Just how cold was it?

[zete]

I'm sure everyone in North America has grown beyond tired of this winter. It's been brutal and seems to keep going even though everyone on this continent simply wants to put a knife through its heart.

But, exactly how cold is it? Well, I noticed with my Volt that it was exceptionally cold because the range has, well, sucked for months now. With temperatures rarely getting to single digits below zero the poor car has been having trouble hitting 40km of range. In fact, from November onwards I don't recall many days -- if any -- where the generator didn't kick in until last week. Last week was the first time I was able to drive to work and back home purely on electrons. But then this weekend it was back down to -19c. Sigh. But at least the weather folks are telling us that this week will be a bit closer to normal. We might actually have 3 days of 1-3c days! Although the evenings will still be -10c or so. Ugh. For reference, at the moment it's -15c. Sigh.

Anyway, what has the car shown us? It's shown us this as gleaned from our OnStar metrics of use for the Volt in December 2012-March 2013 vs December 2013-March 2014.

	2013	2014
Dec	72%	63%
Jan	70%	58%
Feb	66%	47%
Mar	83%	59%

Based on those numbers alone the winter months have been 15-40% colder this winter. Ugh.

I can hardly wait until Spring arrives and I truly hope we have a very pleasant summer. After this winter we all deserve that.

[Ed753]

I take it those are your percentages in EV mode?

[xwoodx]

It's no longer -30 without the wind chill. That's all I care about.

[All Star]

What do those percentages even mean?

[Elvisuperman]

At this point, winter can kiss my @$$.

[zete]

I take it those are your percentages in EV mode?

What do those percentages even mean?

Percentage of time spent in electric mode only. Thus, in the February 2013 OnStar reporting period for our Volt 66% was in electric mode, 34% thus used gas. During the February 2014 OnStar reporting period our electric vs gas driving was 47% electric, 53% gas.

That all translates into more frequent visits to the gas station, something that the 2 prior winters happened maybe once every 4-6 weeks. But this winter came as often as every other week.

Hope that clears things up.

[AMERICA 123]

Sometimes just past, this kinda' caught it

***

So I combed back my Detroit, jacked up my pegs
I wiped my Stacy Adams' and I jackknifed my legs
Yeah, I got designs on a moving violation
Yeah baby, you put me on hold and I'm out in the wind
And it's getting mighty cold

It's colder than a gut-shot bitch wolf dog with nine sucking pups
pulling a number-four trap up a hill in the dead of winter
In the middle of a snowstorm with a mouth full of porcupine quills -

Tom Waits from Spare Parts 1

[chinamonty]

Well the other side of the coin is you may be heading for a summer like we just had. A might warm to say the least. We topped 40C too many times around the country (especially Adelaide where the Holden factory is).

[doh]

Altough it was cold and we set records a few times. It might just be Battery Life which will fade every year.

[Voltastic]

Altough it was cold and we set records a few times. It might just be Battery Life which will fade every year.

No battery fade reported by owners at gm-volt.com.