[ELRDave]

2 Fridays ago my Silver ELR was totaled. No one hurt.. Got same car sitting in my driveway with 1k more miles on( Built 250 cars before my old one) it shipped from an Acura dealer in FT Worth...battery dead after they took it to a Cadillac dealer to get it charged . Now it gets interesting. It has a life time mpg of 32. Battery was dead charged it with my level 2 to 22mi. Cruised my loop and improved the charge currently at 38 and climbing even with my new set of S Drive tires (love 'em better ride better quiet).The battery seems to be coming back up to a decent state. Now the million dollar question. What if any damage would be done if the car was never charged and screamed around FT Worth with A/C on max for 24K miles? That is a lot of generator usage. Wait it gets better it has not seen a Cadillac Dealer since 9600 mi so no maintenance records . My dealer is going to give it the 22.5k service and change all filters.The car been well cared for interior is pristine except for scratch on CUE that has a loose bezel (ordered) exterior has 1 chip in the silver and the grille is not totally chipped up. I am guessing he just used it as a regular car for what ever reason and did a lot of high speed driving on the DFW metroplex. Still unless there was no access to an outlet why do it? even lotsa chargers around to use it just boggles my mind and gives me some concern for future generator issues.

 

[Sly Bob]

8 year warranty should take care of any issues including with the Voltec generator, I wouldn't be worried about it.

 

[jbakerjonathan]

I’ve got a 2014 Volt with 52,423 miles on the odometer, 38,193 of them with the ICE running the generator for 8-10 hours a day at speeds of 65 mph for hours on end. I've even driven the car up to its software limited 101 mph. Is your worry that the ICE or generator will fail? You have a warranty for 5 years or 100,000 miles. Enjoy your new-to-you car without worry.

 

[DonC]

Completely discharging a lithium ion battery can brick it. But if this were the case the battery would be dead. The battery pack has a buffer, so once it will no longer power the car it's not fully discharged. My guess is that it was in this buffer zone. I don't know this, but it's also possible/likely that when the car is being driven with the engine, excess power to the battery can bring the SOC back up to or even above the top of this buffer zone. You see this when driving on the highway. As you drive the SOC builds up above the buffer, and then the ELR switches to the battery for a few miles before the engine restarts.

If it were stored like this in a cold place that would be a good thing. The cells would be preserved. However, in Texas this isn't likely.

You should be able to see how many electric miles are on the car.

 

[Aseras]

If you have an obd2 scanner that's decent you can see how many cycles the battery has had and cell life. Non of the fancy gm tools needed. If the engine was driven it keeps the battery at the minimum SOC. only way to brick is to short or self discharge, which would take years of sitting.

There were a ton of volts bought by fpl in Florida for the tax credits and they were never charged, just used as gasoline fleet vehicles and sold after 24-30kmiles. They were quite popular as the batteries had no degradation at all. The downside is some of them had the weak oil pump and the engines were replaced. That shouldn't be an issue on the ELR.

If it really bothers you you can reset the lifetime stats, ask next time you are in for service for them to do it in the hpcm2 menu.

Did you get a '14 or '15/16?

 

[Taser54]

You should be able to see how many electric miles are on the car.

Voltstats will show it. It shows the breakout from the previous owner of my current Volt. 2-1 gas/electric in my car's case.

 

[ELRDave]

Thanks Aseras that is what I wanted to hear. Been hearing some differing opinions. Are you saying the ELR engine is different than the Volts that needed replaced?

 

[jcramer]

If you have an obd2 scanner that's decent you can see how many cycles the battery has had and cell life. Non of the fancy gm tools needed.

You wouldn't happen to know the PIDs for getting the number of charging cycles and cell life, would you? Those are not items in the posted .csv spreadsheet of OBDII/CANbus PIDs for the Volt.

 

[jbakerjonathan]

Thanks Aseras that is what I wanted to hear. Been hearing some differing opinions. Are you saying the ELR engine is different than the Volts that needed replaced?

