[RobbertPatrison]

After 2 weeks I am very satisfied with my 'fully loaded' 2013 Volt: it drives great, looks good and efficiency is better than the EPA sticker. The drive modes of the Voltec transmission makes this the most advanced and complex car ever, and GM pulled it off. As one review noted, its a giant video game for adults, and I enjoy playing that came on my commute to work.

The complexity inevitably results in bugs and minor design errors. They are the inevitable side effects of large projects. None that I saw until now were bad or affected the core operation or hardware of the Volt. This is the list of software bugs I am experiencing:

• 
  The system date is always one day ahead. This is literally the car of the future Update Oct 18, 2012: Firmware upgrade resolved this problem

• 
  The iPhone remoteLink app has a bug that makes it impossible to set charge alerts. That was reported multiple times, but there is no indication that Onstar is working on resolving this. There is a complex work-around. Update October 30th: after some initial trouble, the latest version resolved the issue.

• 
  When connecting an iPhone using mylink it sometimes plays though its internal speaker instead of the car's stereo. This could be a bug in iOs or in mylink. Unresolved. There is a hack to correct it when this happens.

• 
  Setting the XM music category list has no effect that I could see. You are always scrolling through a flat list of zillions of channels. That makes the setting rather pointless.

• 
  There is a setting for the volume of the navigation voice prompt (which works). There is also a setting for the strength of the muting of the regular audio while the computer voice is guiding you. That doesn't work. During nav announcements the radio/postcast is always muted down to an unintelligible level, which is irritating. The only work around seems to be to switch voice guidance off. The nav system in the 7-year old Toyota that I have solved this much more elegantly by outputting the voice guidance only through the left front speaker. Both the Volt and the Toyota's nav are sourced from Denso. Update October 18, 2012: Infotainment firmware update has resolved this problem.

• 
  POI name search does not work properly if no city name is entered. One would expect that entering 'starbucks' would yield a sorted list of the nearest SB locations. Instead, it lists hundreds SB locations that are 400 miles away. The work-around is to enter the name of the city one is in. But that excludes SB in adjacent cities that might be closer. Looks like I better use the map app on my smartphone.

Granted, most of the above issues are small oversights. I will be curious when (or whether) they will be fixed. There are some bigger issues that are likely 'features' that we have to live with for the rest of the car's lifetime (the crappy nav with its slow boot time and erratic routing, the general messy layout and usability of the center stack infotainment system). But lets focus on the software features that do not work as advertised (and that might with a software update). Any more bugs to add to this?

Edit a month later: Of the above list of issues, the incorrect date problem and the voice navigation prompt have been resolved by GM as of October 17th. I brought my Volt in for unscheduled service after two check-engine light events. I compiled a full list of issues, and the dealer installed the very latest firmware.

 

[Cord]

IS "iPhone remoteLink app has a bug that makes it impossible to set charge alerts" a 2013 problem and being able to fix it is only for 2012. IE some of us were able to get it working.

So no one with a 2013 can get it working ?

 

[CharlieO1]

IS "iPhone remoteLink app has a bug that makes it impossible to set charge alerts" a 2013 problem and being able to fix it is only for 2012. IE some of us were able to get it work.

So how do I make this work for my 2012? I have called Onstar twice concerning this and other issues, and wasted 30 minutes sitting in my car being shuffled from one Onstar operator or "tech" to another. Apparently none of them are aware of how to fix this issue. Ten days ago I was told that they "escalated" my case to try to resolve it. I have never heard back from them.

Combining this issue with various problems that are apparent on the myvolt.com site, I am not at all impressed with Onstar. How is is possible that a service that has been in operation for so many years has so many unresolved technical issues? I will continue using the service for the duration of my lease, but I can tell you that I am not interested in using Onstar in any future vehicles.

 

[OurVolt]

I can't get the alerts to work either

IS "iPhone remoteLink app has a bug that makes it impossible to set charge alerts" a 2013 problem and being able to fix it is only for 2012. IE some of us were able to get it working.

So no one with a 2013 can get it working ?

