GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site

As everyone by now knows, GM and the UAW reached a tentative contract agreement providing a 50 billion dollar healthcare trust, and assurances that GM will support future building and investments in the U.S.A.

Just prior to the end of the strike, the Wall Street Journal reported that UAW representiatives specifically mentioned their desire to have the Chevy Volt be built in the U.S., and at the Lordstown, Ohio plant. Overall the workers have been fearful that GM could ship significant future production overseas to reduce costs.

As per Rick Wagoner, CEO of GM, “The projected competitive improvements in this agreement will allow us to maintain a strong manufacturing presence in the United States along with significant future investments,”

Congrats to all on a rapid resolution to the strike, now lets get back to building those Volts!

This was a question I had posed early on after the car was first introduced. Engineers responded that it should be pretty quiet.

Humans have been used to driving combustion engine powered vehicles for 100 years.

Electric engines by nature do not make much of a sound. Hidden deep in the body of a high tech, well-insulated car, perhaps no noticeable sound at all to a driver in the cabin.

Of course, the Volt also has an on-board ICE-generator which will kick-in after 40 miles of driving.

This then presents a dilemma, which we’ve discussed before. Will the driver be shocked when the ICE kicks in? Will he/she be puzzled when the acceleraotr is depressed and the ICE continues to hum along at a constant RPM?

We have reported that GM might be planning to artificially program the RPMs of the ICE to give it a more natural interaction with the accelerator pedal.

Now, in an interview with Cars.com, Dave Lyon, GM’s executive director of interior design for North America, admits “One thing we’re debating now is whether an electric should make noise.”, and “We’re debating whether we can dial up noise, just like you can by adjusting the ringer level on your cell phone,”.

He alludes to the fact that the car could alert us to how many all-electric miles it has left, and notify us that the generator is about to fire up.

He says, “the car could advise that if you lower your speed by so many miles an hour, or turn the radio off or turn up the temp on the air conditioning or do all of those that you can make the 20 miles needed to get home.”

Clearly, to design a car like the Volt, many new issues have to be considered .

At 11AM today, GMs autoworkers union UAW went on strike, after a deadline to reach a new labor agreement had passed.

There are 73,000 UAW members on strike, and it affects all GM plants nationwide.
Reports are that neither side can handle a long strike, and indeed as of late a lot of progress in negotiations had been made.

GM is officially “disappointed”, but negotiations shall continue.

Could this delay the Volt?  Will it hurt GMs bottom line?  Only time will tell.

The Silicon Valley Leadership Group is a consortium of high-tech companies in Silicon Valley, California. The group is releasing a “Clean and Green” action plan about what these companies can do to help reduced fuel consumption and carbon emissions.

As a part of the initiative 100 executives from member companies have pledged to drive plug-in cars themselves by the start of 2008. According to CalCars.org, at the present time there are only 70 plug-in hybrids on U.S. roads. Remarkably small considering GM is planning to roll out 60,000 Volts between 2010 and 2011.

The group is also about to release a 52 page report on what they believe needs to be done for the environment and recommendations.

A123 will be the battery company (no doubt along with their newly acquired Hymotion) that converts the plug-ins.

Source (Mercury News)

The Chevy Volt has Toyota shaking in their boots, and making weak arguments why the parallel hybrid is better than the series hybrid design of the Volt. As well, GM has forced Toyota to feebly put out to test limited mileage plug-in Priuses, and to acknowledge that their lithium-ion battery supplier is not yet ready for primetime.

Moving on this momentum Mr. Robert Lutz has another new quote that he gave to the L.A. Times, who also got to meet with him in L.A. (link)

“Five years from now, there will be one technology leader in the world,” Lutz said, “and it will be GM.”

Go get em’ Bob, we’re ready.

New York Times columnist David Pogue had more discussion with Bob Lutz about the Chevy Volt than was able to be aired on the CBS Sunday Morning segment. So like any good reporter, he reported it in today’s New York Times (link).

Bob let out some important new information for us to digest and ponder, here are his quotes, followed by comments of yours truly:

1. Volt performance:

“Our performance targets for the Volt are 0 to 60 in around five or six seconds. Top speed of 120 miles an hour for a limited time. A hundred miles an hour is sustainable.”

0 to 60 in 5-6 seconds is faster than the 8-8.5 seconds chief engineer Nick Zielinksi told us. Now thats performance! Lets look for this surprise.

[[[UPDATE:  GM has advised me that unfortunately, Bob misspoke, the 0 to 60 time will actually be 8.5-9.0 seconds]]]

2. First public test drives:

“I’m hoping that as early as spring of ’08, we will have the first rough prototypes running, which will permit members of the media to drive 30 or 40 miles purely on batteries and listen to the internal combustion engine kick in. ”

If they let me, I’ll be there!

3. Release date:

“It’ll either be late ’10 or early ’11, but we’re still holding everybody’s feet to the fire for 2010.”

Yikes!! We’re not backing off the promise already?

4. Arrival of first battery packs:

“We get the first experimental packs from our two developmental suppliers in October. And then we can start bench testing.”

Hey thats in 9 days!

5. Price:

“My personal target still is to bring this car into the market at, you know, nicely below $30,000. And if we achieve that, it will really become a viable solution.”

He says if.

6. Production Volt appearance:

“Obviously, it’s not going to have, like, 22- or 23-inch wheels. But you always do that with show cars. You have way bigger wheels than you put in production.

It’s going to be close enough to the show car to where, when people see one on the road for the first time, they’re going to say, “That’s the Chevrolet Volt.” And it’ll be totally different from any other General Motors car, which I think is part of the secret of the Prius. By driving a Prius, everybody knows, “Oh, that person is concerned with the environment.” Being noticed for what you’re driving is very powerful motivation for what you drive.”

That’s reassuring, we will being seeing the Volt.