[CurrentEvent]

Utah has a lot of changes in elevation. It isn't unusual to have several ten-or-twenty mile inclines and ten-or-twenty mile declines in one 50-mile trip. I was thinking how easy it would be to "cheat" on your gas mileage. You could switch to electric mode, "normal", whenever you were going uphill and switch to gas mode, "hold", when going downhill. You could inflate your gas-only mpg enormously until you run out of charge. That's assuming you want to inflate your gas mileage and don't care about electric mileage. I've been doing this a lot. Not with the intention of cheating, but I think the Volt handles long inclines better in electric mode than in gas mode. It illustrates how hard it is to get meaningful mileage measurements in the Volt.

 

[MikeyCVolt]

Doing that, you'll end up with a very low mileage estimate on your electric range though. Then when you show someone your car, they'll say "It says it has a full charge and 31 miles of electric range. I thouoght these gen-2 volts got 53 miles on a charge?"

Mike

 

[JRRF]

Doing that, you'll end up with a very low mileage estimate on your electric range though. Then when you show someone your car, they'll say "It says it has a full charge and 31 miles of electric range. I thouoght these gen-2 volts got 53 miles on a charge?"

Mike

Yes, but the actual EV range exhibited would not diminish substantially. Because even though the downhill regen is being credited to the ICE in the statistics, it's still available to the battery to be used on the uphill sections.

 

[Barry]

I would be inclined (pun intended) to drive it the opposite way. Use gas uphill. I think that would give you lower total gas consumption on a given trip, assuming you use all of your charge. Inflating your MPGcs figure seems like the wrong goal. You should try to maximize your average MPG for the whole trip (including both gas and electric miles).

 

[JRRF]

I would be inclined (pun intended) to drive it the opposite way. Use gas uphill. I think that would give you lower total gas consumption on a given trip, assuming you use all of your charge. Inflating your MPGcs figure seems like the wrong goal. You should try to maximize your average MPG for the whole trip (including both gas and electric miles).

In this way you might never use up your battery range if it's always downhill. You might actually lose some regen possibilities since with a full battery regen energy will be dumped.

 

[srmarti]

Utah has a lot of changes in elevation. It isn't unusual to have several ten-or-twenty mile inclines and ten-or-twenty mile declines in one 50-mile trip. I was thinking how easy it would be to "cheat" on your gas mileage. You could switch to electric mode, "normal", whenever you were going uphill and switch to gas mode, "hold", when going downhill. You could inflate your gas-only mpg enormously until you run out of charge. That's assuming you want to inflate your gas mileage and don't care about electric mileage. I've been doing this a lot. Not with the intention of cheating, but I think the Volt handles long inclines better in electric mode than in gas mode. It illustrates how hard it is to get meaningful mileage measurements in the Volt.

So what? I don't even get the "cheating" part or any motivation for it. Nobody is going to give you anything for all your effort.

 

[alfon]

We have a 2016 Volt Premier. We use the gas engine quite often as living on the Oregon Coast for any serious shopping or dining its a 160-180 mile round trip to Portland Oregon.

Our lifetime cs mileage from voltstats.net is 46.57 mpg, this is close to what our 2010 Prius has been averaging when you consider winter and summer combined. So far this month our volt just on gas has been 52 mpg.

Even the best economy cars today would probably not have a lifetime mpg of 46.57. With over 26,000 miles on our Volt and 8,662 of those are just on the gas engine. Also no cheating as well.....