 

[holland_patrick]

My alerts work I would contact your volt advisor as they seem to have a great deal of pull. It took weeks but it was figured out. But I still have problems here and there

 

[VoltageDrop]

My charge alerts work as well (2012 MY)......interestingly enough though.....I have never had a problem with the connection of the iphone to the car and music playing through the car....until recently...I have plugged in the phone and music plays through the phones speaker instead of the car speaker....my quick fix.....cycle the phone off/on......What hack are you guys speaking of to overcome this???

Another quick Q? I noticed that my phone isn't being charged when plugged into the USB port......just plays music....Why wouldn't it charge the phone at the same time?

 

[RobbertPatrison]

As for the onstar charge alert bug: this is a bug in the iPhone app that likely applies to all Volt models. It goes not affect all users as it depends on the initial setting of the alarm. The work around seems to be to set it once with the android app. See the thread hyperlinked in my original post. Indeed, I'm not impressed with onstar support. I was treated quickly and courteously when I hit the button, but the problem is not in their solutions database so they had no clue. They promised that their tech support would get back to me, but that never happened.

As for the mylink iPhone sound output bug workaround: see hyperlink in my original post for details. My iPhone charges over the USB.

 

[bonaire]

The nag I have for mine (2011) is that if you park the Volt, turn it off and keep the radio playing - then after about 5 minutes, the radio turns off (for power-savings?). You press on 0|1 button to turn on the radio again. The volume now controls the Audio Cue volume and not the Radio Volume. You have to turn the car back on to control the radio volume again.

 

[Skotty]

I had the problem getting alerts to work in the iphone app as well. May have just been a coincidence, but in case there was something to it -- mine magically started working after I fully filled out my Contact Info on the alerts page. Previously, I had left the email field blank, as I was only interested/expecting alerts on the phone. Then one day I filled in the email field too, and very shortly after I noticed I was finally able to set alerts.

I would guess this is just coincidence, but maybe ... just maybe ... have any of you not filled in the email address? If so, try it and see if it makes a difference. I never contacted my Volt advisor on the problem nor did I do anything else to fix it. If it was not the email address, then I have no idea why it magically started working.

 

[RobbertPatrison]

Thanks for the advice on the charge alert bug. I had tried all possible permutations of email & addresses, to no avail. Judging the from the behaviour of the charge alert bug, it seems that it is likely an un-initialized variable in the iPhone app (a classic programming bug). Any change to the setting in the onstar 'cloud' (either through and android app, or by someone at onstar, or dumb luck) will fix it.

In the 2013 the radio turns off after 10 minutes. I did not observe yet strange sound control behavour after switching it back on again, but I'll check that.

 

[BAZINGA]

Don't own an iPhone but my 4 year old Blackberry Storm and iPad 2 receive charging status updates. I do recall having to call OnStar initially as I was getting some error code, after a few days I received a call back and all I needed to do was go back into my OnStar account and check the enable mobile link box.

I now received both Text and E-Mail notices.

 

[ClarksonCote]

The nag I have for mine (2011) is that if you park the Volt, turn it off and keep the radio playing - then after about 5 minutes, the radio turns off (for power-savings?). You press on 0|1 button to turn on the radio again. The volume now controls the Audio Cue volume and not the Radio Volume. You have to turn the car back on to control the radio volume again.

Yes! There is a work around I've found, but it should be fixed.

The workaround is to go into Config settings for Volume, and Audio Cue Volume. In there, press the Audio Volume (?) blue button instead of adjusting the Volume. It plays the Audio Cue to show you what the volume is set to, and that action returns normal volume control back to the music afterwards.

 

[focher]

When connecting an iPhone using mylink it sometimes plays though its internal speaker instead of the car's stereo. This could be a bug in iOs or in mylink. Unresolved. There is a hack to correct it when this happens.

Just a note on this one, I'm not too sure this is a Volt issue and not an iOS one. So far on my iPhone 4S with iOS 6 beta and the release candidate firmware, I have not experienced the problem. Hard to say for sure as its never been a consistent problem.

Also I have a 2012 and no MyLink.

 

[mikeg3]

Does GM have a public list of software glitches and work-arounds so we don't have to discover this stuff over and over.

