This has happened to a few people on here. If this was not 'fixed' in the 2013 model, the GM is really behind the ball. It is an obvious issue. With all the catalytic convertors these days, I am not sure how much of a CO issue it is, but the car running unattended is clearly an issue.

It would appear there is a very simple fix for this. If the car is in park, and the car is about to transition over to engine, an alert should come on the screen that you have to acknowledge. If you do not, the car will shut itself off.

What I'd like to do is have someone with a new 2013 try this out on their car and see what happens.

Otherwise: Volt Advisors- FIND OUT IF THIS IS/WILL BE ADDRESSED

 

Another happy VolterHome Camper! Especially in this recent heat wave- lol

-Note that the charging will NOT happen if the Volt is booted up ( ON ) before hooking up.

Since the Volt is plugged in and then booted up, it will idle all electric, charging the battery, AC in ECO until the next day. Since the Volt is charging with battery reserve, the ICE has no programed reason to engage.

Some of my used Prius buyers have reported a similar happening to the PO since there is no gas engine sound when stopping and getting out of their car. Very rare but it can happen.

So long as the SOC of the battery remains the ICE will NOT cycle on relative to outside temperature- MY2011/ MY2012-

Best-

Thomas J. Thias

Sundance Chevrolet

 

I think the point is that the car won't charge when plugged in while it is "On." I think this is also a case where the default behavior (absent user intervention) should be to shut off and begin charging. Car is in park, no key present, i've just been plugged in. What are the odds that the intent is to NOT charge, but leave it "on" depleting the battery?

 

I think you are wrong. I went up town and parked at agree charging station across where Romney was to appear. 100 degrees and I left it running with air on comfort full blast for two hours and mine topped off the charge by the time we left.

 

Plugging in or not will make no difference, as charging operations are disabled if the Volt is already "ON" when plugging in

Then how long it will take for the ICE to start will depend on the SOC when the car was left ON.
But eventually it will get to 22% but because the vehicle isnt moving, this point is ignored (i.e. EV operation at low speeds)
When it hits ~16% ICE WILL START
However in this event, the ICE doesnt run constantly.
It essentially "cycles" ON and OFF as the SOC bounces back and forth between the buffer set points (i.e. ~16% ICE ON- 21-22% ICE OFF)
What you will notice is it only takes a few minutes of running to charge to 21% but then there is quite a delay as it slowly gets sapped down to 16%
So it stays OFF much longer than it stays ON (even if AC is ON)
This will continue until you run out of fuel when the car will pull the plug on itself and shut down at 15% SOC (and eventually killing the 12V battery as everything else stays ON)
Not much chance of this behavior is ever going to be changed

WOT

By the way in order to recover from this event
SYMPTOMS: 12V battery dead, plug-in charge wont commence. (no 12V so no proximity detected)
If 12V boosted car still won't engage propulsion (still bottomed out at 15%) "and the Waiting to Initiazlize" message may appear frozen
BUT THEN if plug-in the charge connector charging WILL commence and once you wait for SOC to come off the hard floor (15%) the propulsion system will come back online.
Once you DO get it "ON" of course you'll note the empty fuel tank from the low fuel warning

 

It does NOT start the engine if it is plugged in!

The 1st week I had my VOLT back in January of 2011 I got out of the car without turning it off. However I did plug it in to recharge. The next morning when I realized what I had done I noticed that the only bad thing that happened was the car was not fully recharged, it had not used any GAS so the engine did not start.

 

The 1st week I had my VOLT back in January of 2011 I got out of the car without turning it off. However I did plug it in to recharge. The next morning when I realized what I had done I noticed that the only bad thing that happened was the car was not fully recharged, it had not used any GAS so the engine did not start.

The charge will not start if your Volt is still turned on and running...you must turn the vehicle off before any charging to commence...

 

Not much chance of this behavior is ever going to be changed

Why? What reasons exist not to have a prompt or display when the car is parked and left on and about to switch over to gas? In a car that does so much, this seems like a trivial fix.

 

I must say that I have left my Volt powered on as well. 15-20 min later I questioned myself in the office and walked outside to my Volt, and sure enough it was on. The only advice I can give if you don't have the opportunity to simply take a quick walk outside is to either check remaining battery life via the Remote Link app or call your Volt advisor or Onstar and see if they can capture the status of your Volt. GM needs to include whether or not the car is powered on via status section on Remote Link. Seems like a simple programming upgrade to me.

