I wonder if the electric heater works during this cycle. Once the ICE has bought the coolant temp up to 65C, does the electric heater turn on to at least try to keep the coolant warm despite the cold ambient temps? If the only thing providing heat is the on/off cycle of the ICE, I'm afraid the Volt won't be much of an EV for me in winter; during the months of January and February, it's unusual for the temperature to ever climb above -4C, day or night.

 

I'm wondering the same thing.....
SURELY the high voltage battery will do it's very best to keep the cabin-heating-coolant adequately warm during the time period the ICE has cycled off.
However, can anyone with specific knowledge (rather than just guesses) comment??

 

I'm not sure if this will help, but it is written by our definitive Volt expert (***) and has quite a bit of detail:

http://gm-volt.com/2010/12/09/the-chevrolet-volt-coolingheating-systems-explained/

Check out the comments below the article as well, because *** provides an adiitional schematic at Comment #36.

 

Thanks Slapshot28,
The third block diagram does seem to indicate a 360V Electric Heater is in series with the direction of flow of coolant from the ICE to the Cabin Heater Core. And that even more specifically there is a bypass coolant loop recirculating coolant from the Electric Heater specifically to the Cabin Heater Core "During EV Operation".

 

I understand the ICE will start at 25° F (–4° C) but what about in very hot temperatures? The owners manual advises the ICE may start due to temperature of either hot or cold ambient temperature. Does anyone know the answer at what hot temperature will the ICE start?

 

We have driven ours in 115F temps and the ICE has not come on. But it is generally plugged in when not in use and does make a power draw every few hours, I assume to condition the battery, and when driven the AC is at least on in ECO mode.

 

That's interesting. I wonder what would happen if the Volt was not plugged in and was sitting in a hot parking lot at this temperature. I wonder if the ICE would start to help with the cooling of the battery etc. There must be a threshold for the ICE to start in hot temperatures. I wonder if Rusty or any of those guys have an input to this.

 

It was my understanding that the volt will circulate collant to help to maintain a certain range of temp for the battery. I know if plugged in to power it draws from there. If not i would think it would draw from the battery. Not sure what would happen if the battery was depleted though. From what i have heard owners have comment to hearing humms and noises from the car which are normal as the pumps kick on and off at night.

 

The car certaintly makes some odd noises.. Especially when plugged in. The night we brought ours home, and hooked it up to the charger I unplugged it as it almost sounded like a bug zapper going off.. I have now just come to accept it as normal as everything is always fine when I go out in the morning. Can also occassionally here a pump come on and go off. As far as in the heat we have had some pretty hot days here in Florida, and to my knowledge the engine has not kicked on because it was to hot... Curious to see how the cold weather operations are since we will be moving to Virginia in 2 months..

 

We're bound to see morning temps below -4C here within a few weeks... we'll see then!

 

I just ordered mine yesterday. I'm a previous Prius owner, and I'm very interested in knowing how this works. The major downfall I saw in the Prius was the amount of preheat time it would spend warming things up each day. I only have to drive 5-10 miles a day, and live in the middle of PA - where temps range between 0 and 30 throughout the winter. Just as I get to where I'm going, the Prius would decide it was warm enough to turn off the ICE. I was really hoping the Volt would solve that problem - but this thread makes me wonder. Furthermore, I was hopeful that I would be able to have the Volt preheat the cabin each day (while plugged in) so I wouldn't be making my short trip in a freezing car.

Am I out of luck here? Do I need to cancel my order and just go with a Leaf instead?

 

Do you have a garage? If so the car will likely be 30-45F and so the engine will not start in the garage. You can definitely preheat and get a warm cabin, which should last you 10m with no problem. The return trip will be different unless you plug n at work.

If the outside temp is <25F the volt will start due to the temp. Mine has done it 4 times now.
I've been doing 75 went it goes on and off. The batter still allows a full driving experience even when its that cold, the ICE just turns on to keep the battery a bit warmer.

Each of my temperature-based start lasted about 30sec to 1min. So in a 10m trip at 0, you would like have the ICE on for a part, but not nearly all of it.


My recommendation is to visit your dealer and see if you can take a demo home over night on a cold day.

 

I do have an insulated and attached garage, but don't have heat going to it, nor do I have an insulated garage door at this point. If I run it through a preheat cycle, do I need to worry about keeping the garage door open because of the ICE? I've thought about possibly improving things by getting insulated garage doors or possibly getting heat out to the garage, but have no idea if it would be worth while - and if the ICE does turn on during preheat, I don't want to be making things worse.

