Want To Know EXACTLY How The Chevy Volt Powertrain Works? – PluginCars.com.

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Exclusive Video: Want To Know EXACTLY How The Chevy Volt Powertrain Works? – PluginCars.com.

In many ways, I think the mechanical-drive internal combustion engine is in its twilight years. A product that is in twilight years becomes incredibly complicated and convoluted compared to earlier versions. Modern mechanical-drive automatic transmissions, while reliable, are incredibly complicated with 8-9 speeds or more now the norm.

In contrast, electric drive cars, like on the Chevy Volt lack a transmission or have a simple gear box that goes between two speeds and primarily relies on the wide torque bands of electric motors. The two electric motors in the Chevy Volt provides all motive force -- the engine simply provides electricity to keep the battery charged or power the electric motors.

You get mechanical simplicity, great efficiency, and the ability to store energy as electricity in batteries that can also come from a grid. The internal combustion engine in the volt operates at a near constant speed, well in it's power band.

There is nothing that you can't not like about the Chevy Volt drive-train.

October 1, 2016 Morning

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Good morning! Happy October.  Cloudy and 54 degrees in North Syracuse. There is a east breeze at 7 mph. The dew point is 49 degrees.Not a real great day to start out our month of October, and it looks like our weekend will be pretty cloudy. It looks like as of now, the skies will clear Monday around 10 pm. We are going to be rather jammed between two fronts through Tuesday. But I’m hardly shocked, as October tends to be one of the grayest months of the year — November is slightly worse — but at least we have autumn colors and sometimes they are better on cloudy days.

I wanted to get out for a walk this morning, but it’s already quite wet and rainy out this morning. It might be better for tomorrow, and hopefully i can get out for a walk midday for a while between the showers. I guess every day doesn’t have perfect weather.

Starting to think about upgrading the memory on my laptop. My laptop is now 4 years old and I’ve noticed it starts to really slow down when I get too many browser tabs open along with OpenOffice. Maybe I have a program with a memory leak, or maybe 6 GB of memory just isn’t enough for my purposes. I would have to pull the 2 GB DIMM and replace it with the 4 GB DIMM — the most my laptop supports is 8 GB. Looks like an easy upgrade to make and at $50 it might keep my laptop plugging along for a few more years. I have plenty of disk space, and while the case is worn, it is holding together fine. Computers always seem to hunger more memory after a few years as applications become more bloated… I mean functional. I also switched over to the smaller LXDE window manager, over XFCE, just because it uses even less memory and does everything I need.

Also started to think about my next camping trip. I’m thinking about going and seeing more of Pennsylvania, and maybe West Virginia. Still on the fence on whether or not I would go all the way down to the Blue Ridge Parkway, but I could see spending time exploring other parts of Pennsylvania. There are a lot of affordable state campgrounds that open at least through hunting season, and places in the woods to camp for free. That said, I loved West Virginia but as long as the roads are snow and ice free. I don’t want to be found five summers in the future, after I slide off a narrow dirt road and plunge 200 feet into a hollar to my death. Pennsylvania often uses guardrails sparingly, and while Penna. hills can be just as steep, their roads are somewhat wider. But then again, I am pretty careful about the weather in Penna. too.

Today will have a chance of showers, mainly after noon. Cloudy, with a high of 65 degrees at 2pm. One degree below normal. Maximum dew point of 54 at 3pm. East wind around 8 mph. Chance of precipitation is 40%. New precipitation amounts of less than a tenth of an inch possible. The record high of 90 was set in 1927. The sun will set at 6:44 pm with dusk around 7:12 pm, which is 1 minutes and 46 seconds earlier than yesterday. Today will have 11 hours and 40 minutes of daylight, a decrease of 2 minutes and 55 seconds over yesterday.

Tonight will have showers likely, mainly before 11pm. Mostly cloudy, with a low of 55 degrees at 6am. 10 degrees above normal. Maximum dew point of 54 at 6pm. East wind 6 to 9 mph. Chance of precipitation is 60%. New precipitation amounts between a tenth and quarter of an inch possible. The record low of 30 occurred back in 1972.

There are 3 weeks until Make a Difference Day when the sun will be setting at 6:09 pm with dusk at 6:38 pm. The average high temperature is 57 degrees, with a record high of 86 in 1979.