[dmtanner]

With the continuous improvements in e-vehicle battery research & development, I hope that when the time comes when I must replace the battery in my 2017 Gen-2 Volt that it will be a battery upgrade, enabling a longer range and faster chargeability.

 

[somms]

With the continuous improvements in e-vehicle battery research & development, I hope that when the time comes when I must replace the battery in my 2017 Gen-2 Volt that it will be a battery upgrade, enabling a longer range and faster chargeability.

Since this hasn't been offered yet for the Gen1, I wouldn't hold out much hope for GM to provide an increased battery capacity upgrade the Gen2 but I wish they would do so!

 

[marcusm]

Battery is possible but charger is a separate thing and very doubtful. The charging circuits and system are hard wired into the car and limit the rate of charge. I also doubt GM would offer a battery refit. A more energy dense battery is theoretically possible in the future in the same space but I doubt GM would ever do it. If they did I think some would be interested. I also don't know if aftermarket would ever be an option on such a complex drivetrain system.


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[canehdian]

By the time you actually need a replacement, GM will probably be on to a third or fourth generation battery and won't be offering old battery formats except as warranty replacements.

However, and these companies exist even today (at least for gen1 - a video from a company was posted here at one point and you could see volt T-batteries in the background), third parties could take your battery shell, computer and all, and retrofit it with new cells.

So long as it's the same chemistry, the charger and circuitry all works the same (e.g. charger keeps filling until battery hits x voltage, not a set number of kWh). It would just take longer to charge, and take longer to discharge.

 

[sduck]

I can't think of a time when a car manufacturer has offered a way to upgrade parts of older cars to meet specs of newer cars. There's no economic incentive to do this. And engineering parts so that they're backwards compatible is a major hassle, and not common practice. So I wouldn't consider this a possible option in the future.

Considering that the firmware running my 2012 hasn't been updated, and was never really finished to begin with, I doubt they'd expend any efforts to make batteries upgradable. They want to sell new cars, of course!

 

[saghost]

With the continuous improvements in e-vehicle battery research & development, I hope that when the time comes when I must replace the battery in my 2017 Gen-2 Volt that it will be a battery upgrade, enabling a longer range and faster chargeability.

Two different things, with different issues. The charge rate isn't imited by the battery - you've seen the car pull down 60 kW on regen, right? To increase the charge rate, you'd need an upgrade to the onboard charger module and chargeport wiring. That's certainly possible, but not terribly likely.

More likely is the battery upgrade. I tend to agree with the consensus that GM probably won't be offering one. However, there are enough Volts out there that I suspect you'll see the aftermarket step up and offer upgraded packs in the future, as long as they can get cells of matching geometry in newer chemistries to build packs from.

 

[accelerus]

There was something floating around a while back how someone in another country kind of rigged/wired in an extra set of Li-Ion batteries into the back seat of his volt, supposedly giving him an extra bit of range.

If the aftermarket ever explored this and battery tech got a little better, I'd love to be able to wire in an extra 5 or 6 kWh of battery to my Gen2, that would mean I'm about to go round trip in all EV mode for work (I drive about 75 miles a day) and still use around 1/2 a gallon of gas.

Odds of this happening are super low though, by the time these things are dirt cheap for the aftermarket to start tinkering I'll probably be looking at a 2nd year Model3 once they have the first year bugs worked out.

 

[VoltenRock]

I think you WILL get a more energy dense battery as a replacement, perhaps even from GM. The reason? Battery technology and energy density will increase and GM is not going to stock 10s of thousands of old, outdated batteries in a warehouse for years just as possible replacements for older Volts. It is not cost effective to keep old batteries hanging around, and iffy that such old batteries would still work after years in storage.

Instead, you will get a newer battery based on newer technology. The larger question is whether your Volt's software will be updated to take advantage of it. Also, it is possible GM may only offer a "smaller" battery as a "replacement" that provides the same available usable kWh--bringing your car back to 2017 levels--but not beyond. I agree with the others that faster charging is very unlikely, though.

My '13 Volt is a case in point. I recently had to have part of my battery replaced to take care of a non-serviceable failing temp sensor. I can't yet explain why I'm getting an additional 0.5 usable kWh and a couple additional EV miles, except that possibly the replacement and required software calibration "updated" my car to that of a '15 Volt. As far as I know, I've got the only '13 that gets 10.8 to 11.1 kWh thanks to the hassle of getting a partial battery replacement.

 

[srmarti]

It's been brought up before. I'm not so sure there will be much of a market for improved aftermarket batteries. With all the changes everyone is expecting in the industry, it might make even less sense to retrofit and "old" car with a new, improved battery. Lots of other things on the car might be "old and outdated" by the time a better battery is available.

 

[Dakster]

There used to be a company that for Prius cars that would add battery capacity, not sure if they are still around. Second, see Tesla for a car company that upgrades their older cars. They recently announced a battery upgrade for their roadsters.

After the last battery warranty expires on first generation volts, GM has to stock ZERO replacement parts. That's the way the auto regs are written. I remember trying to get some seals for a convertible Mustang about 8 years after that model was replaced and you just couldn't get them. A mechanic friend of mine has a Ddoge Durango that the headlight switch goes bad on and his is 7 years past being made and he can't get it either.

