NewsChevy Volt’s Battery, its Moral Hazard, and My Solution
Unless you’ve had your eyes glued to the Chevy Volt’s development, you probably aren’t aware of a new controversy which has come up over it.
The Volt’s battery is designed to last for the life of the car (10 years or 100,000 miles). As such, it stays constantly charged. In fact, when only about 20% of the battery charge is drained, it discontinues EV-only mode, and turns on the Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) to recharge the battery. Still, this gives you 40 miles per trip (so you can drive to work, plug in, and drive home… for a total of 80 miles of gas-free driving per day). That’s a good thing.
But, there’s a moral hazard in this. What happens if you run out of gas? The battery stays at least 50% charged at all times. There’s nothing technical from preventing the battery from powering back on, and letting you get home or to a gas station to refuel. Of course, if you do this, you hurt the life of the battery each time… quite significantly, when you’re considering the battery has to last a decade.
So, the question now arises, will the Volt have an emergency mode? Will it have a panic button that lets you power on the vehicle, outside of operating specifications? That’s something that GM says they’re mixed about internally. They realize that there is interest in an Emergency Mode, but they also realize that they have to warranty the battery for a decade, and that this mode will be abused by some (careless drivers who run out of gas a lot).
So, here’s my proposal. I haven’t seen this proposed elsewhere.
Having an Emergency Mode is essential, I don’t even want to debate that. If you’re in a natural disaster, or in a dangerous situation… it’s just as bad as a derelict cell phone that decides to update brick itself. So, give users a little bit of leeway, but set requirements (in the Volt’s computer) for voiding the warranty.
Here’s how it would work. Lets say you run out of gas. The Volt’s computer pops up with the option to continue driving, but notifies you that you can only do this five more times. After that, the warranty on the Volt’s battery is voided. This allows users to chose… they can wait for a tow truck to give them gas, or, they can hit the panic button and keep going.
Once all five incidents are used up, the Volt would connect to OnStar (since all Volts will have OnStar), and sends a notification that the user has exceeded the allowed number of Emergency Mode events. GM then updates the warranty status on their computer, to note that the Volt’s battery is now out of warranty. The Volt will then continue to allow Emergency Mode, simply the user is now out of warranty. Of course, only the battery’s warranty would be affected. The rest of the warranty would remain intact, since this method of operation doesn’t impact other functions on the car.
Really, this could be in GM’s interest to offer from a financial standpoint. Well, first, GM wouldn’t have to worry about wrongful death lawsuits (stemming from people killed in situations where an Emergency Mode could have saved their lives). More key however, it would give GM a way to strip warranties from users who abuse their batteries.
And, this wouldn’t be hard to do at all… all the technology is there. I’m going to put my foot down and say that if there isn’t some form of Emergency Mode, I won’t be buying a first-generation Volt. Hopefully Chevy will listen.
I agree, that’s the best way to handle it. They don’t even need to contact OnStar, all modern cars have their own black box to record such things. Though notifying OnStar would be a redundancy to prevent any hacks with replacing the black box, etc. And there is precedent. The current Nissan GT-R has a launch control feature from the factory, which produces quicker starts. But if you use it you void your warranty because it puts a lot of stress on the transmission.
There is some controversy around the GT-R’s warranty because this is a ’standard’ feature that if you use you void the warranty, which a lot of people think is ridiculous. But I don’t think it’d be an issue for an ‘emergency only’ feature, especially if it gave you a couple of ‘free’ uses. There could be other limits as well – such as if you drop it below 20% charge in emergency mode you void the warranty, etc.
But it would be wrong to have the capability to drive the car out of a bad situation and to strand the driver through artificial limits.
Taking your comments a step further… OnStar should actually report each use of Emergency Mode. That way, a hacker can’t simply reset the unit when hitting close to the five-or-so strikes. That would be an exploit similar to how DVD drives can have their region lock count reset.
By phoning home immediately after each usage, GM’s servers would be able to keep count independently… that would be a lot harder to hack out (you’d have to rip out the OnStar module , and I doubt the Volt will power up in that event… for various reasons GM has yet to spec out, so I’ll stay quiet on that).
I certainly can see GM’s stress about this. If not handled properly, hackers could hotwire the battery, and make the Volt run 80, even 120 miles on a single charge. While that sounds cool, the battery would be shot after three years… a la EV-1.
GM doesn’t want the bad press of turning away legitimate warranty claims on the battery, out of suspicion of abuse. Still, it’s a public safety issue overall.
You confuse me.
Why is it essetial to have an emergency button?
Do you say the same for current Gasoline cars?
There is no difference between the two – Both can run out of gas?
The only thing you gain from the VOLT is possible solution.
It is not essential or a Moral issue?
I agree Jay! Under the theory proposed, all cars regardless of energy source, should have reserve energy stores for a so called emergency mode……
Moral hazard? Most every aspect of the invention called The Motor Vehicle lies upon moral hazard…..
When a Prius runs out of gas it doesn’t run on just the battery and the gas tank of the car has to be totally filled in order to restart the car. Yes I do realize that the Prius is a Gas-Electric Hybrid and the Volt is an electric vehicle with a range extending ICE but the same principle holds true. If the car runs out of gas it should remain nonfunctional until it is topped off again. I’ve only ever run out of gas once and that was in a vehicle with an inoperative fuel gauge and I was actually on the way to the gas station then. I’d also imagine that GM will include a fuel range gauge on this vehicle in the Driver’s Information Center I own an 06 Chevy and it has one as does most of their lineup. I’m speaking as someone who works parttime for a rental car company and my experience with various cars. If there’s something I missing please feel free to enlighten me.
Travis, the principle does not hold true between Prius and Volt.
The Prius battery is very small. It couldn’t handle any reasonable distance… a mile would be a stretch.
The Volt’s battery, if uninhibited by limitations from GM, could easily go 80 to 120 miles on a single charge. Chevy will limit the EV-only mode to 40 miles, in order to sustain the life of the battery for 10 years.
But, if you are in an emergency situation, such as a natural disaster, 20 miles could be the difference between life and death. It could get someone to an emergency shelter, when gas stations are out of fuel.
Finally, there is another key difference between the Prius and Volt. Using an Emergency Mode on the Prius, would harm the battery much more… with again, only the walking distance of a mile gained. With the Volt, the battery would not be dramatically harmed from any single drain-down event. However, several drain-downs would have a life-shortening effect.
You really cannot compare the Volt’s battery and the Prius’s hybrid system…. there are a lot of other technical factors, but safe to say, GM could easily offer an Emergency Mode, and GM’s CEO has even said that the battery will extend itself beyond typical specifications if you are “close to home”… the technology is there, and they should do it.
I’m not saying I wouldn’t ever buy a Volt if they don’t add an Emergency Mode, but I sure won’t buy the first-gen if they lack it. It would show that GM isn’t serious about thinking out every usage scenario with safety in mind.
As to the two comments that suggest that the Volt shouldn’t have access to the full battery capacity in an emergency… it’s simply a false premise.
The Volt already has an emergency reserve… even GM has admitted that. Now it is a matter of if GM will let you access it. That’s why it is a moral hazard for them to not offer an Emergency Mode.
I’m not asking GM to add an emergency reserve. The commenters above are correct, most cars don’t have one. But, the Volt happens to have one. In an emergency, you should be able to use it.
Like I proposed in the article, if people abuse that option, GM can easily void their warranty. It’s no excuse to not give the user the choice… especially when their life could depend on it.
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