question about the Chevrolet Volt

If I understand it correctly, fuel quality starts degrading after 2 months.

If you fill your tank in your volt, and drive it usually less than 40 miles per day so that it is almost always on electricity and virtually never using gasoline, how often are you going to have to take it back to the dealership to have the tank drained and the fuel filter replaced?

Paging Dr. Stiles !

Who is going to give you a better answer than I could.

A possible solution would be to not fill the tank and to use some sort of fuel stabilizer to retard bacteria growth and bind with whatever condensation you will get from not having a full tank.

Stiles is out putting a transmission in his car, but says:

Modern gasoline is useable for about 6 months without treatment. If you're going to keep it around longer than that, treatment with an inexpensive over the counter preservative like Sta-Bil is in order. Sta-Bil runs about $6 for enough to treat 30 gallons of gas, and you just pour it in before topping off the tank. Easy.

I think this is pretty much a non-issue. Most folks will take longer trips often enough to use up a tank of gas more often than every few months.

It is a really kickass "problem" to have though.

^^

Yeah, if that was my biggest problem...

I was just going to post that.

Instead of filling your tank, only put $20 in at a time. This means that you'll have to fill up more often and will constantly have fresher gas than if you'd filled up the tank.

Fuel tanks are usually engineered in capacity using an "average" driver as the model. It's why all cars don't have the same specific size fuel tank.

To give you an idea. My Ford Bronco has a 32 Gallon tank, while my father's Dodge Stratus 16.2 gallon fuel tank. Half the size, but the Bronco has two more cylinders and isn't as fuel friendly. I carry twice as much fuel as him, but he uses twice as much as i do. He drives to and from work every single day, where as my truck can sit for two or three days without even being started.

I forget what the "average" number is used in calculations, i think it was either 8,000 or 10,000 miles per year. But either way, it's engineered in the idea that you will utilize all the gasoline in the fuel cell long before it has the chance to deteriorate.

If you drive on a daily basis, you're more than likely going to consume all the gasoline in the fuel tank prior to that six month limitation anyway, and if you don't, like Minimalism said, there are products that are sold to make the gasoline stable for longer, StaBil is just the most popular.

I use it when storing my motorcycle, lawn mower/snowblower and other thing during the off season, when they don't get used for months on end, and the fuel is still usable.

Ya, wouldn't it be like 12,000 miles like a 3 year 36000 mile warranty? Anyway. It would be really hard to have fuel "spoil" especially if you know your habits. Why spend 50$ when you could spend 20$? Also, if you think about how many times you drive EXACTLY "X" number of miles a day it probably fluctuates more than you think. I would also think, to save battery life you would most likely want to run on fuel to make sure your battery was completely dead. Just like a cell phone i would guess.

I have put just under 48,000 miles on a 2007 Prius since 11/28/2008. Right now, gasoline in selected places around me and between where I live and the places where I work is as low as $1.86/gallon. Because I rarely "run it dry", most of my fill-ups cost around 10 dollars. I do this because of noted "irregular" behavior of the gas gauage in the Prius. The Prius manual states to use the cheapest fuel available, that it will actually get lousier mileage on Plus or Premium fuels. Dont know how that works, dont even care.

Scrounging the bux to do a plug-in conversion.

Neat. So you have a time machine then ?

The Prius is engineered for max battery life for its' particular type of battery (nickel metal hydride) . It is never more than 75% charged nor less than 45% charged. This helps the battery last more than 200,000 miles. NiMH batteries that are repeatedly cycled from fully charged to fully discharged don't live as long.

The Chevy Volt uses a different type of battery - lithium ion - more suited to full charge/discharge cycles.

Cell phone batteries (unless your using one from the late 90's) no longer have a memory either. They are lithium-ion batteries, there is no longer a need to completely discharge them.

My bad...11/28/2007. I type the current date in my work daily, which leads me to type 2008 even when I dont mean to.

You know, as inept as Detroit may or may not be, I doubt they're dumb enough to not take something like this into account.

I had no idea the batteries changed, and you learn something everyday!

batteries and battery technology are going to be changing immensely in the near future, as alternative energies and fuel sources are explored and created, a way to actually hold and store electricity are going to be needed.

The capacity is more than likely going to increase and size and weight are going to decrease. This technology, as many technologies do, will crossover into other realms of technology which will make things much smaller and easier to lose.

Screw batteries, I want my supercapacitors!

Dude, where's my car?

still kinda big for a phone and capacitors still need an initial charge from an energy source, like a battery.

Definitely a huge step forward though.

Remember the good old days, when you had a walkman the size of your head and it was impossible to lose in a pocket?

Too me ten minutes to find my MP3 player the other day, i had to check all my pockets like three times.