Further Analysis Of GM's Announcement of the 8 Year Chevy Volt Battery Pack Warranty

Chevrolet Volt Battery Pack At Manufacturing Facility













This past week GM made it official; Chevrolet's Volt will ship with an 8 year warranty on its Li ion battery pack. At first glance, this seems like a generous warranty that will certainly appease the masses, but is it really? Almost from day one (namely, January 2007) it had been declared that the car would have a 10 year, 100,000 mile warranty on the unknown, unproven and very expensive battery pack. High paid marketing executives determined this was the only way to lure customers into purchasing the all-new extended-range electric vehicle. So how did we lose two years?

So let's review what exactly these Chevy Volt customers are getting for their $40,000 US. With every Volt comes a 16 kWh Lithium Ion battery pack, of which only 8 are available. The pack is charged up to 80% and then depleted to 30% minimum, which yields the 50% or 8 kWh's of energy available for propulsion. This configuration means that you have to buy twice as much battery as needed in order to drive those 40 gasoline free miles. Does this sound like a good investment? Couldn't GM have been a better steward with all that Lithium?

Tell us what you think. A 10 year battery warranty would have meant an owner is assured for the practical lifetime of the car, but it 8 years enough?