Quote:
Originally Posted by rice_classic
I was incorrect to say the Volt doesn't have a drivetrain. It doesn't have a drivetrain in the traditional sense would have been more accurate. The ICE isn't bolted to a tranny with multiple gears to propel the car. But instead the Electric motor(s) feed the rotational force through a planetary gearset through the driveshafts. I really have to be more careful with my words. Also, thanks for the link! 
It looks like the real myth is that the ICE doesn't propel the vehicle. I had fallen for it too (obviously, look what I've been posting) but this paragraph here exposes that while that myth is true 90% of the time, there is a situation in which it is not true and GM clears it up with careful wording:
From that link |
I didn't know that about the Volt. Of course, I've never been interested enough to look that deeply into it. The Volt was a marketing exercise. Ridiculous promises were made about a car that was in very early development stages, and the technology wasn't really new or interesting (I think locomotives have been doing this for a very long time minus coupling the genset motor to driven wheels).
I feel bad for the engineers on the Volt project that were handed a daydream and a deadline and were expected to create a miracle.
-Justin