[Xpender]

Hi all, here is one of my problem. When driving in the city at about 80KM/h on "L", releasing the gas pedal won't slow the car down at all. If feels like it starts slowing down for a fraction of a second and then instantly going back to the driving speed (accelerating?). Like if it was on the cruise (but wasn't). If not touching anything, it will actually starts to slow down after 2 seconds. If you try to use the brakes during those 2 seconds, the car is hard to slowdown, and all the sudden the brakes engage hard. Me and the wife got the same issue happening. i took the car to the dealership and been told it was fixed by reprogramming the car. But it did not fix it. I am going back again and leaving the car there until they find the problem.

Anybody has heard of this issue?

 

[ghostgs1]

Hi, my 2011 does something like that when the weather is very cold and the drive train hasn't run long. Mine actually feels like it is accelerating after you take your foot of the go pedal. Generally, only after starting to accelerating to highway speeds then slowing for changing light or traffic. Once warmed up this disappears. My dealer reprogrammed something a couple years ago, but the weather warmed up and I wasn't able to experience this again until the following winter. Seems like it must be the high speed motor engaging a bit late. If this is what yours is like I am interested if you can get it resolved.

 

[Xpender]

Mine started happening this year in July when driving in "L" mode. Did not try if it happens in "D" mode. Nothing to do with cold weather. Like you said it feels like the car is accelerating when it should be slowing down (especially in "L" mode).

 

[Xpender]

Mine just started to happen this summer. So cold weather is no the problem. Like you said, it feels like the car is accelerating when you take your foot off the pedal when it should be slowing down (especially in "L" mode).

 

[ClarksonCote]

Mine just started to happen this summer. So cold weather is no the problem. Like you said, it feels like the car is accelerating when you take your foot off the pedal when it should be slowing down (especially in "L" mode).

Is this always happening, or only when you go over a bump in the road? Do you see any message about Low Traction? The ABS kicking in will give a false feeling of acceleration as it temporarily disables regen.

 

[hellsop]

The car is just coasting neutrally while it's doing some stuff shifting power around in the gearset so that the main motor generator can regenerate instead of powering things. It just FEELS like you're accelerating because you're used to the heavy "L" deceleration. 2 seconds is a much longer time than it SHOULD take, though, and that may need looking at. That's about the delay you'll see if the traction control alerts and disables the regen, though.

 

[llninja]

The simplest solution is: don't drive in L and instead drive in D and use the brake pedal. Nearly all the braking will generate regen anyway, plus you have the advantage of variable regen instead of regen at a fixed level. Sure, L is a lot of fun, but it gives my passengers motion sickness, and heavy regen generally hurts range, contrary to the thought that it should help ev range. Maximizing your momentum does more than maximizing regen.

 

[VoltenRock]

This is normal. I drive in "L" exclusively and the amount of deceleration is variable based on speed. This was an early Gen 1 complaint --
that regen did not seem "linear" in "L". The issue seems fixed with the paddle in Gen 2 when more "immediate" deceleration is needed.

 

[Chevrolet Customer Svc]

Hi all, here is one of my problem. When driving in the city at about 80KM/h on "L", releasing the gas pedal won't slow the car down at all. If feels like it starts slowing down for a fraction of a second and then instantly going back to the driving speed (accelerating?). Like if it was on the cruise (but wasn't). If not touching anything, it will actually starts to slow down after 2 seconds. If you try to use the brakes during those 2 seconds, the car is hard to slowdown, and all the sudden the brakes engage hard. Me and the wife got the same issue happening. i took the car to the dealership and been told it was fixed by reprogramming the car. But it did not fix it. I am going back again and leaving the car there until they find the problem.

Anybody has heard of this issue?

Hello Xpender,

At your earliest convenience, could you email me at [email protected] with your VIN, contact information and involved dealership name? We'd like to help!

Best,

Amber G.
Chevrolet Customer Care

To review the GM privacy policy, please visit https://www.gm.com/privacy-statement.html.

 

[Sean-a-Tron]

The simplest solution is: don't drive in L and instead drive in D and use the brake pedal. Nearly all the braking will generate regen anyway, plus you have the advantage of variable regen instead of regen at a fixed level. Sure, L is a lot of fun, but it gives my passengers motion sickness, and heavy regen generally hurts range, contrary to the thought that it should help ev range. Maximizing your momentum does more than maximizing regen.

I second this. I've tested L mode for a while, it didn't really seem to help efficiency (By looking at 'Energy used' when powering off).

What Hellsop said about the Volt shifting the gearsets around makes sense. L mode probably wasn't intended to be a 'normal' drive mode and may not be as refined as 'D' is.

 

[Xpender]

Dealership Answer

Got the car back from the dealership. They basically told me that the car was not designed to go over 50Km/h on "L" mode and that the behaviour I am experiencing is normal. I call them on their bull**** answer as this car never had that problem for the past 2 years. They would not listen to me and kept saying it is a normal situation as per GM driving book. At this point I am pretty fed up with GM and the Volt. Don't get me wrong, it is a great car, but the service is a big zero. What should I do now?

 

[llninja]

Got the car back from the dealership. They basically told me that the car was not designed to go over 50Km/h on "L" mode and that the behaviour I am experiencing is normal. I call them on their bull**** answer as this car never had that problem for the past 2 years. They would not listen to me and kept saying it is a normal situation as per GM driving book. At this point I am pretty fed up with GM and the Volt. Don't get me wrong, it is a great car, but the service is a big zero. What should I do now?

Like I said above, drive it in D, use the brake pedal, only use L when trying to slow down on long mountainous hills.

Another situation that comes up often is when you lift in L or even during normal braking, if the drive wheels happen to hit a bump which causes the wheels to go airborne and spin, it will feel like the volt is lurching forward when in reality, it just isn't braking as you'd expect. When my daughter attended grade school, there was a spot that I hit daily which exhibited this behavior, even while in D using the brake pedal. It sends a sinking feeling into your gut as you are expecting the car to stop, and it doesn't for a brief moment, then catches itself. The car actually disengages regen when it detects wheel slippage and if you can catch it, you might even see the traction control or stabilitrak dash lights flash. So I suspect the car is working as designed, there's not much the dealership can do about this (if this is indeed what you are seeing) and you have to not get so upset at the service department for operating the vehicle where you're putting your tires and suspension on edge to cause this.

That's like getting upset that your rear tires are wearing prematurely on a Vette...

 

[somms]

Got the car back from the dealership. They basically told me that the car was not designed to go over 50Km/h on "L" mode and that the behaviour I am experiencing is normal.

Meanwhile, the now over 70k miles I have put on my Gen1 havel been exclusively while driving in (L) and I 'may' have gotten my Volt up to the governed max speed of 100mph once or twice also while driving in (L) w/o any issue. (Our rural speed limit is 80mph so I only exceeded this by @20mph on the dead flat/straight I80 interstate while heading out to Nevada)!