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Chevrolet Sets A World Record With Secondary Use Of Volt Battery

The first-generation Chevrolet Volt will soon be found in the collection of weird and wonderful achievements that is the Guinness Book of World Records.

Well, actually, we should clarify. The car itself didn’t actually set this record specifically.

Rather, Chevrolet recently put its secondary use battery in the books by setting a record for the most people generating electricity in one week at the Toronto 2015 Pan-Am Games, which concluded Sunday.

The company set up the Chevrolet Power of Play exhibit at CIBC Pan Am Park from July 17-24 and had participants compete head-to-head on a 1,038-foot slot car track. The kicker? The slot cars were powered by the Volt’s secondary-use battery and participants were forced to generate the speed and control the cars by riding on six stationary bicycles.

All the batteries used in the Guinness effort had exceeded their eight to ten-year lifespan, though Chevrolet says they still have fifty to seventy percent of their charge capacity remaining.

A total of 4,739 people generated more than 13,000 electrical watt hours of electricity over the course of the week, enough to power a Volt to drive 60 km (37 miles), according to the company.

The whole endeavour itself was meant to draw attention to GM’s Canadian Engineering Center in Oshawa, Ontario, which is located roughly 45-minutes from the festivities located in the heart of the city.

“We wanted to use our Power of Play demonstration not only to offer a fun, interactive way for fans to have their own friendly competition, but also to put our technology in the record books,” said Hossein Hassani, Director Enterprise Marketing for General Motors of Canada.

A far-too-tall Ontarian who likes to focus on the business end of the auto industry, in part because he's too tall to safely swap cogs in a Corvette Stingray.

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Comments

  1. For a two car family I think the perfect cars would be a 2016 Chevrolet Volt for long distance travel if desired, and a 2017 Chevrolet Bolt for local area travel. If the Volt were charged every night, this family would use very little gas, thus having more money for their retirement fund(s).

    Reply
    1. for our two car family our 2012 volt & 2008 saturn vue work just fine. Commuter car volt & grocery getter vue

      Reply
  2. For a two car family I prefer a Cadillac CTS V and a Z06 Corvette

    Reply
  3. That’s a cool, imaginative demo.

    Help us understand the math in pgh 5, though.

    I thought I remembered reading when the Volt battery loses 20% of it’s capacity, it’s basically cashed for road usage.

    It’s great that they can find alternative uses for batteries that still have 50-70% life left in them.

    But if you want to keep your Volt, you buy a new battery for $2000+, and sometimes the old ones can be ganged together to power IT systems, etc? Does the seller get credit towards the new battery?

    If you buy a used Volt, how can you tell how much battery life is left?

    Again, it’s cool they’re finding alt uses for the batteries – just wondering how the system works. As far as I know, there’s one recycling facility in Ohio, for batteries that aren’t repurposed.

    And not sure how this works with Leaf, or Tesla, or other batteries.

    Sorry for all the questions – just curious. Thanks …

    Reply

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