GMVOLTCAB.COM - Over and Out.....

Sorry for the late notice.......

But the GMVOLTCAB.com blog has been done since last February. The program was started by GM (not the site - I was just a member of the Customer Advisory Board) in September of 2010 and ended about mid-Feb 2011.

If you have an RSS feed you may want to delete it as there will be no new posts and the site will be down shortly.

I hope you enjoyed the site and I'm looking forward to my next couple of web projects.

If your a fan of plugincars.com, stay tuned as there will be a new section on the site soon.

Thanks,

Mark Swain------

West Coast Volt Meet Up III & Rally

Just like a Volt speeding down the highway, our three months on the Customer Advisory Board have come and gone too fast.  The pre-production Volts performed admirably but will be heading back to the factory in a few weeks. I for one will miss driving that beautiful silver green Volt, but it's lucky I have a Cyber Grey Volt waiting in my garage to take its place! (And I hear that the redhead's thinking of hiding hers when the time comes...)

To celebrate the end of the CAB adventure and the start of actual retail deliveries, we have planned an excellent third West Coast Meet Up and EV rally. The event will start at the GM Advanced Technologies Center in Burbank where we will start staging all of the Volts and other EVs at 10am. We'll head out at 10:30am to the meet up at the Southern California Edison's CTAC facility, about 25 miles away.  If you're interested in the Volt or EV's, please join us for both events or just stop by for a tour of the Smart Energy Experience at Edison. All electric vehicles are welcome, and we're hoping any new Volt and Leaf drivers will come out too- lots to be excited about these days!

There is no formal RSVP for the event, but it would be great if you're planning to attend to leave a comment on this post. (SCE has 8 J-chargers on site, as well as 3 TAL's for any RAVs and Chevy S-10s out there)

UPDATE: Due to weather conditions on the East Coast the event in Montclair NJ is canceled. Not to worry as we will plan another event in the spring. The West Coast event is still a go.

UPDATE: East Coast EV Meet Up February 5th in Montclair NJ. 

Our EV friends on the East Coast have setup an excellent event at Tom Moloughney's restaurant in Montclair NJ. The meet up starts at 1pm and we are going to try and video link the East and West Coast events. For all the details, click the link. 

The CTAC Energy Center is a source of energy efficiency information for business owners and operators, architects and designers, operations and facility managers, contractors, engineers, or any one wanting to learn about the latest in state-of-the-art technology for saving energy, money, and the environment.

Here is a excellent video (staring one of our own CAB members Ed Kjaer) showing a little bit of what you will see on the tour.  Enjoy and hope to see you at the event.

How Volt Works

The Holidays are over and the 2 inches of Southern California snow has melted off of my Volt. It's time to get back to reporting about my Volt experience.  I have several long distance trip report posts in the works and a few Volt tricks to get excellent EV mileage.  Also if you're in Los Angeles we are planning another Volt meet up in the next few weeks.  Stay tuned for the date and location.

For now, here is an excellent animation I stumbled upon that explains how the Volt works.  Enjoy.

Happy Holiday's

Los Angeles CAB Meet-Up II

It doesn't get much better than this. Saturday's Volt meet up at the GM Advanced Technology Center in Torrance was a huge success. It was by far the largest "casual" meet-up I have attended over the last few years with well over 50 people showing up to see the facility and check out the Volt. 

This building is where the EV magic happens, at least here on the West Coast. With over 20 years of research, thousands of patents, many great minds and definitely long hours, this facility is part of the GM story few have had the pleasure to witness. Despite the ups and downs, many of the employees working here have been around through the EV1, Fuel Cell and now Volt days (and even the Hughes Aircraft days before that.)

In attendance were the leadership team from GMATC, three Volt engineers flown in from Detroit, as well as CAB members Chelsea Sexton, Colin Summers, Bill Nye, Ed Kjaer, Kris Trexler and myself. We were also joined by special guest Alexandra Paul who drove her RAV 4 EV to the event as she awaits her #00005 Volt to show up any day.

And no EV meet up is complete without a roll call of cars:  8 Volts, 2 RAV 4's, 2 MINI E's, many Fuel Cell Equinox's and a beautiful Tesla!  

Thanks to everyone who made this possible (especially Chelsea for initiating it and Tim Powers for making it so great) as well as everyone who showed up. From what we saw on Saturday, the EV future is looking very bright.  

Please check out the photo gallery with images from the day's activities.

Electric Freedom

My VOLT exploring the oil fields in Central California during a rain storm in the distance.  

Swain 2010©

EPA sets Volt's "Fuel Economy"

The EPA finally released a fuel economy sticker for the Volt, paving the way for public sale of the cars we lucky CAB members are loving.

Read the story on CNN.

Next SoCal Volt CAB Meet-up!

  

Saturday, December 4th,  11:00 am

GM Powertrain- Advanced Technology Center

3050 Lomita Blvd., Torrance, CA

I am particularly excited about this one- for geeks like me, GMATV in Torrance is a relatively unknown little gem in the EV world. Since the 1990’s, the folks inside this building have quietly worked away on the charging systems and power electronics that have gone into the EV1 and S10 Electric as well as the hybrid and fuel cell vehicles that followed, and now- the Volt.

They perhaps deserve even more credit for putting up with me spending hundreds of hours there during the EV1 program, often showing up unannounced with some vehicle part, imploring them to take it apart and teach me how it worked- or in some cases, why it wasn’t- so I could then explain it to my customers. (In hindsight, however, I’m thinking there might be worse things to a bunch of engineers than a 20-year old girl endlessly wanting to know more about what you do!) Either way, that they patiently indulged my curiosity while never acting as if it was over my head because I wasn’t an engineer myself is probably one of the main reasons I came to love the technology and still work with it today. For that, these people would forever have had my respect and appreciation even if GM never built another plug-in car- but that they have is something we’re all excited to celebrate. 

