We bought our 2014 Volt new, and it has been a relatively trouble-free car. Bought in January 2014, and it now has 53K miles.
My wife mostly drives this car. Since she commutes late at night alone, and travels sometimes to rural areas, I decided to renew Onstar (Protection) on this car. It was probably one of the best decisions I made.
On 7/30/17, my wife was driving the Volt. As the Volt's EV miles were depleting to 0, she expected the car to transition to the engine, as it normally would. However, once the car went to "0" on EV miles, the engine wouldn't switch on, and the car began to coast from 70 mph and slow down.
She was on the fast lane (Highway 880 near Fremont, CA), and didn't have time to safely swerve all the way to the right side of the highway, so she drove to the shoulder near the median and as close as possible to the highway divider.
There were no warning messages on the display, and only the "check engine light" was illuminated. The car wouldn't shift to reverse or drive.
She called Onstar, who arranged for a tow and police dispatch (although the car was very close to the median, part of it was still dangerously close to the fast lane). A police cruiser came and parked behind her flashing the lights to warn traffic. Finally, after an hour, a flatbed came to tow the Volt to our local dealer (Capitol Chevrolet).
While waiting for that tow, she had Onstar pull the codes from the car. In the confusion, she wasn't able to capture the actual codes, but she was able to record the conversation with the Onstar rep. "Lithium Ion battery is not performing as expected; service within 7 days." "HPCM module is not performing as expected; service within 7 days." "Vehicle electronics are not performing as expected."
The car is still at Capitol and the Volt technician will start work on it tomorrow. It seems like this is an issue with the Voltec system. The Onstar team had kept her calm during the whole ordeal, but in retrospect, it was a truly frightening experience, and I'm glad she made it out safely.
Has anyone experienced anything like this? Hopefully this is a 1 time event--when the car is repaired, we don't want to have this scenario repeated again.
Ivan Jue