Maintenance
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As Chevrolet very often point outs in marketing its 2011 Volt extended-range electric car, more than 70 percent of U.S. vehicles cover less than 40 miles a day. That means that if you recharge a Volt every night, and cover less than that distance daily, your car might never, ever need to switch on its range-extending gasoline engine to generate electricity. Which leads to a whole host of questions carmakers have never had to consider: Will the engine run right if it's never started? Will the gasoline get stale? And so forth. The answer is something called "maintenance mode," in which the Volt...
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Do Battery-Pack Failures Reduce the Life of Hybrid Cars? A Reader AsksOur reader Jonathan P asks: I have a 1997 Saturn that, remarkably, is still running. It probably has the book value of a large watermelon, so if anything major goes wrong with it, that's the end of that. If that Saturn were a hybrid, I'm guessing the battery pack would have died about four years...
John Voelcker -
2012 Ford Focus Electric: All The Parts It Doesn't Have...
A few days ago we told you what you needed to know about Nissan LEAF and Chevrolet Volt servicing. After all, an electric car doesn't have many of the serviceable components you associate with a fossil-fuelled vehicle. Not one to be left out, Ford are now extolling the virtues of simple servicing...
Antony Ingram -
What You Need To Know About Nissan Leaf, Chevy Volt Servicing
A few months ago we asked the question, what exactly do you have to service on a 2011 Nissan LEAF? After all, the LEAF doesn't even contain many of the items that require regular attention on a regular car, such as oil changes, spark plugs, filters, transmission fluid and muffler parts. Brakes...
Antony Ingram -
So What Exactly DO You Have to Service On a 2011 Nissan Leaf?
Despite initial purchase prices higher than those for gasoline cars of equivalent performance (before incentives, anyway), electric cars undisputably cost less to run. Not only does the grid electricity to drive a mile cost just half to one-fifth the cost of the gasoline to go the same distance...
John Voelcker -
2011 Chevy Cruze Green Oil Filter: Everything Old Is New Again
Sometimes a "new" green idea is actually just the way we used to do things, before disposability and convenience became primary consumer values. Consider the "cartridge filter" that GM touts on the Ecotec engines fitted to its new 2011 Chevrolet Cruze. Instead of a one-piece metal cannister that's...
John Voelcker -
At the moment, drivers of cars from the 2011 Mitsubishi i-MiEV to the 2010 Mini E are struggling to achieve the official mileage-range figures. So far, only Tesla's 2010 Roadster seems to be able to deliver on its range promises, and that's just when driven conservatively. Why are we hearing so many tales of stranded EVs that couldn't reach their claimed mileage? Do car companies exaggerate their ranges, or are there other forces in play? Manufacturers' range-per-charge claims are as tough to tie down as fuel economy figures. They're often obtained under laboratory test conditions, with...
