The new and supposedly improved LEAF battery is informally referred to as the "Lizard" battery. Prior to its introduction (in 2015?) the older battery chemistry has resulted in surprisingly high degradation in many areas less severe than Arizona. Even some cars in the San Francisco Bay Area had ~20% capacity reduction after 3-4 years of typical driving. The LEAF actually does not even have an air fan to cool the battery -- its entire passive with heat either radiating or bring absorbed through the steel battery enclosure along the bottom of the car. Nissan introduced a commercially-oriented microvan called the e-NV200 which was based on the LEAF drivetrain but finally added a fan to blow air through the battery pack. As far I know, that change has not yet been incorprated back into the LEAF but maybe with the updated pack in the 2016 model year?
nope. they did reveal the exterior and interior in vegas a few days ago though. where you been, under a rock?
Well, first day driving to work with the Volt. A coworker I talk to regularly about plug-ins with wanted to drive it to his house, but it was the same direction as my house so it added about 3 miles to the trip. Now he's jealous that he didn't buy a Volt a few months back and instead got a regular Camry. Despite the 38 mile EV range, I managed to get 41 so far, with approximately 10 miles left. Guess all those years of driving a prius and utilizing hybrid driving techniques paid off. Now if only Toyota would've released a plug-in with the same kind of range as the Volt but with prius mpg on gas. I would've bought that in a heartbeat.
From what I've read, the volt has almost zero battery capacity loss even from the first year model.. Was it a 2010? Anyway, Chevy has used the best battery cooling technics. Liquid and air I believe. Vs the ford c-max energies that uses only air for its pack. Energi owners have already stated to see battery capacity loss. That's also a much newer vehicle. Any, its nice that the volts battery seems to be holding up extremely well. Good job Chevy! But time will only tell, and as we all know, battery's can't last forever. It will be interesting to see how plug in's hold up over the next 5-10 years
I think another large part of the Volt's battery longevity is that it only uses a portion of the pack's total power, and never discharges to completely empty nor recharges to completely full. But it will be interesting to see if the Volt battery will stand the test of time like the prius batteries generally do.
I drive the 42nd Volt off the assembly line and picked up my 2011 model year car on Dec. 21, 2010. It now has 116,000 miles on it of which about 72,000 are from charging the battery. I'm probably seeing 5-10% capacity loss but I'm still able to drive it 45 miles to work without using any gas almost every day. In 2013 and again in 2015 they added a few extra miles of range by slightly increasing the battery and now for 2016 it goes up to 53 miles versus the official 35 mile range on my car. Other folks with similar mileage as my own car say they still cannot detect any capacity loss. The Volt battery is actively thermally controlled using liquid coolant (same type as engine coolant) that flows through thin aluminum plates sandwiched between the roughly 5x7 inch flat battery cells in the pack. There is no air flow within the sealed and insulated battery pack. The "coolant" can be either heated by a dedicated electric heater or cooled by flowing through a dedicated heat exchanger that shares the A/C compressor loop used also for cabin cooling. The car aims to keep the battery above around 32F and begins actively cooling when the pack temperature reaches about 87F. Under moderate conditions, the battery is cooled just by pumping coolant through a regular radiator behind the front grill. As we know, all batteries today gradually lose capacity but since the Volt starts out with a generous capacity (for a PHEV) even as it loses some range over time it will still have more than any other brand new PHEV available other than the BMW i3 with range extender.
I don't think you'd drop the money needed for a new Volt on a PiP with a larger battery. Are you sure the balance of the warranty is still in effect on your buyback? A California buyback does not have a warranty when resold in California. Ship the car to NJ and it gets a clean title and the balance of the warranty. Every hybid and EV does not use the entire pack so the Volt isn't special in that department.
