Dismayed by GM's response....

[HiHoStevo]

Or vice versa.

Also, the owners manual is available online in PDF. Self education is often superior to relying solely on a dealer sales rep. .

Yes that is true... and if you just read the owners manual you would have absolutely No Clue that the front sensors will not work when you pull in the garage because the owners manual claims that they "default to on."

Also you would not know about the guidelines issue, because no where in the owners manual does it state that the Nav system is necessary to get the guidelines... it just tells you to put a check in the box to turn them on.

[mtndrew1]

I pretty much agree with 2 out of three issues you mention.
2. I don't see how the parking sensors would work while you are driving. Every time you pull up behind someone they would be going off. It would drive me nuts. I think having the default that switches the system on for reverse + a button is a good solution. I will give GM the credit here. The only thing I wish was they could add a visual display that showed a top view map with the proximity displayed for the sensors. (Like many other cars do...)

A dear friend of mine has a late-model luxury car that behaves just this way; the sensors go bananas if someone is walking in front of the car at a crosswalk! The beeping is of course accompanied by an additional notification on the GPS screen. Really irritating.

That said, the Volt's setup could of course be better. I don't know why the front sensors can't be active from 1-10 MPH and off at a dead stop or at speed. Further, I find it maddening that when starting the car and putting it in reverse the FRONT sensors blare at me. Hey car I'm backing up, dummy! I have to park very close to a wall both at home and at the office so this happens to me at least twice a day.

As for pulling into my garage it's just become a habit to reach up and punch the parking sensor button on my way in the garage door so that I can snuggle up close to the wall without banging into it.

-Drew

[HiHoStevo]

Thank you for all the responses... and yes these items are not "end of the world" but annoying none the less.

To those of you who suggested I contact my Volt Advisor... that is the person who promised to have the problem fixed and have an engineer call me in the next 48 hours...

Apparently their "fix" was to completely trash my account and then not bother to call or email and tell me what their "fix" was.

As to the comment on the functionality of the back-up camera... as I have a white car I found the display horribly dark also to the point of being unusable. However I did find a way to bring up the brightness and contrast settings for the camera and that has helped immensely.

On the parking sensors... if you are going to put in the Owners Manual that they "default to on..." then by golly they should default to on! As I mentioned I have had 3 other cars with parking sensors... the first of which was a 2004 Toyota mini-van (read nine years older tech) that not only the sensors but a display on the dash to tell you which sensor was being activated. Never once have those always on sensors activated in traffic or when they were not needed.

I realize that the guidelines are not the end of the world.. but GM's Volt brochure where they show the guidelines does not mention that you have to buy the Nav to get them... that was my issue. Frankly I felt the guidelines was why GM was charging $700 for the back-up camera. Now could my dealer have headed off this problem..., probably except I purchased my car at a local very low-volume Chevy dealer that had probably only sold one Volt before. They are terrific people and I just hated to see GM try and excuse their failings by pretending it was all the dealers fault.

Other than these annoyances I have enjoyed driving the car. The range of the car should allow me to drive to and from work with even the occasional errand and do it solely on electricity. I had originally planned to buy the plug-in Prius as I have owned and enjoyed 3 Prius's in the past... however I think Toyota missed the mark by giving the car only 13 miles of battery range. For those folks in California that can now use the HOV lanes with the PI-Prius it would be a no-brainer as when you run out of battery you are still getting 50mpg.

If your normal commute fits the Volt's range like my nephew's and mine does then it also is a great choice! I will be re-positioning the car in the near future and it will be a pity to have to ruin my fledgling record of driving on electricity only... lol.

[awm]

A dear friend of mine has a late-model luxury car that behaves just this way; the sensors go bananas if someone is walking in front of the car at a crosswalk! The beeping is of course accompanied by an additional notification on the GPS screen. Really irritating.

All it takes to stop the beeping is press a button.

Further, I find it maddening that when starting the car and putting it in reverse the FRONT sensors blare at me. Hey car I'm backing up, dummy! I have to park very close to a wall both at home and at the office so this happens to me at least twice a day.
-Drew

When backing out of a tight parking lot with a car on your side, the front sensors are really helpful.

[ysa002]

Aw, that's too bad. The Volt Advisor not being able to help you fix the problem.
I'm lucky then that my dealer helped me a lot with problems concerning my car.