So come on out and join us- as with the last meet-up, we’re again happy to chat about our experiences and put you in the driver’s seats of our Volts. But this time you’ll also get to meet some of the people involved with the engineering of those cars- some of whom are familiar faces from the EV1 days- and tour the facility where that work is done. Most definitely worth the trip!

PS- In terms of charging, there are five J1772 EVSEs on site- which, I’m informed by the boy, are also useful for killing zombies...

Preview of the LA Auto Show - Electric Edition

At 5:15 a.m. my alarm clock went off. I don't know about you, but I'm definitely NOT a morning person. Today however was different. It was Press Day at the 2010 LA Auto Show and several of the West Coast CAB members and others who are purchasing Volts were asked to take part. GM Marketing VP Joel Ewanick was the presenter for this first conference of the show and told the large crowd and many cameras about his adventures driving the Volt from Detroit to LA. After the car was driven on stage, he said "You're probably wondering why this Volt is so filthy," and then explained that it was his personal vehicle from the cross country trip, driving home the point that the Volt is not just an electric car but also one that can travel long distances. Joel stated that the Volt has over 10 million lines of code compared to a state-of-the-art fighter jet with a mere 8 million. He then offered sincere thanks to the many GM employees who have devoted the last 4+ years making this moment a reality.

Kris Trexler was in the front row with me and shot this excellent video of Joel's introduction to the Chevy Volt. Shortly after the video ends we were asked to go on stage.  Thanks Kris for sharing the video!

Click to read more ...

First East Coast Volt Meet Up!

It looks like the East Coast had a great Volt meet up last Saturday.  Tom Moloughney hosted the event at his restaurant Nauna's Bella Casa in Montclair NJ.  In attendance with their new Volts were CAB members Mike Maria, Eric Rotbard, Robert Backer, and Lyle Dennis.  Also on hand was Tom's MINI E and a Tesla.

Checkout all the image in the gallery.

2011 Motor Trend Car of the Year: Chevrolet Volt

Not surprisingly, the Volt was announced today as Car of the Year by Motor Trend.

West Coast Volt Meet Up!

It was a great day in Culver City last Saturday when the West Coast CAB members hosted our first Volt meet up. We gathered under a very high tech solar car port answering many questions and offering test drives.  Father's Office (the best burger in LA!) is located in the old Helms Bakery building that has been converted into restaurants and high end furniture stores. We had about 15 people show up just for the meet up and because of the location, at least that many walking by and asking questions. 

There were 4 sparkling new Volts at the event represented by CAB members Chelsea Sexton, Colin Summers, Ed Kjaer and myself.  Oh, I should mention Ed is the 16th member of our Volt CAB. He is the Director of PEV Readiness at Southern California Edison and has led their various electric transportation efforts since the 1990's. He and his team have more depth in the field than any other utility; when Obama came to LA to learn more about EVs, it was Ed who did the presentation. Good to have him on the Board!

Click to read more ...

First CAB Member Banned from GM-Volt!

And here is a demonstration of why I was worried about the CAB members posting material on GM-Volt.com. Without warning, and after deleting several threads I had contributed to his site, Lyle Dennis banned me (as of 4pm Pacific Time) from the site entirely. 

As far as I know, my crimes were that I mentioned material that could be found on sites other than just GM-Volt.com. Most recently I posted a little summary of three test drives I had this Sunday, including one by our spokesperson, Alexandra Paul. That seemed like good, fun content for a community of Volt-interested readers to have. I also mentioned that there was a page dedicated to the test drives on my blog, and that the CAB site was working on some way to list all of the people who test drove CAB cars.

The thread was deleted. I was banned.

I guess I should be thankful that in two and a half weeks the ban might be lifted.

Removing A Contributing Author

Charge complete notifications, radio bug

I set my OnStar iPhone app to send "Charge Complete" notifications via both email and text message. The email alert works fine: "Your 2011 Chevrolet Volt has completed charging. To learn more about your charge mode settings, visit myvolt.com. To disable these alerts, change your notification settings on the OnStar MyLink Mobile App. For further assistance, call 877-4VOLTINFO." However, I have not been receiving text alerts. Have any other CAB members tested this?

I have only one complaint about the Volt, and that involves the radio. Although I do enjoy listening the radio at times, there are times I don't want to listen to the radio. Silence is golden, and the Volt gives you plenty of that. Except when you change modes on the center stack display. With the radio switched off, changing from NAV to CLIMATE CONTROL will turn the radio on, annoyingly so. Any change of display mode turns the radio on. In fact, the radio MUST be on to see any screen other than the VOLT logo on the display. Sorry, this defies logic or perhaps it's a bug. The workaround is to turn the radio volume all the way down. I'll be sure to bring this up on our next GM conference call. Anyone else bothered by this? If this is a conscious decision, I aim to convince GM it's not a good idea and I'd like some backup if you feel as I do.

 I reported both of these issues to the CTF advisor via an OnStar call today.

Other than the SMS charge notification and the radio issue, no other problems so far.

Kris's first "extended range" drive

On Saturday Nov 14, I drove to the Volt on a roundtrip of 140 miles to the Mullin Automotive Museum in Oxnard, CA from my home in Los Angeles. A classic car club I belong to had arranged a tour of the museum, and I thought this would be a great opportunity to get the Volt out on the road and experience the convenience of "extended range" for the first time.

Here's a snapshot of my Energy Info after returning to my home Los Angeles.

Click to read more ...