Today GM has announced the creation of a new international engineering team whose task is bringing the electrification of vehicles into the mainstream development process more quickly.
Robert Kruse, GM executive director for vehicle engineering of hybrids has been appointed to head the team which will stretch from China to Detroit.
Jim Queen, GM VP of Global Engineering says:
“The future of automotive transportation will be based on electrification of our vehicles,”
and
“By having a vehicle engineering team in place and focused on delivering the technical aspects of hybrids and E-REVs, we can accelerate these programs and get them into production quickly and efficiently.”
So here is another move by GM to help speed among other cars, the Volt, into production.
Source (GM)
This entry was posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 12:01 am and is filed under Engineering, Production. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Jan 25th, 2008 (1:22 am)Lets hope this new team will produce an electric vehicle that has good range AND that is *UNDER* 30K.
Jan 25th, 2008 (1:22 am)Lyle, I don’t anyone will accuse you of wrongful censorship if you get rid of those first two posts.
Jan 25th, 2008 (1:41 am)I can’t believe the attitudes displayed in the first two posts. This site is about a concept car – not the concept of racism. If anyone has a problem about the imigration policies of the state of Michigan there is an appropriate venue for those concerns. This site is not that venue. Lyle, show this person to the door for they are interfering with our pursuit of happiness.
Jan 25th, 2008 (1:43 am)Seriously, I read this every day for the latest news and info on the volt, really enjoy nasamans comments. Please ban the first two comments and block the IP. A question that is floating around my head. With a full load (four?) people, what will the ev range degrade to? Twenty? Twenty five? Just has me wondering.
Jan 25th, 2008 (2:27 am)Ditto on the comments in posts #3 through #6. Maybe ‘Michigan ToDie’ would feel happier expressing sentiments to a more receptive audience.
Back to the topic … it’s nice to see that GM is pooling so many resources to focus on EV’s.
Jan 25th, 2008 (3:57 am)Jim Queen, GM VP of Global Engineering says:
“The future of automotive transportation will be based on electrification of our vehicles,”
Reading what Hiroshi Takemoto #8 says and if true, the quote above from J. Queen has all its importance.
Jan 25th, 2008 (4:00 am)I just learned about the Volt two weeks ago and am new to this site, so forgive me if this is redundant with anything said recently. First, the Volt is the coolest concept car I have ever seen (Tesla Roadster included). I am more excited to get behind the wheel of my Volt than I was to drive my 1st car. Second, I am glad to see the above announcement as it signifies that GM is tackling the crux of the problem. Third, I am impressed with the number of people thinking deeply about this stuff. While many things said here are not quite correct, it seems like it usually gets resolved after several rounds of posting. Fourth, where is this deeply troubling $40K value coming from? Seriously, everything else I have read talks about $30K or under. Finally, I’m not sure about other states, but here in UT you can buy electricity generated from wind for pretty cheap. It costs ~$20/month extra for the average household to purchase all their electrical energy from wind power. Those particularly interested in the green aspect of the Volt could do day to day driving with zero direct or indirect emissions.
http://www.utahpower.net/Article/Article22009.html
Thanks Lyle, keep it up!
Jan 25th, 2008 (6:41 am)Brett, Bob Lutz originally stated that he’d like the price of the Volt to be “well under” $30k. Recently he said that the engineering teams can’t make that target and it looks like it’ll be over $30k. I don’t know where $40k came from, it seems to just be an arbitrary number that people latched on to that’s over $30k. Recently there have been some interviews with the engineering team that suggest that under $30k is still a possibility.
TomW: I wouldn’t expect the hit to be that big. 4 people means ~500 extra lbs, or 16% extra weight. So a rough guess is that you’d get 84% * 40 miles = 33.6 miles.
DavidL: Hiroshi is trying to make a point with the racial epithets. Maybe not the best way to make it but I don’t think a person who’s excited about racial equality and equal treatment for foreigners should be referred to the KKK.
Jan 25th, 2008 (6:45 am)Lyle, there is really no reason why posts #1 and #2 need to remain here. I am deeply opposed to censorship, however, there is a time and place for such comments. This site is to help promote the Volt. Comments 1 and 2 do not help with this cause.