I'd be surprised if the dealer let me take one home - they only had one (that he claimed they couldn't sell at this time), and I've never seen another on the road around here. Besides that, it's in the mid-40's this week - nowhere near cold enough for the typical winter day I'm expecting.

 

I've been preconditioning (heating) in my closed garage for a while. I leave the garage door closed. I'm not sure I've heard a definite realworld real owner example/scenario when the ICE/GG would come on during preconditioning. It comes on when you start the car for sure when it is below 25F.

This all has been talked about a lot. The modern Volt ICE setup with the catalytic converter *RIGHT* next to the exhaust manifold reduces emissions extremely fast by comparisons to other vehicles. As has been stated you could not hurt yourself even if you wanted to running the modern ICE in a closed garage. Remember it on runs 10 minutes up to 2 precondition requested times.

I'd probably insulate my garage door ($) but certainly not heat the garage ($$$). Youtube videos of varous insulation kits/etc: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Garage+Door+Insulation+Kit

 

My garage is attached, only a 2 walls are insulated, doors are not insulated. When its <-10F (i.e. very cold) and windy the garage gets below 25 and I will not precondition as I don't want the ICE running in the garage with the door shut. Furthermore when its that cold I'm sure the car's ICE will turn on and provide heat almost right away.

When its at 0F, garage hovers around 32F so I may still choose to precondition. Will have to wait and see.

You can be sure the ICE will never turn on in a LEAF Less certain you'll be albe always make it to your destination though with a 20m R/T commute you would be fine

You might compare
http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2011/04/a-winter-in-the-nissan-leaf.html
http://blogs.cars.com/kickingtires/2011/04/a-winter-in-the-chevy-volt.html

some some of the their others comparison posts.

 

Thanks for the replies and links - I'm feeling much better about my order now. I pulled up my daily trip on Google maps - looks like it's only 5.3 miles round trip, and I work from home - this trip is just to take the kids to school, so there's little downtime between the there and back. I'll go with the garage insulation and see how things go.

 

I pulled up my daily trip on Google maps - looks like it's only 5.3 miles round trip

Then you should be able to pre-heat on the return trip without worrying about range too. You can pre-heat without the car being plugged in. It just draws down the battery. But it may be worth it to get into a warm(er) car...

 

I did one better - I created a PC app to simulate the OnStar commands for starting the engine, then set that up as a scheduled task to run 20 minutes before I leave each weekday (since I leave at the same time every day anyway). I'm thinking I'll enhance it a bit once I get the hang of how far in advance to make it run, if I need one cycle or two, and perhaps factor in those things based on weather. I'd also love to make it so it doesn't start automatically if I'm not at home (I.E. vacation), but haven't quite figured that one out yet. Maybe I can tie it in with my Android phone's GPS location... I'm open to suggestions.

 

Did you get a real API from them, or did you just reverse engineer it? Care to share?

Maybe make it an android app then ti can easily access your location and ask if you are away (or just do the right thing).
Getting the PC to connect to the phone is tricker (I guess your phone could push the location).

 

No, no API. Just loaded up the Tamper Data browser extension and watched the traffic that goes back and forth when performing a start command through the official website. I'm not sure I have any idea how to program a cron job in Android, nor have I ever done much programming with Android at all - my expertise is all in web app development and scripting technologies. As it stands at the moment, I can't do anything the OnStart website can't do for you - only I can schedule those things to happen without my input. I will certainly share what I've done, but since I've only had the car for 3 days (and haven't used the app I did for more than testing functionality at the moment), I'm thinking I should hold off at least until I'm sure it'll work consistently. I'm also mildly concerned about them blocking my work. Since it's not an API, it will be very fragile and will very likely break the moment they make changes. I don't want to be "responsible" for fixing it, nor do I want to be held accountable should it cause any real issues...

Perhaps someone else would like to take "ownership" of it?

 

Shared here - though I'd still love for someone else to pick it up and run with it from here.

 

Thanks Ohm.. replied on the other thread. I'm just finishing up a busy time but have already planned on getting into android programming for the Volt (well mixed iphone/andorid for some, just droid for others). I agree that web-replay hacking is just that and not really ideal for an "application" that requires support.

 

Once I figure out what language you used and how this works, I might pick this up and run with it for linux. Running windows in virtual box just to do the Volt in the driveway is more work than walking down there. Fixing windows for clients made me rich, but now that I trade stocks for a living (my own dough only) no way windows gets run - too dangerous and insecure for my taste. Having seen the nasty underbelly of that one...

