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Comment by cptskippy | Hacker News Reader

I've always wondered what long term issues one might encounter with a Volt.

Can the gas in the tank go bad? I know modern fuel has a lot of preservatives.

Has anyone experienced any issues with summer vs winter blends? You're potentially carrying out of season gas in your tank.

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The gas tank is pressurized and vacuumed or something. Actually have to press a button to open the tank to put more in. If you don't use the gas engine for 6 weeks, it runs for 15 min to lubricate. If you don't keep the average gas age below 1 year, it will run the gas engine until the average age is below 1 year. And that logic is very much as a software developer would expect. It burns half the gas away and you refill it? Average age is now 6 months. In 6 months it'll do it all over again.

The car takes care of that by keeping track of when you fuel. It will burn some of the gas to keep it from going bad, to keep the engine oiled, and occasionally to keep the vehicle warm.

The gas tank is pretty small (9 gallons), so it's not a big issue and only a tiny amount of fuel is used for these things. I normally keep about a quarter to half a tank in there, which is enough to be more than comfortable but not enough that I'm burning a lot of gas to keep it from going bad. It automatically keeps the average age of gas in the tank from going over 6 months.

>Can the gas in the tank go bad? I know modern fuel has a lot of preservatives.

This is something that is occasionally mentioned in speculative apocalyptic scenarios. It will go bad, after about a year you wouldn't be able to use any random car without swapping out its gas with some from a better preserved source.

I suspect it'd work, just not recommended. I drive around with nearly 6 month old gas all the time and have used >1 year old gas in lawnmowers and boats (etc). I suspect it'd run rough after a year or so, but probably good enough in such a scenario.

EDIT: Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xktrYDny_lc

Gas deteriorates over time, but in practice, it’s not really a problem unless it’s very old.

I know an ex-junkman. He said that MTBE gasoline pissed him off because it went bad they had to pay to get rid of it. But they would fill their cars with the non MTBE gasoline no matter how old it was.

>I've always wondered what long term issues one might encounter with a Volt.

It's a Chevy...so expect some pretty bad engineering defects with everything but the engine/drivetrain.

I've had an incredibly good experience with the Volt. They deployed their best engineers to work on it. It was probably the best made Chevy at the time, a kind of flagship project.

> It was probably the best made Chevy at the time, a kind of flagship project.

In 2013, the Volt and Cadillac CTS shared the highest score (3.00) of any General Motors vehicle in Consumer Reports Reliability Index (excluding the Pontiac Vibe which is really a Toyota rebadge).

For comparison: 37 (of 41) Toyota vehicles scored the same or better than the Volt.

Yeah, it does seem like Chevys have some pretty robust engines/drivetrains, installed in some pretty lousy bodies.

I have a truck that has 300k miles on the original engine and transmission but I have to change the headlight switch every 50 to 70k miles. I also have to replace the interior door handles every 100k. So, 6 door handles (right and left), 6 light switches, a fuel pump, radiator, and she's ready for a suspension. But rocking the same engine.

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