Thank you.
Jan 25th, 2008 (6:49 am)Brett, #10, here is where the 40K came from.
http://www.gm-volt.com/2008/01/16/lutz-first-volts-will-cost-more-than-30000/
“I don’t know. You’d like to have it at about $30,000 for the customer, but what I’m hearing from the team is we’re not going to get there. They say we might get there on the second generation, and they say if they had a lot more time they might be able to cost-optimize it. I don’t want to wait for cost optimization. I’d rather come out in 2010, and if it costs closer to 40 than 30, well, that’s too bad.”
Jan 25th, 2008 (6:50 am)Sorry. the quote above is from Bob Lutz
Jan 25th, 2008 (7:54 am)Considering the wide range of the viewing audience here (GM exec’s/etc) we should strive to keep this forum rated “G”.
I think we pretty much figured Toyota was/has been working on something. They are not going to give up without a fight. Bring it on!
Jan 25th, 2008 (7:54 am)While Mr. Takenoto’s use of english colloquialisms may offend, lets remember that english is not his native language. I’m sure he didn’t learn those terms in an english language class but probably from us Americans. During my military career I had the opportunity to serve in Korea in the mid 70′s for 4 years. Korea was then considered a “Third World Country”. But I remember the intensity that the students back then, and still today, displayed to learn. A college education was not a right, it had to be earned and part of that was to score high on the college entrance exams. It was not uncommon to hear of a young person committing suicide if they did not score well on the exam. This all has to do with saving face and not bringing dishonor to the family; traits that have been inherent in many Asian cultures for thousands of years. Korea is now a world leader in technology (as well as Japan) and we Americans are sometimes offended by this fact – that some country could out-do the USA. Some of you may remember Gold Star Electronics, a Korean company that made cheap electronics and appliances back in the 70′s and 80′s. Well Gold Star is no more. It evolved into LG and their battery may power our Volt.
Jan 25th, 2008 (8:32 am)Good Morning Lyle:
# 1. & 2. need to go back to Japan with Hiroshi. If you are so unhappy here, please leave. No excuse for these postings !! Please delete. Go VOLT !
God Bless America.
Jan 25th, 2008 (8:39 am)I would love to see GM make a comeback, but my primary interest is an affordable, quality, good looking electric vehicle like the Volt appears to be. That will be good for the world and America, wherever it comes from.
Competition is a good thing.
Jan 25th, 2008 (9:18 am)I agree with #17. I like the idea of seeing GM pull this off, and seeing Toyota come up to speed with competition for the Volt will help motivate GM to come to the market faster, with a lower price point, and a better product.
We want GM to get it done fast, right, and cheap. Tough goals, but if Toyota is breathing down their backs they’ll be even more motivated to get it done.
Jan 25th, 2008 (10:14 am)Sorry about those first two posts, I just got back to checking things. They are deleted, sorry if some of the thread gets hung because of it. Racism will not be tolerated on this site.
Jan 25th, 2008 (10:17 am)I would say by Mr Michigan’s comments that perhaps even the Japanese people are getting a little nervous!
There is an old saying that sometimes though protestis too load.
Jan 25th, 2008 (10:20 am)Back on track, thanks Lyle.
Any word on A123′s packs? Seems a bit SLOW.
Jan 25th, 2008 (10:46 am)Thanks Lyle. The words in those 2 posts were uncalled for here. I agree with Brian. Let’s keep this forum professional and rated G.
Jan 25th, 2008 (10:58 am)“The future of automotive transportation will be based on electrification of our vehicles,”
I stand by the comments I made in an earlier thread concerning the resale value of the Volt and electric/hybrid vehicles in general…
“I think the people who need to worry about resale value are those that buy the typical ICE powered vehicle in 3 or 4 years. By the mid to late teens those type of vehicles could be considered obsolete.”
I have a 2 year old grandson and when he learns to drive in 14 years or so, he will probably do so in an electric vehicle. I can hear him now… Grandpa, What’s a spark plug?
