept it there for about .5 gallons with of gas. Once I hit .5, I put it back in Normal and I was able to regen about 7 EV miles which happened to be enough to get me home. So, where I was using 1 gallon per day for the commute, with both charging a little at work and MM, I'm able to cut my gas consumption in half once again. The only downside is that in MM I only get about 22MPG whereas I was typically getting 40MPG.

Speaking of range, it's been very cold here on and off usually hovering around the 20s - 30s. I know some people have complained about decrease in range. Like I said before, I've been getting about 32 EV miles per charge. There were a couple days when I got more but that's cause I went to the extreme of not using any heat at all. But using eco, keeping the temp around 72 and the fan speed low, I'm getting a respectable 32. My Volt advisor said that was great cause quite a few other customers he works with in my region are getting far lower. So, I can wait for the warmer weather. I saw someone here got somewhere around 50EV miles so that is my ultimate goal.

Speaking of Volt Advisors, I finally got a call from my advisor today so I want to say thanks to Trevor for getting that done for me. Really appreciate the amazing customer service that Chevy is extending to their Volt customers.

Well, that's about all I got for now. I'll post again at the month milestone with any new good or bad news. This site is such a great place to find so much info on the Volt. It's a treasure trove of information to make you a more efficient Volt Driver. I love it!

[saghost]

As for the bad at this point, they're really only minor. Last week I started experimenting with MM. Today I was playing around with it some more and I noticed when I switched from Normal to MM and there was under the minimum electric charge required, it would switch to gas right away, the icon for the gas tank would be front and center and the battery charge icon would go to the background. However, the battery icon showed 0 miles left when in fact it had 8. Don't know if this is a software glitch or not.

It's not a glitch, and all Volts do it. Whether it was the right decision is debatable. When you enter mountain mode, it reduces your available battery by ~3.5 kWh, and recalculates range based on that (though the SoC green bars still show.) Based on the new calculation, you had no electric miles left, so it went straight to gas (and probably started rebuilding that 3.5 kWh buffer.)

I've been playing with the L and D modes a lot lately trying to get as much range out of it as possible. I read somewhere that someone asked for a brake light for when you throw it into L and use it to slow down or aggressive regen. A few commenters said it made no sense and that the decrease in speed is minimal. I beg to differ. If I'm in traffic or on the highway and I throw it into L when I see a red light or a slow down in traffic, there is definitely a noticeable difference in speed. Hell, you can even feel the car be affected by the decrease. I watch the odometer and it drops quite a few mph in a relatively short time. And there has been a couple of times when a tailgater doesn't notice that I'm drastically reducing speed because they don't see the brake lights. Now, back to switching between the two, I just hope it doesn't affect the car in any way. I find myself using L instead of the brake a lot so I'll just quickly switch from D to L and then finally apply the brakes for a full stop. I'm just nervous of any long term damage.

No damage - unless you manage to wear out the shifter itself. There's no difference in the gearing between the two, and the only thing "shifting" does is tell the computer to calibrate the gas pedal differently, including a lot more regen. You could get exactly the same transmission and battery response by using the brake pedal. A lot of us drive in L all the time after we got used to it (there's actually a thread floating around about how much we miss it when driving other cars: "driving while Volted" or some such.)

Another thing I've just recently been experimenting with is MM. I know I read it somewhere but I never really paid attention to it but MM recharges the battery! Of course, the downside to this is the MPG in MM is cut nearly in half. The other day on my first day of experimentation, I was about 25 miles away from home. I was close to empty and I was afraid I wasn't going to make it to the gas station so I put it in MM hoping it would help. It actually started sucking down the gas at a faster pace. After about 10 miles in MM, I put it back in Normal hoping that what little charge I had left would get me to the gas station. The gas meter was still active but I noticed that the ICE wasn't running even though the gas icon was front and center. The console showed that it was running on battery. I figured it was the charge I may have received during regen but it lasted a good 5 miles which got me to the closest gas station. After I filled up, I put it in normal and lo and behold, the battery said I still had 5 miles. That's when it hit me that MM regenerates the battery. I did it again today just to test my theory and to see if I could use even less gas. I had about 12 EV miles left for the ride home so once I used it up and the ICE started running, I threw it into MM and kept it there for about .5 gallons with of gas. Once I hit .5, I put it back in Normal and I was able to regen about 7 EV miles which happened to be enough to get me home. So, where I was using 1 gallon per day for the commute, with both charging a little at work and MM, I'm able to cut my gas consumption in half once again. The only downside is that in MM I only get about 22MPG whereas I was typically getting 40MPG.

If you use mountain mode between ~10-12 miles to empty and the native CS switchover, you have to separate out your gas and electric miles and calculate gas mileage yourself - the car will account for it wrong (count some gasoline driven miles as electric.) Used intelligently, we believe that switching into and out of mountain mode can improve economy substantially. If you just cycle in and out on the freeway with no attention to terrain/speed, it will make the economy worse.

[DCFusor]

It's the heater, that thing can draw 7-8kw - that's a lot! When I don't use mine (not willing to do that most of the time, but I did test) the range was close to the same warm or cold.

MM uses gas faster some of the time - if you kick it in when you're below its threshold (about 45% charge) the ICE is both driving the car, and charging the battery too. But you get most of that extra back if you then use up the 45% charge it put on the battery, so it works out as a wash. You have to be careful about computing mileage that the battery was in the same state of charge at start and end or you get a bogus number if for example, you get to the end of trip with more charge than you started with, that's where some of the gasoline went - into the battery.

Since I'm charging on solar (off the grid), and I don't get as much extra at this time of year, I commonly run at 40% or less state of charge at the beginning of a trip - I came home running the batteries down as close to zero as I could, and didn't charge them much - low sun angles and bad weather prevent that. But it works out, as I can get the ICE to run the instant I fire her up - and that takes care of the heat a lot cheaper off the engine waste heat. In summer, when I'll be able to be all electric, I also won't need heat - it works out fine for me.

But other than more use of heater and lights - I notice no change in actual range with temperature - but you use heat and drive in the dark more in winter, and those do cost you.