Chevrolt Volt

Car Technology

GM’s vision of an electric-drive future

Hybrid-electric vehicles are no new story.Shorty a new kind of hybrids technology will come whose batteries can be charged from a wall socket as well as by the vehicle’s internal combustion engine.In this new technology the engine is not running continuously.Power to wheel is delivered by electric motors which are powered using batteries.Now if the batteries run out of charge,the engine switches on,to run a backup generator that charges the batteries.

Chevrolet Volt is the first of this kind and that too from a big name,who stole the show at Detroit North American International Auto Show in January.Chevrolet Volt has 1 liter,3 cylinder turbocharged engine which runs a 53 kW generator that recharges the 16 kilo watt hour Li-ion battery which is made up of 80 4 volt cells.This battery powers a 120 kW electric motor which delivers an astonishing 320 Nm torque.It will take 6.5 hours for a full recharge (plug-in) for the Chevrolet Volt and it will run for 62 km all-electric,says Chevrolet.But what about the fuel tank,its 45 liter tank can give about 1000 km between refueling.But Tony Posawatz,the Chevrolet Volt line director says,the car which is exhibited in Detroit doesn’t run yet,so its range has been estimated on papers.

But the Chevrolet Volt is not yet ready to be in show rooms,the lithium ion battery isn’t ready to give up.This battery is usually used in laptops and other digital devices like digital camera,so its life is about 3 year.And for an automotive part it must have at least 10 years of life or 4000 full charge-discharge cycles.But a battery of this much life is not ready yet.So we have to keep waiting for the Chevrolet Volt until they can get sufficiently powerful and durable lithium ion batteries for automotive use.

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