Jan 25th, 2008 (10:58 am)Hey everyone..I just saw an article that states that the first production run of the VOLT in 2010 ? will only be about 10,000 units and all will be sold around the production area in case there are glitches or…? I hope that this is not true…..At that rate ….. we would not see a Volt in my area of Canada till 20?? GM… you have got to do better.. just searching the internet is bringing out more and more readily available or to be ready by 2010 electric and hybrid units….
Jan 25th, 2008 (11:22 am)Ray, can you provide a link to the article that stated there will only be 10K units of the Volt made in 2010 and sold only in the production area?
Thanks.
Jan 25th, 2008 (11:32 am)I am on a JAL plane now and will never want to return the Used States of Ameritrash, and will work very hard to defeat Detroit, you guys may not know that our Japanese cars are also defeating GM in china now, Toyota and Honda are much more profitable per vehicle in China that GM. One time Ford complained that Toyota withhold technique to them, but Toyota and their affiliates did sell things to the USA, for only one reason, to avoid backlash. GM/Ford are shameless, you may not know this: When toyota wanted to learn to Ford in 1955, Ford was so arrogant, and now Ford is begging us to teach them, what a crappy company.
Jan 25th, 2008 (11:33 am)I have never leased a car in my life. I know that the “L” word doesn’t go down very well here. We have always paid cash for our cars and run them until the wheels are ready to come off. We retired our last Suburban at 430,000 miles, a lot of them hard trailer towing.
Having said all that, I am beginning to wonder if the first generation Volt is a good candidate to lease. Having read Mr. Lutz’s very typical comment the other day, posted by Rashiid at #10, has started me thinking along these lines.
If the technology is about to evolve at the rate some believe it will, and the price drop substantially by gen. 2 as Mr. Lutz seems to suggest, and considering that there is clearly a reliability risk, maybe it would be better to have the option to bail after 3 years and move up to whatever develops in the meantime.
I have always felt that one would just automatically get screwed by the underlying APR of the lease, but I really don’t understand the process. Do we have an expert out there who would comment on the pros and cons?
I have been exposed to PR tactics of spin, obfuscation, and the use of tortured euphemisims for many years. I hate them. Even so, I begin to think that Bob Lutz needs a minder. “…and if it costs closer to 40 than 30, well that’s too bad”? Come on Bob, can’t you hear how that sounds?
Thanks Rashiid for digging that quote back up.
Jan 25th, 2008 (11:35 am)Brett #7, welcome! It looks like the wait list is approaching 10,000, which is fantastic! It is a milestone that should be celebrated. Let me propose that we ask every wait-list member to forward the link to the site to one friend to mark the occasion.
My local power company in Wisconsin also offers a green-power premium. MG&E claims that the “average” home will use an extra $6/mo. Please check with your local power company for similar programs.
The disadvantage of posts #1 and #2 coming off is that I did not see them. I don’t want to re-open a can of worms, but I had been hoping that GM’s focus on electric vehicles would jump-start the economy in Michigan and the rust belt. A bit provincal of me to be sure. But the global development team will be followed by global production, which really hurts the “buy American” argument.
Also, if you care about the environment you need to consider that one reason why Chinese production is so much cheaper is that their environmental standards are horrible. I won’t feel good about buying a Volt if the factories that make the parts are pumping out CO2 and waste-water that is filled with pollutants.
Jan 25th, 2008 (11:38 am)It’s nice to see GM actually leading the way again. This news of a global GM electrification team is yet another indication that GM is willing to help the world free itself from the fossil.
Even Toyota is paying attention so much so, that they have done an “about-face” on Plug-ns within the last 3 months and are now following GM’s brave leadership.
Way to go, GM!
Thank you Mr. Lutz. Please keep in mind that this car MUST be mainstreamed and will therefore need to be designed and priced as general transportation and NOT just a toy for the wealthy.
Jan 25th, 2008 (11:40 am)Having read the latest effort of Michigan ToDie (sic) at #24, I have to believe that someone is lamely trying to be ironic and to be an agent provocatuer to fire up the discussion.
