The first Volt’s 84-hp, 1.4-liter, four-cylinder gas engine stood in contrast to the car’s high-tech credentials. It used an iron block, required premium fuel, and lacked leading-edge technologies such as direct injection. The 1.5-liter is the first of GM’s new four-cylinder, direct-injection, aluminum-block engines in North America. Despite a compression ratio of 12.5:1 (compared with the 1.4’s 10.5:1), the 1.5 runs on regular gas and makes 101 horsepower. And the powertrain is 100 pounds lighter than the outgoing car’s, useful considering that Volt drivers generally prefer to motor electrically, carrying the engine as dead weight.
“There was speculation that the engine would be smaller, have fewer cylinders, or be turbocharged,” Volt chief engineer Andrew Farah says. “What this really comes down to, with the new higher-compression, direct-injection, larger-displacement engine, is that we can get the same amount of power at any point we want with lower rpm. And lower rpm translates into lower noise.” And, no doubt, lower consumption.
True to the original recipe, the Volt still uses two electric motors. But, according to Farah, “not a single part number” is common between the first- and second-gen Voltec powertrains. The first-gen car used one large motor and one small one, but the new car’s motors are closer in size and share the workload more evenly. Combined electrical power stands pat at 149 horsepower, while torque from the motors climbs 21 pound-feet to 294. Once the batteries are depleted, Farah says, “the most efficient thing to do is to take torque from the engine to the wheels. So we will actually do that more often.” GM says the new Volt will get 41 mpg on gas and 102 MPGe on electricity, increases of four in both combined-driving metrics. The corporation also says that the new Volt will be quicker, getting from zero to 60 mph in 8.4 seconds, 0.4 second fleeter than the last Volt we tested.
Energy capacity is up while battery mass has dropped by 31 pounds. The number of Compact Power lithium-ion cells in the T-shaped battery pack has dropped from 288 to 192, while revised chemistry helps energy capacity grow from the outgoing car’s 17.1 kWh to 18.4. The pack enables a claimed all-electric range of 50 miles.
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