Chevy Volt Needs Premium Fuel, But Why?
I haven’t quite made my mind up on the Volt. I like a lot of things about the Chevy super-eco-car, like its many standard features, emphasis on technology, and the fact that it can be an every day car. I don’t like the $41,000 starting price (which comes down to $33,500 after Federal tax credits… still pretty expensive).
Know what else I don’t like about the Chevy Volt? Premium fuel only. Seriously GM?
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Premium fuel is actually required in many cars today, most of them in the high performance category. When I owned a ‘95 Pontiac Trans Am, I had to put in premium fuel. My heavy foot and the thirsty 5.7 liter V8 guzzled a lot of gas in short order, and I’d cringe when I pulled up to the gas station. Premium gas tends to run 20-30 cents per gallon higher than regular unleaded. That’s a couple of dollars difference every time I filled up.
Yet my Trans Am had 270 horsepower and a whole mess of torque. The Chevy Volt’s range extender has just 80 horsepower. All it has to do is turn a generator to make electricity to supply the battery to move the electric motors. Nothing high performance about that. It displaces just 1.4 liters, less than a big bottle of Mountain Dew. If you were considering the Volt as a way of saving money on gas, you might want to think twice.
Maybe GM thinks that by making people buy premium gas, they might be less inclined to fill up so often? The Volts does have a 40-mile all-electric range. I’m pretty disappointed in this development, though there might be a legitimate reason… maybe the engine runs cleaner on high-octane fuel? Maybe.
Source: The Truth About Car | Image: GM
Chris DeMorro is a car enthusiast, blogger, and all-around crazy man who is as passionate about hybrids as he is about Hemis. You can follow his constant misadventures at Three Months In A Mustang.
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July 30th, 2010 at 10:52 am
100% ELECTRIC CARS ! NO MORE OIL ! STOP DRILING START SOLAR AND WIND POWER !
July 30th, 2010 at 11:24 am
Once they make Volts E85-ready (as they promised), then the cleaner-burning, high octane fuel can be used instead of premium gasoline. Why they didn’t make it an FFV from Day One, I don’t know…
July 30th, 2010 at 1:00 pm
Higher octane means they can use higher compression, which means more power per stroke and more power per given unit of gasoline. This is true whether you want brute force acceleration or clean burning efficiency.
As for using Ethanol, being less energy dense than gasoline and considering the quantities of hydrocarbons that go into making it, gasoline may actually be the greenest choice.
July 30th, 2010 at 5:35 pm
Yea, with Chevy Volt’s stratospheric price tag just won’t make much of an impact where it is needed the most with the middle and lower class. Our society needs a very affordable 80+mpg car. Anything less is just for show and no go!
July 31st, 2010 at 2:14 am
Yep, MaxHedrm is correct. That higher octane is going to allow for higher compression ratios, and intern will deliver more power. . Now in most cars you have different options of what to do with that. You can tune a car for performance or efficiency. In Christopher’s experience that has always meant more performance, but not here. This isn’t a traditional car engine. It’s a generator. You see the difference is your car engine has to go many different speeds and make a large range of power. The generator goes one speed, and it can be tune to run very efficiently at this speed. There aren’t the massive pumping losses that are present in car engines…
Okay, I could go on and on, but let’s just say they did if for efficiency, and that’s what it’s really all about.
And, Constantin, what’s with the shouting. Lets be productive here.
July 31st, 2010 at 11:47 am
I suspect the premium requirement has to do with the fact that they actually expect you to not use much gasoline. They actually expect the fuel in the tank will sit and age for much longer than it would in a traditional vehicle’s tank. As gasoline ages (particularly in the summer), it looses octane rating. So while the engine is probably quite capable of running on Regular 87 octane, they don’t want the engine trying to run on “aged” 87 octane that has degraded to ~84 octane. So they recommend 91/93 premium octane, so if the fuel ages, it ages down to 87.
I don’t know this for fact, but I’m betting this is the deal.
July 31st, 2010 at 7:04 pm
Repeat after me… GM will only make about 12,000 Volts the first model year and will sell them not matter how much they charge for them. GM will make more volts in future model years where the price will fall as volumes increase…
August 1st, 2010 at 4:02 pm
When GM unveil their plan to green the world’s electricity supply, I might consider buying one of these.
Government is the most financially undisciplined customer a business will ever have. Not surprising they pay big bucks to move pollution from one area to another. It makes people think pollution is gone.
Problem solved.