sub3marathonman said:
Another time I got to the EVSE at about 4 a.m., only to find a Volt plugged in, but obviously not charging. It is incredible how loud the alarm sounds in an empty parking garage at 4 a.m.! I was getting ready to plug it back in when the alarm finally stopped. But it seemed that the Volt owner should have considered turning off the alarm before leaving it plugged in all night.
Some have no idea it can be turned off or how. See below.
DarthPuppy said:
TomT said:
It is programmable on the Gen 2.
So then if it alarms after the charging is done, the driver failed to program it correctly? Sounds like Chevy found a way to pass the buck to their customer while still being obnoxious. It will be interesting to see if these cars continue to alarm after they are done. The Volt has a lot of nice aspects going for it. Shame they didn't fully fix this by now. Or am I assuming incorrectly?
On the Gen 1 Volt, there are two stupid honk alarms which seem like they're on by default given what I've seen at public charging and sometimes when new mystery GM EVs/PHEVs show up at work.
They can be turned off by the user, but I heard (from a Volt enthusiast on Facebook) that for the '11 Volt, you must go to the dealer. (We have no '11 Volts at my work, probably because they didn't qualify for CA green HOV stickers due to emissions being too dirty.)
For the '12 to '15 Volts (which are Gen 1), they can be disabled via menus. The Spark EV also inherits this and yes, some people don't disable it or don't know how. We have brief instructions on our internal EV/PHEV page at work as to how to turn it off.
I've met Volt people who have no idea how to disable it or that it can be disabled.
Two recent examples for me:
- (very smart) high school classmate of mine (software engineer w/BS and MS from Stanford) who's had a Volt for years. He had no idea it can be disabled and sometimes accidentally sets it off
- encounter w/a Gen 1 Volt driver at free public charging. I believe I'd set it off when unplugging their completed car. I told them that they didn't have their honk alarms disabled. They claimed their car doesn't do that, so we tested it. Sure enough, made the darn honking within the ~10 seconds of unplugging. I didn't have the instructions in front of me. When I offered to help them shut it off, their response was "I'll have my husband look into that."
I've had other encounters at the above free public charging where the Volt drivers also didn't know how to disable.
I now carry notes w/a screenshots of the pages from the Volt manual on how to disable the 2 alarms and leave them on offending vehicles that scare me or someone else at public charging. (I know that if you unplug a GM EV/PHEV w/o the honk alarms disabled, expect to hear the honking in about 10 seconds... so I'm prepared.)
See page 5-57 (169) of https://www.chevrolet.com/content/dam/Chevrolet/northamerica/usa/nscwebsite/en/Home/Ownership/Manuals_and_Videos/02_pdf/2k12volt.pdf. Charge Cord Theft Alert and Charge Power Loss Alert both need to be turned off to disable the stupid honks.
The fact that they're on by default and that the Gen 2 Volt only has a lame 3.6 kW OBC (barely an upgrade from the Gen 1 Volt's 3.3 kW OBC) and still ships a Spark EV w/3.3 kW OBC only tells me that GM is still somewhat tone deaf when it comes to EVs. It's this along with stuff like http://www.greencarreports.com/news/1101774_gm-wont-fund-ccs-fast-charging-sites-for-2017-chevy-bolt-ev and the Frankenplug crap they've pulled + their current level of virtual non-support for it.
TomT said:
It is programmable on the Gen 2. Also, the dash light pattern is different than with Gen 1... When the vehicle is plugged in and the battery is charging, the number of flashes indicates the percentage of battery charge. For example, one flash = 0–25% charged, two flashes = 25–50% charged, three flashes = 50–75%, etc. A solid light means the battery is fully charged.
Yep. Stupid that decided to make it totally the opposite of the Gen 1 Volt and Spark EV. This only adds to the confusion in public charging situations where some don't know the indicators of other vehicles.
Before Gen 2 Volt existed, I've spoken to Gen 1 Volt drivers at free public charging who were confused about Leaf's indicators, for instance.