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Originally Posted by zete
There's been a correction to the correction. Not sure if it's been posted elsewhere, but the generator does charge the battery, but it's not its primary role.
 As the Volt Turns.
According to Lauckner, the battery will receive power from the gas engine when load conditions are light (as in, not under acceleration). When the battery comes back up to a certain level of charge (that figure is still the subject of development at GM), the gas engine can cycle off and the Volt can run for an unspecified period on the stored battery power.
Thus, if through conservative driving one stores up enough juice, it'd be electric only again. Nifty. |
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GM's VP for Global Program Management, who says that the 1.4-liter gasoline engine does in fact send whatever surplus power it makes to the lithium-ion battery
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Well that means that when the ICE is running, the generator send power directly to the emotors and sends the surplus to the battery.
When pushing the car to its limits it may be a choice between fuel economy or battery lifespan. : revving the engine when power is needed and the battery is not fully recharged or assisting the engine running at optimum rpm with power from the recharging battery.
It could be tricky. So, if the target lifetime for the battery is 10 yrs, the setup may be programmed to run first (2) years to asure maximum fuel eficiency. If meanwhile, the battery would degrade too much ( more extreme driving habits), the software could chose to rev up the engine more often when power is needed to spare battery's life (to get to 10 yrs) but at expense of a decrease in mileage. But this latest choice would be actually legitimate and in driver's best interest. He would get pissed off if it's battery would die in 5 yrs even if he didn't care to plug-it in more often.