 

[Rosenkavalier]

When connecting an iPhone using mylink it sometimes plays though its internal speaker instead of the car's stereo. This could be a bug in iOs or in mylink. Unresolved. There is a hack to correct it when this happens.

I too experience this on an intermittent basis in my 2013 Volt. I have an additional iPhone/audio system issue that I don't know if anyone else has experienced.

I use Playlists extensively on my iPhone 3GS (iOS ver. 5.1.1). I've got nearly 2,000 songs on my 32GB model, so searching on it is not a good use of time - I prefer to preset playlists in advance. My "bug" is that the 2013 Volt audio system seems to intermittently 'jump' to later positions in the playlist that is cued up on the phone when initially connected. And since the 2013 interface does not present a list of the currently playing playlist (it just lets you go forward & back through the list), I have to navigate thru the entire iPod tree to get to the playlist, then try to find where I was, and force the audio system to pick back up on the correct item. This takes time, and forces me to stop and focus attention on the audio system instead of starting to drive.

I'd say this happens about every 1 of out 6 connections - I connect with the 30 pin cable, as I never could get the Bluetooth audio stream to work reliably.

 

[Kevlar]

Today when I connected my iPod to the USB port it started playing for just a few seconds before the USB source got greyed out...Has anybody else had this problem? after playing for about 5 seconds, the Infotainment screen gets frozen with the message "indexing" and after that the USB port gets deactivated. I couldn't make it work again by disconnecting and reconnecting... it wouldn't even work with a USB memory stick. It only worked again after turning off the car for more than 10 minutes... both the iPod and memory stick used to work fine before.
A similar problem happened about a month ago with my iPad (1st generation), it used to work fine, then one day the sound only came out of the iPad speaker and wouldn't work. When I connected the iPad to the computer it couldn't be recognized and I had to reset to factory settings...which was big hassle to recover to how it was set before that...
Yes, that's a 2013 Volt.

 

[Kevlar]

Efficiency display bug in the 2013 MY

I noticed that after using EV Hold for a while (driving on the highway) when I slow down and switch the driving mode to Normal, the efficency display continues to track the distance traveled on the gas engine (charge sustaining mode) and not on the electric miles traveled. I assume this is a glitch in the software controling the display since I've made sure every time that I'm only using the battery for propulsion, no gas engine is active. This happens practically every time I switch from EV Hold to Normal driving mode, although sometimes it doesn't seem to happen. I think it may have something to do with not having the efficiency display active while transitioning, but I"m not sure. In any case, the result is that we get an inaccurate count of electric miles traveled, which is not a big deal, but it would make Volt drivers happier to see that they actually got more electric miles of every charge than those reported by the efficiency display.
Apparently, the electric miles counter starts working again after hitting some speed above 40 mph... I wonder if the software assumes that you ran out of battery and went into Charge Sustainment mode where at low speeds it uses only battery power but doesn't count those miles as electric miles...
Anybody else noticed that problem?

 

[Rosenkavalier]

I noticed that after using EV Hold for a while (driving on the highway) when I slow down and switch the driving mode to Normal, the efficency display continues to track the distance traveled on the gas engine (charge sustaining mode) and not on the electric miles traveled. ... Anybody else noticed that problem?

Yep - there's a thread: http://gm-volt.com/forum/showthread.php?16165-2013-Volt-Hold-Button-Programming-Glitch-Bug

Going back for a moment to my radio comments from several posts ago, I have updated my iPhone 3GS to iOS 6 and am trying the Bluetooth audio streaming again. So far, it's working better - only the occasional audio dropout, but staying connected. I haven't been connecting directly, so I can't say if iOS 6 produced any differences for the issues noted.

 

[thequickad]

Has GM fixed the bug in 2013 where in 2012 that if you turn off the radio it also turns off the navigation screen? or when you turn on anything, the radio turns on?

 

[marlow]

The nag I have for mine (2011) is that if you park the Volt, turn it off and keep the radio playing - then after about 5 minutes, the radio turns off (for power-savings?). You press on 0|1 button to turn on the radio again. The volume now controls the Audio Cue volume and not the Radio Volume. You have to turn the car back on to control the radio volume again.

I have noted the same problem with my 2011 Volt