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Driven! 2011 Chevrolet Volt and 2012 Ford Focus EV

From Banovsky, Featured Contributor
Posted on August 4, 2009

Filed under GM, General Motors, Environment, Future, Green, Mileage, Feature, Ford, Ford, Chevrolet, EV, Grant, Detroit, 2011, Cruze, Electric car, Guest post, Focus

This guest post was prepared by esteemed green car expert John Voelcker, editor-in-chief of GreenCarReports.com. He also drove both the Volt and Focus EV test mules…lucky guy!

Well, the big day has come and gone: Now we've driven a 2011 Chevrolet Volt prototype. More than 18 months before buyers can walk into a Chevy dealer and test one, we got behind the wheel.

What's the Volt like? It's remarkably ... unremarkable.

And we mean that as praise. General Motors has managed to build a radical car that seems so normal it'll make the average American driver completely comfortable with electric drive.

For half an hour today, we drove a Volt "mule" – a Volt powertrain installed in the body of a 2010 Chevrolet Cruze subcompact – around the roads of the GM Technical Center in Warren, Michigan. It uses "production-intent" components and, said vehicle line executive Frank Weber, provides about 80 percent of the capabilities of the final car.

Click through for more.

Just like normal, only different

In fact, the Volt accelerates, brakes, and drives exactly like a quiet, smooth subcompact. If, that is, it happened to have a powerful engine mated to an automatic transmission so quiet you couldn't hear it shift — ever.

Electric motors put out maximum torque power at 0 rpm, making the Volt mule pretty sprightly when accelerating from rest. The goal for the production Volt is 0 to 60 mph in 8.8 seconds; ours did it in about 9.5 seconds. We even got the inside front wheel to spin accelerating around a turn from rest.

It's no 2009 Tesla Roadster, mind you, but it's not designed to be. It has four seats, four doors, and it's designed to provide its 40-mile electric range and undiminished performance even after 10 years or 150,000 miles. (We quickly learned that GM executives get very snitty if Tesla is mentioned, making irritable remarks that cite the technical flaws of "certain startup West Coast electric-car makers".)

We weren't able to test the Volt mule's top speed, which GM says will be 100 mph, but certainly from 0 mph to almost freeway speed, the car could clearly keep up with traffic.

A few other journalists have driven the Volt as well, and their consensus matched ours: The Volt's powertrain offers a smooth flow of power from rest to speed. The Volt team is particularly proud of the lack of motor whine, and because the "Voltec" powertrain has no transmission, you hear no changes in tone from shifts to match gearing to road speed. In fact, the loudest noise is tire roar.

We drove an early mule that had been hard-used, with over 13,000 miles on a car less than a year old. (Among other duties, it went to Washington, DC, so GM's then-CEO Rick Wagoner could drive it to the auto industry hearings.)

Ours, said vehicle line director Tony Posawatz, actually had some of the oldest software of any mule. Frankly, we wouldn't have known it. Our codriver listened in vain for inconsistencies in power delivery, but couldn't find any.

GM stressed that these mules were not representative of the final suspension tuning. The Volt powertrain adds roughly 660 pounds to the standard Cruze, Weber said, and it drove that way. We'll reserve judgment on handling until we can drive one of the 75 "integration vehicles" that will go into testing this summer; they'll resemble the final Volt in almost every aspect.

EV Mule Faceoff: Chevy Volt v Ford Focus EV

We were lucky to drive the Volt exactly a week after our brief road test of a 2012 Ford Focus EV mule. So how do these ground-breaking electric vehicles from the two major US carmakers compare?

They're both subcompacts. They both refined for test mules. They both offer good acceleration, run quietly, and drive just like a "normal" car. Your mother could get in either one and never know the difference, at least once she got over the lack of engine noise when the car powered up.

One difference is production volume. With the Volt, GM is making an aggressive and expensive push to claim for itself the image of green-tech leadership that Toyota has so successfully exploited with the Prius and its other hybrid vehicles. GM plans to built the Volt in a dedicated factory, in substantial volume; we've heard numbers like 10,000 the first year, and 60,000 a year after that.

Ford, on the other hand, will sell perhaps 5,000 Focus EVs a year, and they'll be built by subcontractor Magna, which actually converted the car in the first place. Pricing hasn't been announced, but with a battery pack for 100 miles of range, Ford is likely to lose tens of thousands of dollars on each one – even if the Focus EV sells for the same $40,000 as the Volt's rumored sticker.

But the biggest difference is in their positioning. "We wanted to make a real replacement for the first car in the household," said Frank Weber. That meant addressing what GM calls "range anxiety" – the gnawing worry that your electric car might not have enough juice to make it home.

Hence the Volt's "range extender" 1.4-liter engine, which kicks in to supply more electric power after it does its 40 miles on battery power alone. That engine adds another 300-plus miles of range, and the driver doesn't have to do a thing.

But the Focus, a pure battery electric vehicle, has no range extender. Its quoted range is 100 miles, which covers perhaps 9 out of 10 daily trips in the car. For that tenth trip, though, you'll need another car. In the Volt, you can drive thousands of miles on gasoline if you have to, without ever recharging, meaning you'll be able to take a family of four on vacation in it. That you'll never do with the Focus EV's 100-mile range.

For most of us, or all of us?

So which wins, the Ford or the Chevy? As always ... that depends. Based on early drives, they'll both be great cars.

If you're like 78 percent of Americans, you drive less than 40 miles a day. You may never have to refuel the Volt; your local utility may sell you all the fuel you need. If you're part of the other 22 percent, your Volt can run on a mix of electricity and then gasoline.

Some of you in that 22 percent could still use a Focus EV as well. But, if you're in that few percent of us who drive more than 100 miles a day, you can't. After 100 miles, it's done for a few hours.

In other words, the Focus EV is for most of us – but the Volt is for all of us. All of us, that is, who have a place to plug in a car to recharge it. But that's a different story.

Read More:

• Future of GM: Chevrolet Cruze
• 10 Domestics Worth Waiting For
• Leasing for Select GM Models

Banovsky is a featured contributor for vLane.