Bug or feature: Weird pedal behavior in mountain mode

[JeremyN]

So yesterday I drove a couple hundred miles and discovered a behavior that I can't make any sense of. About 5 miles before I arrived at my destination, I realized I wanted to show off the car in full electric mode, so I turned on Mountain Mode to put more energy into the battery. I arrived and put the car in Park and waited for my passenger to come up to the car. The gas engine was running at a relatively high RPM as it still had a way to go before it had reached Mountain Mode battery max.

But this is where it get's weird, out of sheer curiosity, even though I was stopped and in Park, I wondered what would happen if I pushed the gas pedal. I was expecting the car to ignore me, since there wasn't any point, but weirdly enough the engine revved up, a lot like a gas car would in park. The more I thought about this, the less sense it made.

Then a while later after the car had fully charged to MM max, I tried again. Now pushing the gas pedal while in park did nothing, just as I had expected.

So, is this a bug or a feature? I can see it either way... As a feature, it could be responding to the driver wanting to charge the battery even faster, and our way of communicating that to the car is by pressing the gas pedal while in Park. Or it could be a bug, where the revving of the engine in mountain mode is directly tied to the gas pedal level, but they forgot to disable that when the car is in Park.

Not a problem, just an unexpected behavior... Any thoughts?

[TheProgrammerGuy]

Yeah: you try weird things and think too much.

[saghost]

Not a problem, just an unexpected behavior... Any thoughts?

As you say, totally unexpected. My only thought is that I'm going to have to find a chance to try it with DashDAQ on. I can tell you that the car's normal choice for charging in MM in Park is ~1700 RPM.

[Bzzzt]

Does it in non-mountain mode as well.

Hey, its a car. That's what they all do.

[WopOnTour]

Does it in non-mountain mode as well.

Hey, its a car. That's what they all do.

Bingo! (as in feature)

WOT

[JeremyN]

Does it in non-mountain mode as well.

Hey, its a car. That's what they all do.

Hrmm... Not in my experience. What state was the car in for this to work for you when not in MM?

[islander]

From a a comp sci major in college standpoint sounds like a small bug. When in Park I don't think they would like the ICE to rev like that. But of coarse, that is just a guess cuz there could be other reasons they would want that to happen.

With the I think millions of lines of code in the Volt, it is not surprising that there may be a few MINOR bugs in the code. I never did hard core coding in the real world so maybe some others could chime in.
D.

[jeffhre]

From a a comp sci major in college standpoint sounds like a small bug. When in Park I don't think they would like the ICE to rev like that. But of coarse, that is just a guess cuz there could be other reasons they would want that to happen.

With the I think millions of lines of code in the Volt, it is not surprising that there may be a few MINOR bugs in the code. I never did hard core coding in the real world so maybe some others could chime in.
D.

When I was in college I thought that I could improve just about everything in short order, and everyone that was working full time must have been lazy or something. Caused me to way over think everything instead of just doing the task in front of me.

Edit: 30 years later I figure when the engine is running and the driver steps on the gas, the engine revs. Could be some folks on the Volt team thought so too. Maybe not the best legacy feature but...

[bjhorton2005]

Well they made it actually vary RPM slightly based upon throttle position to give people the familiar "feel" of a car.

When you were in MM, there was a use for the extra energy from pushing the pedal so it gave you that "sensation" of a regular car by increasing the RPM a bit.

Then when no more buffer was needed it probably would not simulate that same mode, as it isn't efficient at that point, an so inefficient it isn't even worth it to provide you the "sensation" of a normal ICE car. Does that make sense?