General Motors’ shift from an internal combustion engine-producing company to one that makes electric motors is sputtering. EV sales are up, but growing slower than expected. The company’s next-generation Ultium platform, in particular, isn’t meeting expectations. GM’s new electric trucks and SUVs seem perennially delayed — or full of buggy software.
I think I have an easy solution to a lot of these problems: bring back the Chevy Volt.
Remember the Volt, GM’s scrappy Toyota Prius fighter from the mid-2010s? The company was lauded when it first came out in 2010 as a prescient bet on vehicles with electric powertrains. And it was undeniably a very good hybrid. The first-generation model got 36 miles of electric range before the gas kicked in, while later versions would get a whopping 53 miles of electric range.
The way the Volt was originally pitched gasoline generator, fully electric drive train should be the way it is brought back. I’m fully convinced the reason GM made the change to hybrid drive train for the volt is because you wouldn’t have to pay gas tax on the gasoline and the government made a request.
Wait, what? AFAIK the Volt was always a serial hybrid (gas engine charges batteries, which powers the motor that moves the car). And I have no idea what kind of government request was made here that wouldn’t apply to other PHEVs or fully-electric cars
The volt is a traditional hybrid where both the gasoline engine and electric motor can both power the drive train. Before the initial production year GM changed it from the gasoline generator electric drive train to the traditional hybrid. Sorry for the late reply, I had to find a source:
https://jalopnik.com/chevy-volt-engine-wont-recharge-batteries-while-driving-5054642
Also, it was just my theory on why it was changed via government request. It was about this time the government bailed out GM
That was published 2 years before production started.
Skimming through another article, it looks like the gas engine does power the car, but only at high speeds when electric efficiency goes way down and when the battery runs out. And it does charge the battery as well by spinning the motor (turning it into a generator) at the same place the power gets sent to the wheels. https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/hybrid-electric/a6179/chevy-volt-hybrid-drive-system/ (Ctrl+F “series hybrid”)
Ultimately, the parallel/serial hybrid question seems to be answered best with “it depends” but the whole “government wants the gas tax” theory seems to be blown by the fact that the car can run on electric-only just fine in the correct circumstances.
Yes, as I said, it was originally hyped to be all electric drive and the gasoline engine was just a range extender to charge the batteries only. It was never supposed to actually turn the wheels on the car directly. I was actually exited for all electric drive in a car, but was bummed out when GM changed it before it started production. You should check out Edison Motors who are implementing this concept in their work truck and semi truck applications.
The problem with taxes is that any gas or diesel purchased not for directly powering the drive train for a vehicle operated on a highway isn’t subject to fuel taxes. It’s why refrigerated trailers, off road farm equipment, and generators aren’t subject to regular taxes meant to pay for roads. It’s also why untaxed fuel is dyed so if you’re caught using untaxed fuel for propulsion on a highway you’ll get a pretty big fine. If the gasoline engine is just a generator for making electricity, you could argue that any gasoline purchased for the Volt would not be subject to road taxes.
Eh, the spirit of the car being very usable on electric-only is still there. The engine does charge the battery, but I’ll grant that I learned that it’s not its only purpose as I thought. But the lack of gas tax theory is a huge stretch to be honest. Even if you manage to make the legal argument that it shouldn’t be taxed, it’s pretty easy to then say it’s an electric vehicle and subject to those registration fees (albeit at the state level, and not all states have that yet). Plus, how many people have easy access to dyed non-road fuel? Especially unleaded? I’m not driving half an hour away to save a few bucks on a tank of gas.
Farmers get dyed fuel delivered to their farms all the time. It’s a pretty standard operating procedure. All major chain Truck stops have the option at every pump to pump untaxed fuel (for refrigerated trailers), though most of those pumps aren’t dyed. Older truck stops have a separate pump specifically for dyed diesel.
Also the electric drive train ice range extender doesn’t get energy from one source. That issue has not been addressed tax wise.
Right… All sparsely-populated areas with demographics that have almost no interest in anything but a pickup truck or maybe an SUV. And again, doesn’t most of that heavy equipment using all that fuel run on diesel? The Volt certainly doesn’t.
Right, most off road equipment runs on diesel, but not everything. The biggest off road gasoline example is aviation gasoline. I’m fairly sure each grade of aviation gasoline has a different dye. It’s been a long time since I looked into this. It was when the Volt was announced. Fuel agnostic engines that are easily convertible by the user would be really neat to run in these applications and likely would’ve been the natural progression of the platform. I think the heavy duty and farm sectors would be best served with this concept (electric drive train and PTO, ice generator range extender).
I’m also the guy that lives in that area in flyover America. My proselytizing usually involves showing them my home charger’s app that shows how much electricity I use and what that costs (normally around $30/mo) and compare that to the average fill up every week ($30-40). I also say I know where my electricity is produced (coal fired power plant) and that the coal is mined by people local to the area. My state has a friends of coal license plate, it’s easy to say my car being actually coal powered when talking to the people with that plate. It’s also easy to pitch being self reliant and putting up your own solar panels to the people who think our electricity grid can’t handle the load. I can always generate electricity on my property, but I can’t refine gasoline on my property. It also helps by giving them a ride and slamming them into the seat and explaining that the motor is about the size of a coffee can, lol.
I also wanted a decently priced electric pickup truck for light duty work and home projects, look through my history for my story on how well that went last year for me. For now I have my Bolt to get around, but I’ll give it to my eldest child when she’s ready to start driving and hope that truck prices normalize and better availability for non-luxury trims.