Quote:
Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile
Can a Volt (or Tesla Model S) REALLY last an hour or two in hellish stop-go commuter traffic in the middle of winter when it's 10 degrees outside and you absolutely need to run heat, defrost and lights / wipers to avoid getting killed? Can it be counted on to be reliable enough to get you through blizzard conditions during an emergency without risk of literally freezing to death in your car when the heat goes out? These are real issues for some people and some of them live not that far away from here. I'm just wondering if they're "real" or if they need to be only kept around and used as a supplement to a conventional internal combustion type vehicle.
|
This question doesn't apply to the Volt since it has an internal combustion engine. GM engineers made huge power reserves on these cars for cold weather use and also to offset battery degradation over time. Electrically heating air does use a lot of juice, but if you invoke the gas engine (easy to do on demand), the coolant goes through a heater core just like a "normal" car.
They spent 5 years developing the Volt hybrid system, and it's pretty impressive to me. I just turned 23K miles and have had no issues.