 

GM needs to include whether or not the car is powered on via status section on Remote Link. Seems like a simple programming upgrade to me.

We still can't get alerts to work... so don't expect any "simple" programming upgrades any time soon.

 

If you get out of your Volt with your key FOB, and the Volt is left on, the vehicle does chime, but it's on the inside of the car and, without a window down, harder to hear. This is the "Remote not detected" chime.

 

It's happened to me a few times as well. No noise coming from the car that I hear with the windows closed. Having the car horn honk would be more appropriately audible than an interior chime.

 

Lets pretend you are at the airport, in all the fuss about getting bags out, you leave the car on, and you're away for a vacation. Having remote-link tell you the car is on isnt going to help (unless you can turn it off with remote-link, and I doubt that will happen). this is so much more of an issue with an EV because you don't get all the normal queues that a car is left on.

We've already seen valets do it, as they don't always know what needs to be done. the engine won't be wurring to tell them they actually need to turn it off. We've already seen one lady report that she forgot about it, and came out to a garage filled with fumes. We are just a small sampling of users. So its going to happen more.

 

There is a cancel start feature on remote link. Why couldn't you press that? Will it not work under this seniero?

 

It may. Since I have read about people dropping their wives off at a store (when she had the keys to the car in her purse) and then driving away to do their errands, successfully turning the car off without the key fob being present, I guess it could work.

I guess what I'm saying is this is so easily avoided by a simple center screen prompt. The remote-link would be nice if you wanted to be able to turn it off before it reached the engine turn-on point. I just figure there are more safety concerns involved with allowing an application to disable a car. Would seem more prone to error and accidental disabling of the car when its moving.

With the software prompt, when the car is in park, there isnt much risk that I can see (I can't see any)

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but... Don't confuse carbon monoxide (CO) with carbon dioxide (CO2). Both will kill you in high concentrations but it's CO that gets you first when talking about internal combustion engines or improperly vented home heating equipment.

 

I think there definitely could be some issues with having the Volt run its engine in an enclosed garage for an extended people. Wasn't trying to say otherwise. Either GM has a really good reason for not fixing this already (possible) or its just corporate arrogance (also possible). When people talk about Volt issues, this is the one recurring issue that I think is serious enough for an official response or correction.

 

I don't think anyone has died from CO2 (carbon dioxide) and I highly doubt anyone has a CO2 detector in their home. Carbon monoxide (CO) is another matter entirely.

 

The easy answer to me is when you get out of range of your remote the car should shut off.

 

Perhaps if you turned it off, plugged it in, then turned it on you would be correct, but it is well established and understood that a car that is "on" will not charge when plugged in. Go try it.

 

This is very easy to do.
Set climate control to max ac
Turn car off.
Plug in car.
Recharge.
Connect Kill A watt when done.
Start car with AC max.
Leave car running with key in your pocket while plugged in.
Come back in 10 hours. See what Kill a watt records.
Turn off car. See what SOC charge is.
See what kill a watt records.

 

In addition to the other car warning if you get out and leave the car on -
It seems to me there is another 4 beeps when you plug in the charger- and doesn't the charge light stay YELLOW ?

 

I'm not sure about additional beeps - I don't remember there being any - but yes, the light on the dash will stay yellow, and you won't get the accepted/charging beep after 10 seconds. Both more subtle indicators than the ones people are already missing to have this problem, however.

 

Keep in mind there are times when you need to leave the car on with the ac running. When you have to make a stop and it takes longer than you thought it would take to complete the task. The case of other passengers in the car.

 

So far, some interesting replies. If you noticed in my original post, I said his battery was basically depleted when he rushed into the office. So that's why the ICE eventually came on. I liked the idea of a screen popping up if ICE is to engage while in P for extended periods of time. That seems like a decent idea.

I come from a motorcycle background. We spend lots of time there talking about conspicuity and how people should pay more attention to how they drive. Then we hear reports of people crashing into fire engines with alarms and all lights blazing. Forget it. These little dash indicators and horn chirps are not going to cut it with the more scatterbrained crowd. And it will only take one disaster to cause ENORMOUS PR damage. As it is I get every other person coming up to me asking me if I'm scared of the car catching fire. Imagine what an episode like the ICE running all night in someone's garage would cause?

This is too obvious. GM MUST have heard this before. Nobody knows anything else?

-MKL

 

How many of you have accidentally left your car on?

