While I was skimming some comments at Nissan Leaf's optional equipment list revealed: includes invoice price, destination fee and more — Autoblog Green, I noticed a comment So, I did a little Googling and found Another battery recall? - SaturnFans Forums. I knew about a recall within the past few years, but apparently, there a second recall that some folks are now receiving a letter for. I can't find it on NHTSA's site yet, but here's a quote from post #3: Sheesh! Talk about GM's too little, too late efforts that turn out to be crap. Post 23 also had a choice quote (emphasis not mine):
Interesting... So every one of these mild hybrids sold had the original HV pack, a replacement pack, and now another replacement pack all within a couple years. Dont see how a company could really screw up any more. Using a pack less than a full hybrid and having it last 10% of the time... If you didnt trust the Volt before, now I would be really cautious! (I know it is an old post, but I saw it as a "recommended thread" in another thread and I was curious )
On this note, today I stumbled across GM Replacing 25,800 Hybrid Battery Packs...When It Gets Enough. I had to LOL a bit since GM said their supplier could only build 504 packs/week and there were 25,813 packs to replace, meaning it could take up to 51 weeks to replace them all, assuming 0 in inventory.
Gm still does not get it and never will. Maybe the federal government can bail them out again or make a hybrid for them at least batteries that last.
The quality of NiMH battery and how they are used determine the life of the HV battery. We know HSD uses the battery gently with active charging capability due to two motors design. GM mild "hybrid" and Honda IMA only has one motor. They can be hard on the battery. Volt uses it's Lithium battery hard too. It has two motors like HSD but the battery gets beaten up during the CD mode. Volt's pack runs twice as hard as Leaf's pack due to more powerful traction motor and smaller pack.
That benefit of Prius being a full hybrid will take awhile to become apparent. The mild "hybrid" owners will notice the lack electricity availability after awhile. The drain from hill climbing is the opposite of what we see in Prius, which takes advantage of the engine running to top of the battery instead. And of course, the use of A/C should make it obvious. As for Volt, the intentional design of avoiding engine use definitely has tradeoffs. Electric-Only acceleration is bad enough in the first place. But taking into account that the acceleration is allowed to tap the battery so hard and the fact that the resulting power is a major selling point, it's a recipe for trouble later. It's ironic that supporters moch Prius for taking advantage of having an engine available rather than using it to ease the burden. .
