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Chevy Volt replacement battery cost varies wildly, up to $34,000

There's a growing hubbub in the plug-in vehicle community over what looks like some ridiculously cheap replacement batteries for the Chevrolet Volt going up for sale. GM Parts Online, for example, is selling a replacement Volt battery with an MSRP of $2,994.64 but, with an online discount, the price comes down to $2,305.88. For the 16-kWh pack in the 2012 Volt, that comes to a very low $144.11 per kilowatt hour (kWH). But is it a real deal? How can it be, when a Chevy dealer may quote you a price of up to $34,000 to replace the pack? For a 16-kWh Volt pack, $2,305.88 comes to a very low $144.11 per kWh. But is it a real deal? Battery packs in alternative propulsion vehicles are usually priced by the kWh and, historically, they've been thought to be in the range of $500-per-kWh for OEM offerings. Since automakers are understandably secretive about their costs, we still don't know what the real number is today, but we do know it varies by automaker. Tesla, for example, has said it pays less than $200-per-kWH at the cell level but, of course, a constructed pack would be more. Whatever is going on, li-ion battery prices are trending downward. So, $144.11 certainly sounds great, but what's the story here? Kevin Kelly, manager of electrification technology communications for General Motors, reminded AutoblogGreen that GM Parts Online is not the official GM parts website and that, "the costs indicated on the site are not what we would charge our dealers or owners for a replacement battery. There would be no cost to the Volt owner if their battery needs replacement or repair while the battery is under the eight year/100,000 mile limited warranty coverage provided by Chevrolet." A single price tag also can't be accurate for everyone, Kelly said. "If the customer needs to have their battery repaired beyond the warranty, the cost to them would vary depending on what needs to be replaced or repaired (i.e. number of modules, which specific internal components need replacement, etc.)." he said. "So, it's hard for us to tell you exactly what the cost would be to the customer because it varies depending on what might need to be repaired/replaced. As a result, the core charge would vary." But, is the $2,300 price even accurate for anyone? Thanks to a reader comment, we see that this similar item on New GM Parts makes it look like the lithium-ion modules that Kelly mentioned – where a lot of the expensive bits are – are not included.

Steve McQueen's last movie car, now Pawn Stars-owned, up for auction [w/video]

The last car Steve McQueen ever drove in a movie is officially up for auction. The 1951 Chevrolet Styline DeLuxe Convertible you see above is now owned by none other than Rick Harrison of Pawn Stars fame, but once ferried McQueen around the set of his last film, 1980's The Hunter. That flick saw the Bullit star play a bumbling bounty hunter and didn't exactly set the box office on fire. McQueen bought the car after production wrapped, and four years later it sold at his estate sale at the Imperial Palace in Las Vegas.
Flash forward to 2003, and the convertible received a full restoration back to near-stock specifications. Hagerty Insurance estimates the car to be worth around $45,000 without the significant providence. Given its ties to one of film's most popular gearheads, the old Chevrolet could fetch up to 10 times that when it goes under the gavel in Ft Luaderdale, Florida on March 22. You can head over to the Auctions America site for more information. You can also check out the trailer for The Hunter below.

'Killing a Duramax' Gale Banks YouTube series methodically tunes a diesel to death

Learning or perfecting a skill by watching YouTube videos is known as attending YouTube University. GM Authority picked up on one of the video site's more fascinating courses, hosted by Gale Banks; in a fair world, he should be referred to as Professor Banks when it comes to diesel engines and truck tuning. A few months after GM introduced the updated L5P 6.6-liter Duramax diesel V8 in the 2020 Chevrolet Silverado HD and GMC Sierra HD that ships with 454 horsepower and 910 pound-feet of torque, Banks decided he wanted to methodically tune the engine to death. The purpose of the resulting series, called "Killing a Duramax," is to push more power out of the engine in order to discover which parts break and when — or, as Banks puts it, force-feed the Duramax "until the crank hits the street and the heads hit the hood." With that knowledge, Banks can figure out all the weak points on his way to building what he calls a "Superturbo," that being a supercharged, twin-turbo race engine with more than 1,000 hp. What makes the series fascinating is Banks' knowledge, paired with the company's comprehensive iDash engine monitoring system that keeps tabs on a glut of parameters every step of the way. So for instance, you get Banks explaining the differences between inches of mercury and barometric pressure, how those are different from the water content of the air measured in grains, then showing those readouts on the iDash, then explaining in detail how they affect the air density in the Duramax system. The stock Borg-Warner variable turbo gets a lot of airtime — Banks accuses it of being "out to lunch" because he feels it's the weakest link on the engine. That turns into a turbo teardown and a deep explanation of performance pitfalls, such as when air pressure on the turbine begins to diverge from the boost pressure coming from the compressor. Banks says he can keep close tabs on where power's coming from, because the iDash monitors the horsepower contribution provided by the ambient air, the turbo, and the intercooler separately. The major changes so far are a stouter Precision 7675 turbo and TurboSmart wastegate (episode 5), a twin intake (episode 6), a custom liquid-cooled intercooler from a marine engine, a new GM oil cooler and synthetic oil (episode 10), and new injectors (episode 11).