Very funny, LOL. (NOT)
Sorry I missed the first two efforts. Snoozing and losing again, alas.
Jan 25th, 2008 (11:50 am)150 MPG with AFS Trinity’s PHEV Technology
Video: http://www.podtech.net/home/
Jan 25th, 2008 (12:05 pm)Michigan ToDie Says:
“I am on a JAL plane now and will never want to return the Used States of Ameritrash…..”
—————————-
As you leave, picture my middle finger sticking up and pointing in your direction.
Good riddance.
Jan 25th, 2008 (12:20 pm)I wouldn’t mind if the first 10,000 Volts were produced in 2010 and sold exclusively in Michigan, that would tend to indicate that they would be ramping up to the earlier figure of 60,000 per year by 2011. Any Volt delivered in 2010 is a good thing, especially if it is “comfortably under $30,000″ as Lutz stated a few months ago. A reliable EREV40 sans glass roof but with the Volt styling is going to be transformative if it is under $30k and it will still be incredibly important if it is ‘closer to $40k’, but then I won’t be able to afford it so I would still be a fan but not an owner.
Regardless of what GM does, competition is a good thing.
Jan 25th, 2008 (12:34 pm)Lyle;
Number 24 and 30 need to to be deleted again. Some people have no brains with absolutely no manners.
Jan 25th, 2008 (12:42 pm)I like that GM’s has an open door policy on battery suppliers. That automatically puts them at an advantage over Toyota, unless Panasonic has superior Li-ion chemistry technology than all other suppliers worldwide (and we know they currently don’t).
The electric motor is simple, well understood technology. So is any range extender. GM’s investments can then focus on the software, styling, aerodynamics, material technology, etc. Sky’s the limit in getting people excited about American cars again.
Jan 25th, 2008 (12:43 pm)Tom M, I was politely responding to someone putting down my country.
I did not, in any way, mean to hurt your tender feelings. I am American and don’t like some foreigner trashing us that way.
The only manners I neglected to use in my #30 comment was the word “Please”. Sorry to have forgotten that everyone.
I support Michigan, Detroit, and those hard workers. I support America. I was sticking up for my country. Again, Tom M, I’m sorry to have offended you by doing that. NOT!
Jan 25th, 2008 (12:53 pm)Rashiid,
No problem I thought it was from those two characters from early this A.M. I see your postings all the time and agree with you 99.9%
Have a great day, and yes we will get the job done.
Jan 25th, 2008 (12:57 pm)Tom M. All is cool here. Thanks for letting me know. I was really offended by the first two posts and just needed to vent to this guy for the last one he made. Good riddance to him. America doesn’t need him.
Jan 25th, 2008 (1:10 pm)I have serious doubts about ’10,000′ and ‘in Michigan’ for 2010.
No offense to anyone in Michigan, but there is no way you could sell 10,000 of these there.
Michigan has the highest unemployment in the country and the ‘jobless’ rate is close to 22 percent (including those who have fallen off the unemployment roles).
The whole state only has 10 million people of the poorest, desperate, most paranoid about losing their job people in the country. They aren’t going to plunk down 40k. IF GM could sell 10K to the 10 million people in Michigan, they could sell 600,000 to the rest of North America.
Jan 25th, 2008 (1:12 pm)Sadly, outright laziness among American workers has become much more prevalent in the past 1 or 2 generations, while the work ethic is still dominant in Japan, China & the rest of Asia (based on my first-hand observations as a frequent traveler to many Asian countries). So I’m not at all surprised that GM has “created a new international engineering team whose task is bringing the electrification of vehicles into the mainstream development process more quickly”.
The way I see it, California (still the world’s 5th largest economy, I think) has never really suffered from buying John Deer farm equipment, Caterpiller road-building equipment or automobiles manufactured elsewhere …although they’re one of the world’s largest USERS of all these products of heavy industry.
I truly believe that in the long run, ALL of America, like California, will prosper in spite of China, India, etc increasingly doing most of the world’s manufacturing. GM has obviously decided not to fight this global trend but to benefit from it, and I applaud that corporate strategy!