I don't think that that was what he said. The ELR (models 2014 -2016) has the same 1.4L engine that the Gen 1 Volt has. It does not have the 1.5L engine of the Gen 2 Volt. Apparently there have been some Volts that fpl Florida had bought and then run solely in CS mode that had weak oil pumps (the first I have heard of it) and that the engines were replaced. That is what I think he is saying.

 

[ELRDave]

That was what I was trying to understand why it is not an issue on our ELR's was it early year Volts with the bad pumps?

 

[Barry]

If you had bought an ICE car with 24,000 miles on the odometer, you could consider that engine still practically new. It still probably has 85% of its reliable lifetime left. So your ELR engine should be no worse. In fact, the ELR's engine is probably better in comparison, since the engine has been computer controlled to properly warm up at each use and run only at optimal RPMs, shut off at stop lights, etc. Plus, you will probably now be charging the car daily and using the engine less, so the engine may well last several hundred thousand miles (assuming most of them electric).

As for the battery, they age slowest when kept at low states of charge, which your battery has probably been kept at almost its whole life. Plus it should have very few charge/discharge cycles. So it should be in newer condition than one that had been used normally over the same time period.

 

[jbakerjonathan]

As I said, this is the first that I have heard of the Volt engine having any problem. Perhaps those Volts driven by Florida Power and Light were abused and never maintained. Who knows? I would place more credence with the amassed data here on the forum regarding problems with the quality of parts/systems.

If anyone has more information on the topic, please post. I'm going to do a Google search to see what I can find...

EDIT: A search found this:

http://gm-volt.com/forum/showthread.php?271833-Disintegrated-Oil-Pump

 

[Aseras]

Yes the oil pump issues was only on the earlier 2011 and 2012 volts. a 2014 ELR is built on the most "sound" gen 1 volt platform, no plastic bearing cage and the newer oil pumps that didn't eat themselves.

I'll check and see if I can get the list of battery VID's for the charges and cell life.

Also FWIW I drive my ELR almost exclusively in sport and L mode. That's the way the car feels like it was meant to be. I only kick it to D on long trips. I rarely use my gas engine but mine also was a demo/program car and was 90% gas miles on it. They broke the engine in for me, had no problem driving home 700 miles from the dealer I found it as still selling as new on an MSO in March 2017.

Cadillac service is above and beyond chevy in every way. I actually feel confident in them, my chevy dealership I wouldn't trust with anything after my volt experience.

I also had my cue fixed as touchscreen was also touchy or just up and didn't work some days. New cue system is MUCH faster and my dealer offered to put the 2016 version and HMI 2.5 but would loose sd card. ( apparently the older cues are all dying and they are trying to move everyone to the newer fixed units. )

 

[ELRDave]

I also had my cue fixed as touchscreen was also touchy or just up and didn't work some days. New cue system is MUCH faster and my dealer offered to put the 2016 version and HMI 2.5 but would loose sd card. ( apparently the older cues are all dying and they are trying to move everyone to the newer fixed units. )

What did you do to get the new CUE mine doth suckest ?

 

[Aseras]

What did you do to get the new CUE mine doth suckest ?

Bottom 1/3 of my cue was unresponsive when hot. Service writer ( who has an ELR ) said the 2014 units were severely back ordered and he'd see what he could do. Got authorization to replace it with the newer version. They ordered it, and it was put in the next week. They had to do some voodoo on the back end to get the right software. I have hd radio and time shift but no sd card. I have CarPlay.

The only thing I don't have is the lte wifi hotspot with onstar. I never activated my Cadillac Onstar account so its inop.

Works for me.

/ due to me lemon laying my volt I'm sure there's a gm flag by my name that says fix wtf this guys says is broken ASAP.
// the Cadillac dealer a so so so so much better than the Chevy dealer it's unreal. The ELR tech actually know wtf he's doing too.
// having an ats-v as a loaner is a lot better than a Equinox that's engine sounded like it was full of marbles.