 

That's ok - I won't get to it in the next week, but I'll likely be converting this to either perl or php in the next few weeks so I can run it on my ReadyNAS (which runs linux). I have one more feature to add yet too - the option to unlock the doors after the preconditioning cycle is complete.

If you get to it before I do (I'm out all next week), please share the code!

Ohm

 

So I have my first real world experience with the cold weather ICE running. I preheated for about 15 min prior to leaving. (2 cycles) the car was parked in my garage temp was 47 F in the garage, 12 F outside (garage is surrounded on three sides by house and kids room above). As you can see by the picture my one way commute to work is 2.9 miles. I drove .2 miles to my daughters bus stop, waited 2 minutes for the bus and then the ICE kicked in .3 mi from home, Ran for the next 1.3 miles and kicked out. My mpg at that point was a dismal 27. It recovered to 45.9 by the time I parked it. Disappointing to say the least, but the drive home in the afternoon was nice (the temp was a balmy 28 F). The night before in 20 F temps, I made a 14 mile round trip with no preheat and the ICE kicked in at 1.4 miles from home and one again at 7 miles. Seems in sub 25 F Tempos you really want to drive 5-7 miles to even out the economy. My 3 Mile commute will kill my overall mileage. Seems that there needs to be a way to indicate that I'm only making a short trip. Any additional comments?

why is my picture upside down? Shows ok in iPhoto

 

Seems in sub 25 F Tempos you really want to drive 5-7 miles to even out the economy. My 3 Mile commute will kill my overall mileage. Seems that there needs to be a way to indicate that I'm only making a short trip. Any additional comments?

Your commute, results, and observations are pretty much identical to mine. I was very tempted to drive around the block a few more times to get my average back up! With my 5.7 mile trip at 20F, I'm getting about 55mpg. when I had to run to the store and make a much shorter 2 mi trip, it dropped to about 38. I'm thinking maybe I'd do better if I drove as fast as possible - minimize the time, which seems to be the biggest factor. I'm not seeing much, if any difference in pre-heating - though it sure feels nicer!

 

As I drove from my office to home this evening (about 7 miles) the ambient temperature dropped from about 28 F to 25 F a few miles from my house. As soon as the temp hit 25 the ICE came on and stayed on for the rest of the trip, but I expected it to happened based on what I've read on this thread.

 

I had the ICE come on due to low temperatures for the first time this morning. It was 24 degrees here in central NC but 38 in the garage. After about two miles of driving the ICE# came on and stayed on for one cycle: I suppose it was no cold enough to make it cycle again during my brief (11 mile) trip to work. The net result was, because I have a longer commute, 147 mpg average for the trip.

I'm happy it operated this morning did mainly because it confirms the car is working as it should.

One thing I have to watch is that, as soon as the ICE came on, I switched Climate to "Comfort" to make the most of all that wonderful ICE warmth, and then left it there after it shut down at the end of its one short cycle, making quite a difference in the rate I depleted the kWhr remaining, but it was only for about 8 miles so I figure I used less than 1/3 kWhr for heating. And I have still have enough battery to get home and more . . .

 

I drove the car this morning and had the ICE/temperature experience. My garage temperature is 55 deg F, the outside temperature is about 15 deg F today.

I jumped in and backed it out of the garage and the ICE fired up with the "Engine running due to temperature" warning within 50 yards of my house. It ran for about 1.5 miles (2-3 minutes), then shut off. It came on two other times during the drive, each time stating the same warning - "engine running due to temperature". I finished my errands with 14.3 miles on the battery and 2.7 on the engine and 143 mpg.

The battery claimed 26 miles of range when I began driving and 17 remaining when I quit. Based on the rate of drain per mile I was driving I think the whole battery would have delivered about 40 miles today. I used the heated seats for a few minutes and listened to Siamese Dream loudly the entire time. I accelerated hard once. I'm pretty impressed by the range.

I really wish that they would give us a "short trip" button so the ICE could just stay off on my twice-daily 7 mile round trips taking kids to school and picking them up. I will not be getting infinite mileage around town in the winter. Too bad, that would be fun!

 

Brian, you likely can make it run just once by using COMFORT setting.

See: COMFORT-setting-limiting-quot-Engine-Running-due-to-low-temperature-quot-ERDTLT
http://gm-volt.com/forum/showthread...COMFORT-setting-limiting-quot-Engine-Running-due-to-low-temperature-quot-ERDTLT