I would definitely like to see any current stats where people have something like that happen when they’ve run out of gas.

People sue for anything under the sun, this is also true.

As such, I can tell you right now, the first time someone is robbed/hurt/injured/killed/etc in a Volt that is dead on the side of the road, and someone finds out that the battery could have started up… GM will be sued.

You only have to lose one or two of those lawsuits before your insurance agency says “look, we’re going to keep getting sued over and over again on this… just implement something or we’re going to have to hike your rates.”

I’m just trying to save GM that trauma while they’re off their feet, and still recovering from bankruptcy. Even if you don’t agree that there’s a moral hazard, it’s much harder to disagree that someone, at some point, will sue over this down the road.

“P.S. Your car doesn’t keep a reserve of gas to prevent the car from wearing out early. The Volt’s battery does.”

It could though. Let’s see if I can parse this.

1. “Your car doesn’t keep a reserve of gas”

No it doesn’t. This isn’t useful to the discussion.

2. In general, keeping a reserve of gas can’t “prevent the car from wearing out early”

I’m not an expert on this but I believe some wear might actually occur when your car runs out of gas (mixed results googling for that). People generally don’t run out of gas very often though. If it happened in an emergency, it could be bad, just like if an electric car ran out of charge or went below the set threshold. They act the same there.

What about the gas generator in the Volt? I almost forgot about that for a minute there. Some electric cars don’t have those. If you are out of gas and out of electrical charge, then you’ve exhausted two of your power sources there. That’s one more than gas car drivers get. This part only applies to the Volt. Alright, I can still see you saying, “but no, there’s still charge in the batteries and I bought the car”. I’m reminded of software DRM again.

I do like the OnStar method – ask an actual person to enable it. That would completely prevent accidental activations. Having this option would actually be an advantage over gas automobiles. You can probably call OnStar to have someone bring out a gas can though. Very similar but takes a bit longer.

You might argue the electric car is different – it’s harder to find a place to charge up. Well yeah but that sounds more like an argument for having more places to charge up, or for being more responsible about charging and keeping your generator tank filled. Again with a Volt you could always go to a gas station anyway, effectively same as a gas car in the discussion.

“It’s not like the Volt doesn’t have a giant, cellular radio, to phone back to GM and alert you that you’re abusing the emergency mode… or customer service reps sitting by the phone to make the call.”

First, you’ve still got a cost there. There would have to be some device or code in the car to do this, and you’re also paying the “customer service reps sitting by the phone”.
Second, What if it didn’t? Would there be no moral hazard then? Would companies that don’t have an OnStar-like system not be exposed to the same criticism? If so, then this would be punishment for GM having an OnStar system and that doesn’t make much sense.

People die in construction work occasionally. At the end of the day, some level of danger is accepted, otherwise we wouldn’t build things, or drive for that matter.

OnStar pricing hasn’t been revealed yet, but I suspect it will be free on the Volt… at least to initial buyers. I’d call it compensation for all the Technical Service Bulletins that those first Volts will have to go back to the shop for.

P.S. Your car doesn’t keep a reserve of gas to prevent the car from wearing out early. The Volt’s battery does. That’s where the moral hazard presents itself, possibly in a life or death situation. It’s not like the Volt doesn’t have a giant, cellular radio, to phone back to GM and alert you that you’re abusing the emergency mode… or customer service reps sitting by the phone to make the call.

I’d compare it to remote vehicle starting. If I’m in an accident, OnStar can enable/disable my vehicle. It doesn’t take a lot of code for me to call OnStar and say “I’m in an emergency, let me use the remaining battery so I can get to the hospital.”

One thing they could do is to charge more for the car. They obviously don’t want to do that. They could charge more for versions of the car that have this emergency mode. Not only is that inefficient manufacturing from GM’s perspective, but there will be lots of groaning that some cars have it and some don’t. Also, if someone dies from a freak accident due to not having enough charge, it’s their fault for not getting the emergency mode option, hahaha.

If they actually do set up a system for this, rather than having it void the warranty after 5 uses, maybe they couled void it immediately. If it’s really an emergency situation then who cares about a warranty. There is still the customer support issue there too. They’d have to give back warranty status to people who actually needed to use emergency mode (probably extremely few) and then deal with everyone else who wants to game the system.

To the argument about the Prius is valid.
“The Prius battery is very small. It couldn’t handle any reasonable distance… a mile would be a stretch.”
“But, if you are in an emergency situation, such as a natural disaster, 20 miles could be the difference between life and death.”

Ok but a mile could be the difference also. Who decides where the line is? The courts? GM and Toyota would love that one too.

You’re paying $X for car Y. If you think that’s a moral hazard, then not putting small emergency backup gas tanks in gas cars is also a moral hazard. You could run out of gas and die! Heck they could just keep a little reserve gas in there for just such a situation to hold until the emergency button is pressed. The gas is already there! It would be a moral hazard to not use it for emergencies! That wouldn’t even harm the life of the car either.

Back to the software parallel, consider trial or shareware software that is free or costs less than the full version. This software has limitations and you don’t get full functionality until you pay for the full version. Is this a moral hazard? I have to admit that software tactics like DRM can get really nasty and might actually be moral hazards actually causing harm to your computer or usability of your computer. However a Chevy Volt won’t cause harm to your house as a designed feature. But now that I think of it, when you run out of gas, the car or carmaker isn’t causing harm to you and isn’t potentially causing harm to you. Plenty of people get hurt for accidental reasons such as a mistake they made themselves. You seem to have brought a life or death situation into it to add weight to your argument, and it’s not really a valid part of the argument at all.

Anyway, I just don’t see this anywhere on the safety scale compared to the regular safety issues. Do we have any stats on how many people have died from running out of gas?

The Volt’s battery has a recharge range, from around 30% to around 50%. GM will convey this to users as conditioning, in order to preserve the battery. Chances are, the final UI will never show this exact figure to the user. They’ll only see the amount of battery life that they’re allowed to use.

I never talked about CO2 emissions, so that’s an irrelevant point you’re spuriously bringing up.

Finally, you brought up the notion of “always refilling so the gas tank doesn’t get to empty.” Unfortunately, you missed the emergency word in there. A EREV shouldn’t be designed to think that gas will always be available.

What about a gas crisis? Please don’t tell me that’s unlikely. What about a natural disaster? Please don’t tell me that’s unlikely.

A big battery is nice. A dead person that couldn’t get to safety, while that battery still has a charge left in it, isn’t.

also the battery can be go down to 30% not 50% check GMs web page not some figure u made up. also can be charged up to 80% not 100% as some people may believe. ok u have a huge battery to take care of after 10 yrs but u reduce co2 emission but what almost half. Lesser of two evils the volt wins, also send the batteries to a 3rd world country they can built huts or something out of them bam problem solved. there about 400lbs a battery fyi pretty big

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.