GM Announces Warranty on Battery Pack

[Grendal]

http://green.autoblog.com/2010/07/14/general-motors-announces-8-year-100-000-mile-warranty-for-volt-b/

It's been discussed on the forum before and now it's official: 8 years or 100,000 miles.

Edit for more details: In its final production form, 95 percent of the components were designed and developed in-house by GM, it weighs in at 400 pounds and has an output of 110 kilowatts. Internally, the water-cooled pack consists of 288 LG Chem lithium polymer cells.

[NeilBlanchard]

It's a water cooled battery pack, huh? The Leaf battery pack has no active cooling, FWIW.

[SlowSRT4]

Please make the Leaf warranty the same, Nissan.

[aptera1213]

Yep...at that, 8 yrs/100,000 I would buy the LEAF...

Less and I lease.

Gavin

[Grendal]

Yep...at that, 8 yrs/100,000 I would buy the LEAF...

Less and I lease.

Gavin

It will probably have to be 8 yrs/100,000. "California Air Resources Board consider the battery to be part of the car's emissions control system" which forces them to put an 8 year warranty on it. At least that is what the article said. That sets an interesting precedent. Unless they consider the Volt a hybrid and there are different rules for a pure EV...

It doesn't mean much unless they specify in a useful way what the expectations will be for the pack. Gavin, I see a lease in your future...

[AndyH]

The battery is LG/Chem LiMn. GM is forced to provide the 8/100 warranty because the car's a hybrid, not an EV.

I'll bet they've chosen liquid pack heating/cooling specifically because the demands on a hybrid pack can be more extreme than a pure EV, and because they have to have a very stable and long-term emissions profile to meet EPA requirements - again due to the ICE.

Degrading pack = more ICE time = increased emissions profile = trouble with EPA certification, alternate fuel points, CAFE, etc. etc.

[evnow]

Looks like they want to put Volt under ULEV - and thus the 8 year warranty. They would have needed better warranty to get SULEV, PZEV or AT-PZEV ...