My Volt Performance

[techtom]

Illustrations below summarizes my Volts performance. At home I charge with the 120V EVSE that come with the car. At work my employeer provides a 240V charging station that is supplied by a photovoltaic energy storage system. The EVSE is manufactured by Clipper Creek. On average I get anywhere from 31 to 46 miles on electric. And I average 3 to 3.45 miles per kWh. Monitoring the DC bus current on my daily commute, I can recover 10 to 20 percent of consumed energy from regenerative braking. The greatest performance.... going from $400+ per month in gas for my truck, to about $50 per month in electricity and gas for my Volt.

Tom

[Rusty]

Monitoring the DC bus current on my daily commute, I can recover 10 to 20 percent of consumed energy from regenerative braking.

How are you monitoring the DC bus current? Do I presume correctly this is the current between the battery and the inverter? Are you monitoring inductively or are you monitoring via the ODB interface? Do you have voltage as well, or are you assuming a fixed voltage? It's not really current that matters it's watts, and to get that you need both.

[techtom]

How are you monitoring the DC bus current? Do I presume correctly this is the current between the battery and the inverter? Are you monitoring inductively or are you monitoring via the ODB interface? Do you have voltage as well, or are you assuming a fixed voltage? It's not really current that matters it's watts, and to get that you need both.

Inductively (clamp on DC hall-effect probe) between the inverter and battery. I'm still waiting (anxiously) on the ODB PIDs to be released. Since I'm only estimating, I am assuming a fixed linear voltage decay from 360 to 300. I'm not going to chance exposing/damaging a connection or wire to obtain voltage so I can calculate dc power.

I would love for GM to do like the Nissan Leaf and display the actual engineering units on the display... or at least give the option. While in stationary in Mountain mode and letting the generator run, the Volt display doesn't even show the battery being supplied with power. Hope there's a display update down the road.

[Rusty]

I would love for GM to do like the Nissan Leaf and display the actual engineering units on the display... or at least give the option.

From your fingertips to GM's ears! Or however that works...

As to voltage, IIRC the Volt's battery pack is 288 cells. I think I recall hearing that's arraigned 96x3, and with a presumed nominal voltage shelf voltage of 3.7V/cell, that's 355V for the majority of the charge curve.

Presumably this info is available somewhere from the ODB, but I (and many many other owners) would sure love to have it available as an option on a display in the car!

[VoltCrazee]

Techtom,
I sent you a private message.