This poll was inspired by several previous posts on the issue.

Lets also include if your Volt has been accidentally left on by someone else (valet, significant other).

This in reference to several threads, where people have accidentally left their cars on, to return later to find the battery has been depleted, and the engine has turned on. In one case posted on this board, a lady returned to her garage a few hours later that had filled with fumes.

My suggestion is simple: If the car is placed in park and on, and the engine needs to be turned on, a message should come up on the display that states "Would you like to engage the gas engine to continue powering the car?" If 'Yes' is not selected, the car will power off before the motor is allowed to turn on. If someone pulls into a spot, after already being on generator mode, the prompt should still display if it needs to re-engage the motor. There should be a repeat of this prompt at certain intervals of the car being parked (maybe every 30 minutes). Should be a simple fix to prevent some potentially significant outcomes.

 

My Volt does the 4 beeps (sometimes) when I plug it in, and sometimes not. It's very annoying in my garage and loud. I wonder why it only does this on certain occasions.

 

This sounds like the 'you left the key in the car' warning - if you open and close the driver's door with the key inside and the car off, it triggers a fast horn series.

 

I left my Prius on a few times, but never the Volt yet. I think it's because the screen in the Volt is much more noticeable to me when on or off.

 

My wife accidentally left the volt on in the driveway. Neighbors called to tell us that we left our lights on! It was not in range extended mode, so she forgot it was on! This happened when we had borrowed our friends volt, just picked up our 2013 tonight so we will see how we both do.

 

Congrats on your new Volt and welcome to the forum...

 

The Volt doesn't ding-ding-ding, when you open the door when it is on? Like in a regular car, when you leave the keys in the ignition.

 

OK, this thread is very timely.

Friday night and Saturday I let my teenage son use my Volt to visit a friend overnight.

I drive my Volt 80 miles each day (40 electric + 40 gas). I filled up my tank and drove 200 miles (I use Trip 1 for each tank of gas). The Volt indicated I was getting 80 MPG. When he returned the car, Trip 1 indicated 400 miles was driven (yes, he added some gas).

What I couldn't figure out was the Volt showed 40 MPG (for 400 miles). It didn't make any sense to me.

Then I read this post.

This was the second time he drive the Volt (without me in the car). The first time was for about 2 hours.

"Hey, when you would get in the car on Friday or Saturday were the two displays screens already on or were they off?"

"They were on, why"

"Do you turn the car off when you get out of the car?"

"What? Turn it off? Doesn't it turn off by itself?"

So he had the Volt for about 36 hours. Only the first 10 miles were electric (so we'll assume no electric for the entire time he had the car). In that time he didn't shut off the car. The whole time the car was right at the "zero" State-of-Charge (roughly 20% true SOC) -- I think I figured out how the math works out. In his 36 hours he ended up with about 0 MPG (gas engine was running, but miles weren't driven). (0 MPG + 80 MPG) / 2 = 40 MPG.... Yes, I know I just ignored the 200 miles that he drove, so it shouldn't have been 0 MPG (but perhaps 10 or 20).


While my son (and wife) can just get in the Volt and drive it "like any other car", there are subtle differences that the "temporary" driver need to know about.

 

This was the second time he drive the Volt (without me in the car). The first time was for about 2 hours.

"Hey, when you would get in the car on Friday or Saturday were the two displays screens already on or were they off?"

"They were on, why"

"Do you turn the car off when you get out of the car?"

"What? Turn it off? Doesn't it turn off by itself?"

So he had the Volt for about 36 hours. Only the first 10 miles were electric (so we'll assume no electric for the entire time he had the car). In that time he didn't shut off the car. The whole time the car was right at the "zero" State-of-Charge (roughly 20% true SOC) -- I think I figured out how the math works out. In his 36 hours he ended up with about 0 MPG (gas engine was running, but miles weren't driven). (0 MPG + 80 MPG) / 2 = 40 MPG.... Yes, I know I just ignored the 200 miles that he drove, so it shouldn't have been 0 MPG (but perhaps 10 or 20).


While my son (and wife) can just get in the Volt and drive it "like any other car", there are subtle differences that the "temporary" driver need to know about.

Recognizing that the general point that the Volt isn't exactly like any other car is valid, I really have to wonder about the application here... Have you ever met *any* car that turned itself off?!? I don't believe there are any - so I have no idea why anyone would think the Volt might.