Jan 25th, 2008 (1:20 pm)Noel at 25,
“L” word also stands for lawyer, which probably also doesn’t go over so big. But there are things about financing arrangements I tend to look out for. Watch the banks.
The last one I ran in to cost a credit union dearly because they thought it was cute to ask clients whether they wanted insurance for their car. Some sort of life insurance such that if you died, they’d pay off your car. The credit union also did not disclose the premiums or the policy to the clients. Let’s just say class action.
You just have to read them very carefully. I’ve heard that people that tend to switch cars every two years benefit by leases also. So long as you don’t blow the mileage maximum, it may be a good idea. These batteries are new to everyone…I think if it’s not warranted by GM, a lease may be a darn good idea.
Jan 25th, 2008 (1:58 pm)I really do hope that this announcement means that they will aggressively develop hybrid or other electrified versions of the Aveo, Cobalt, Malibu, et al. Sooner rather than later, if you please.
While I am really exited about the hope that the Volt will lead GM back to the point of the spear of technological excellence, it needs a whole array of competetive products to survive and prosper.
With leadership from this group, why couldn’t Daewoo’s product development group come up with a hybrid Aveo? This would give the dealers something to put up against the coming Fit based Honda hybrid, for example, without consuming a huge amount of US based engineering resources.
Likewise a true hybrid Cobalt to take on the Civic and a true hybrid Malibu to take on the Camry – although these don’t seem to be selling all that well at the moment. In LA, you can buy a Camry hybrid for the same price as a Prius. I don’t think that was the plan going in.
Jan 25th, 2008 (2:53 pm)What I would really hope would come out of this ‘team’ is some new thinking on direction.
I think most of us would like to just see a product.
Use the old tech, use old batteries, heck use the Cobalt platform, exterior, interior design as is. I don’t need a futuristic cockpit, dash, new fangled skirt kit, regenerative braking, or even a panoramic roof. I don’t care if its a Lithium battery or a 1975 style deep cycle battery that I have to replace every 3 years!
Just make it electric…and make it cheap.
Jan 25th, 2008 (3:23 pm)Statik, #41:
Yeah, I used to agitate on the Fastlane blog for a lightweight Cobalt or Aveo with one of the smaller European versions of the Ecotec which would get mileage to compete with the Yaris or the Fit. Nobody could get interested in that brilliant idea. I just sort of gave up and started following gm-volt, which is WAY better that any of the official GM corporate blogs.
Jan 25th, 2008 (3:52 pm)The rhetoric is there. Now we have to measure the rate of change, which I’m sure is going to feel agonizingly slow as we watch gas prices steadily rise before even the Volt debuts.
Jan 25th, 2008 (4:19 pm)ug, #43:
Well exactly.
I cannot tell you haw many times I have hopefully mentioned the Volt to people who are unaware of it, with the same response.
“Oh yeah, GM talks a good game about this sort of stuff, but then it never happens.” The most recent being my own younger son, just last night. And he has been raised in a die hard, gear head, Chevrolet owning family.
Come on Volt team, make them eat their words!
Jan 25th, 2008 (5:24 pm)I am looking forward to the day when we can tell the gas companies to kiss our behinds.
And with GM on the job I am sure that we will see this come to light. The reason I say that is for the first time in years GM seems serious about going green and I for one am glad to see it. If it is possible to get the foreign auto makers out or at least to a respectful level and get our GPD back up and going again. Then Maybe fuel prices will come down for our big rigs and such.
But Kudos to GM for being serious for a change and it would be a great pleasure to GM take the lead again and stay there.
one thing for sure if they do not stay ahead of the curve I am afraid that it will be the death of American autos for sure.
Jan 25th, 2008 (5:28 pm)L. W. Lerch, #45:
Amen, especially to your last sentence.
Jan 25th, 2008 (6:03 pm)I was always interested in an electic car and now that GM has started there hybrid and electric car engineering department now i don’t have a problem spending some money to get and American product that will turn around and help the people off this beautiful country.
