That means “Internal Combustion Engine.” It refers to pretty much every vehicle that doesn’t have a battery pack for propulsion (a “traction battery”). We’ll start with what everyone is familiar with: ICE. If not, I’ll explain a few of the various terms in common use you might run across, and what they mean. If you’re familiar with electric vehicles, hybrids, and such, you can just skip this section. Or, more commonly, make it home without having to find somewhere to charge.īut, on the flip side, it uses a far smaller battery pack than pure battery electrics - and it makes far better use of that pack! BEV, PHEV, Hybrid, ICE… Oh My!
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Once the battery runs out, the gas motor kicks on, and you can drive it across the country on gas. When you set off, you run in a pure electric mode for the battery range - 20-60 miles, depending on which version you have and the outside temperature. This means that you plug the car in at night (or during the day) to charge the main battery. The Gen 2 (2016-2019) upgrades to about a 50 mile battery only range, a larger gas engine, and a different transmission design, but works out to the same thing - some battery range and then a gasoline engine for longer travel.
#2012 chevy volt range extender plus#
The Gen 1 Volt (2011-2015) has a 30-40 mile battery only range in the summer - plus a decent little gasoline engine and a useful gas tank (9 gallons) that can run it down the highway pretty much as long as you can find a gas station every few hundred miles. It’s somewhere between a pure electric car and a hybrid - but, in reality, it’s far better than either! The Volt, on the other hand, is a “plug in hybrid,” a “series hybrid,” a “range extended electric vehicle,” or… probably half a dozen terms I’ve seen over the years. It’s confusion for the sake of confusion as far as I’m concerned. And some marketing people at Chevy should be strung up for that bit of cutesy confusion, because it doesn’t help anyone. If you’re not familiar with the Volt, you may be in the process of confusing it with the Bolt - which is also a Chevy product. Plus, they depreciate like mad (just like all other electric cars), so you can get one cheaper than you might think! The Chevy Volt I think it’s the “sweet spot” for electric transportation at this point in time, I think it’s rather significantly more environmentally friendly than a pure BEV for most use cases, and I think that, for most people, it’s a really, really good car and highly worth considering if you’re interested in cheap, (slightly) environmentally friendly car transportation.
![2012 chevy volt range extender 2012 chevy volt range extender](https://cdn.dealrimages.com/VB/71/BW/6GJY1EA0EY2E1Y.jpg)
Since it’s my blog and I can post what I want, I’ve decided to talk about the Volt for a while. We picked up a used 2012 Volt with under 30k miles, and have been using it quite a bit, because, well, it’s our car. Some while back, I tossed in a (little noticed) comment at the end of a post that we’d obtained a Chevy Volt.