Volt Drive for Innovation Teardown with Videos!!

[toidvolt]

Very interesting read. Thanks for sharing the links.

[SolarVolt]

Last month, Avnet Express released a video of the teardown of a 2012 Volt. This month, they offer a detailed description of the 360 Volt battery and its controls, complete with a slide show. It's a little over my head, but those techno-geeks out there will LOVE this!!

Enjoy!!

Volt 63

Description of Battery Pack: http://www.driveforinnovation.com/vo...BM+Electronics

Slide Show: http://www.driveforinnovation.com/vo...BM+Electronics

Great find!
I was a little dissappointed that the balancing technique is passive resistive dumping, but it certainly reduces the complexity of the charging circuitry. (Charging the entire series string and monitoring each cell, verses charging each cell individually.) However, with this method, the energy lost as heat and therefore the extra energy required to cool the pack during charging is much higher. Maybe in future generations of the battery pack or the entire car, the charging method will be modified.

Bruce

[Gary Norton]

Thanks. Very interesting.

[Voltmeister]

That was fun, Thanks!

(I share SolarVolts curiosity regarding the balancing technique, but have enough grey hair to know that the car guys design for very specific reasons and environments and this choice is no exception!)

[larry4pyro]

"The Chevrolet Volt, GM’s entry in the electric car market, is one of the most complex vehicles on the road, using almost 100 microprocessors that are controlled by about 10 million lines of code. By comparison, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner gets by with only 6.5 million lines. One of the real wizards in the Volt is the Power Inverter Module. Sophisticated hardware and control systems sit in this breadbox-sized component. In this article we’ll take a look inside."

"We were initially surprised to see a dedicated transmission controller, but further analysis of the transmission operation clarified this need. Three clutches control the engagement of the electrical motors, wheels, and gas engine as the Volt switches between different Drive Modes and Regenerative Braking; this controller co-ordinates the clutch switching."

Drive For Innovation

http://www.driveforinnovation.com/te...train-teardown

link contains article plus additional links to slide show presentation and 36 minute video

[2BeLivingGreen]

Larry4pyro, good find.

So do you think the noise a few owners mentioned coming from the rear of the vehicle is from the fan for the high to low voltage module mentioned in the powerpoint presentation slide #23?
http://www.driveforinnovation.com/vo...e-presentation

[Jason M. Hendler]

"The Chevrolet Volt, GM’s entry in the electric car market, is one of the most complex vehicles on the road, using almost 100 microprocessors that are controlled by about 10 million lines of code. By comparison, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner gets by with only 6.5 million lines.

Now I am scared to fly in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. They need more code.

[Raymondjram]

More code means more bugs to find and "debug".

Actually, GM used IBM Rational Software products to write, test and even exercise the code (using real-time emulations) to "debug" those 10 million lines:
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/rational/announce/volt/
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/m...hboard?lang=en
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pr...ease/32902.wss
http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/presskit/32895.wss

GM is very thorough when testing their software. Since 1975 when the first emission regulations were established, GM has installed millions of ECMs (Emission Control Modules) in all of their vehicle, and as more power, safety and comfort systems were added, GM created new modules (PCM, BCM, etc.) and each one has its own microcontroller and coding. My Equinox has four modules, and they have to work together 100% under all weather and road conditions.

You can trust the GM code more than the software in your home or business computers. There will never be a BSOD!

[TheProgrammerGuy]

You can trust the GM code more than the software in your home or business computers. There will never be a BSOD!

I'm really not superstitious, but still, I wish you hadn't said that. :-\

[Fulgerite]

I certainly hope the Dreamliner's code has been more thoroughly tested than my Volt's code.