Knowing how GM works, a replacement battery will have the same useable capacity as the current one. I could be pleasantly surprised though.

 

[caronjeff]

My 5 years owned 2011 has saved me about $10,000 in gasoline when compared to the 3 series BMW it replaced. I do see slight degradation of the battery capacity, maybe 5-6%. Looking at this issue from a pure economic standpoint, how much money does a full battery replacement cost? Has anyone actually paid for a replacement out of warranty? If we use or make assumption that the car itself will outlive the battery are we not negating the economic argument? I'm fully expecting my 2011 to be functioning in 2021 on the original battery, possibly with some acceptable range loss. I'm also predicting that the majority of Volts will hit the scrap yard with original battery still intact. Maybe in 2031.

 

[Loboc]

Replacing the battery is equivalent in cost to replacing the engine in a conventional car. Why would anyone do that to a 10-yr-old car? The rest of the car is worn out as well.

My grandfather had the same ax his entire life. Eight new hafts and three new heads.

 

[ghostgs1]

A small operation is advertising upgrades for Teslas on eBay. I think it was $15k to get to a 90kWh battery for all small model S batteries. Of course this is a different monetary demographic, but I could imagine something similar for the Volt.

 

[Whatstreet]

Replacing the battery is equivalent in cost to replacing the engine in a conventional car. Why would anyone do that to a 10-yr-old car? The rest of the car is worn out as well.

My grandfather had the same ax his entire life. Eight new hafts and three new heads.

A new battery for an old car is to expensive. There is some rebuilding of batteries for hybrid cars already, mostly the Prius but they also service other cars. These same companies will eventually provide rebuilt batteries for the Volt and others. Perhaps even upgrades.

http://www.priusrebuilders.com/

 

[JacobH]

I am new to my 2017 Chevy volt and was surprised the manual said nothing about battery care. Plugincars.com talks about avoiding fully charging, avoiding fully discharging the battery to prolong life, etc. Any thoughts on this?

 

[Steverino]

Plugincars.com talks about avoiding fully charging, avoiding fully discharging the battery to prolong life, etc. Any thoughts on this?

By design, the Volt does not allow you to fully discharge or fully charge the battery. Instead, there is a built-in "reserve" that essentially limits you to using only 70% (or so) of the battery. So a "Full" battery in a Volt is actually reading the 80% you are allowed to use. An "empty" battery (no bars), actually has about 30% left. Chevy was very clever in doing this, after all, they are on the hook with an 8 yr/100k mile warranty (exc. CA).

 

[freshcut]

I would love if GM or even a 3rd party upgrade were available in the future. However, looking at more commonly available batteries that we all use everyday such as cell phone, laptop, etc......and looking at whats available for devices from 10 years ago, the capacity hasn't changed much at all even though battery technology is vastly improved. My guess is that even 20 years from now when we get batteries that have significantly more capacity than we have now, we might get a somewhat lighter battery pack with fewer cells and the same total capacity, but likely not an increase. Hopefully I'm wrong as I would love to have a pack that fits my '13 with a range of 100 miles or more, but I won't hold my breath for such an option.

 

[canehdian]

I would love if GM or even a 3rd party upgrade were available in the future. However, looking at more commonly available batteries that we all use everyday such as cell phone, laptop, etc......and looking at whats available for devices from 10 years ago, the capacity hasn't changed much at all even though battery technology is vastly improved. My guess is that even 20 years from now when we get batteries that have significantly more capacity than we have now, we might get a somewhat lighter battery pack with fewer cells and the same total capacity, but likely not an increase. Hopefully I'm wrong as I would love to have a pack that fits my '13 with a range of 100 miles or more, but I won't hold my breath for such an option.

While that's true for cell phones - they haven't made many with a 10Ah battery (though they could), they chose to shrink the battery to get a smaller/slimmer phone while maintaining the power capacity and lowering cost of the battery component.
However, if you are looking to retrofit your 10+ year old volt, with a large metal case holding the cells - you gain no advantage to shrink the cells except maybe a bit of weight. Better off to replace all cells with like size, but much larger capacity.

So in new future vehicles, I could see this. But as a retrofit, you don't gain much of an advantage, and you'd also need additional material to 'pad' the inside of the battery case for those smaller/lesser cells inside of the pack.

However, there is a possibility that a future chemistry costs exponentially more to pack it in tightly and get high energy density, whereas they could use the same chemistry but more loosely to replace volt cells 1:1 (size/volume) at a very cheap price. That would give the price and weight benefit for a volt upgrade.

 

[marty2627]

I would love if GM or even a 3rd party upgrade were available in the future. I would love to have a pack that fits my '13 with a range of 100 miles or more, but I won't hold my breath for such an option.

Yeah , me too ! Lets do a bulk deal!

 

[Fred_B]

At this point, we have NO assurance that anyone will be able to replace the Gen 1/2 Volt batteries when they wear out (past the Voltec warranty period). It seems like (so far) that GM designed the batteries to last the life of the cars (10 years?). Although I would LOVE to keep my 2013 Volt running for 20+ years and do a refresh with a new battery every 10 years or so, I will most likely end up buying another new car. I trust at that point GM will have an assortment of even better electric vehicles to choose from.

I do really like having the gas-powered generator. Even with a longer range battery I would still want this, until ultra-fast charging stations are as plentiful as gas stations.