God Bless America
Jan 25th, 2008 (7:01 pm)Sorry but were any of you guys actually paying attention to what “Michigan ToDie” said?
Assuming he wasn’t a troll, he was a Japanese national working as an engineer in Detroit on a (probably) H1B visa. He had probably worked hard there for years and was settled in, and then due to some shortsighted boneheaded xenophobic legislators, had his right to drive a car revoked.
This is very embarrassing to me as an American and I’d rather try to apologize to him and try to smooth things over than wish him good riddance.
Jan 25th, 2008 (7:18 pm)Tom #48
You are making a lot of assumptions without any knowledge of the facts beyond what Michigan ToDie said. You then jumped to the conclusion that Michigan ToDie was right and everyone else was wrong.
Sorry, I need more facts before jumping to conclusions, becoming embarrassed or feeling a need to apologize. And, you’re not likely to get those facts from Michigan ToDie!!!
Jan 25th, 2008 (7:24 pm)Like I said, assuming he wasn’t a troll. He did link to a newspaper site that confirmed his assertion that new Michigan legislation denies drivers licenses to legal immigrants with certain kinds of visas.
Jan 25th, 2008 (7:56 pm)That’s no excuse for his language in his first couple of posts (and neither is English as a second language, if that is indeed the case.) In case you didn’t see them, he used several EXTREMELY offensive racial slurs.
Jan 25th, 2008 (7:58 pm)Sorry, but I must have been under the mistaken impression that this site was about the Volt
Jan 25th, 2008 (8:07 pm)>> In case you didn’t see them, he used several EXTREMELY offensive racial slurs.
I did notice. It was meant to be ironic. Or do you think he’s calling himself all those slurs for Asians?
Jan 25th, 2008 (8:58 pm)Yes!
The gods have smiled Anti Oil Jihadi.
GM is responding to the challenge.
Come to think of it..I havent seen him for a while.
Jan 25th, 2008 (9:53 pm)Back on the subject of the announcement of the team to make a lot of GM vehicles electric: Is this good new or bad news for the Volt?
Positively, it shows a widespread interest and sense of possibility within GM. Presumably people within GM see this direction as a winner.
Negatively, it brings more and more people with an involvement with a project that has to remain lean and focused to get a good product out the door. Bloated management has been a consistent GM weakness.
Which is it?
Jan 25th, 2008 (10:01 pm)I’m not really familiar with GM organization chart. Does anyone know what if any effect this international engineering team could have on the Nov. 2010 date? Move it up or make it more solid? Does this effect the Volt project team
Jan 25th, 2008 (10:38 pm)From the article:
“The future of automotive transportation will be based on electrification of our vehicles,”
This is good news all around. I was starting to lose faith in GM, this is very refreshing.
Jan 25th, 2008 (10:42 pm)It is always a pleasure to come to this site and see the hard work Lyle set aside for anyone here to bash with Volt news and E-REV and all. The knowledgeable comments of Nasaman,Tom, Estero, Juan, Brain M, Bruce, Rashiid Amul, Jihad to oil, and other that are too many to mention make this site feel like the TV show Cheers, a site “where everybody knows your name and they are always glad you came.” Comment like # 24, should simple be ignored and thus it may be hard to do so, that person is just an ignorant and his/her senseless comment should not derail this wonderful site. History is the testament of what this great country has been contributing to this world, while other just duplicate. GM, lead the way.
Jan 25th, 2008 (10:50 pm)RB #55
Part of GM’s recent success has been leveraging it’s talent from around the world to produce automobiles, and it appears that this will be no exception.
Previously GM had used concentrated design centers in various areas of the world w/o much collaboration, so this is again a good thing.
Jan 25th, 2008 (11:07 pm)1) I think that the globalization of the platform is a welcome gesture in that there are many innovative forward-thinking people in the world that can contribute to the presence and purpose of a car like the Volt. I sincerely hope that this leads to the Volt’s on-time arrival (plus or minus a month or two) and its ability to perform to advertised specs (something we all would like).
2) Although I wasn’t present for the first two posts, I must say that by inference of such, I am highly offended. I feel that everyone on this blog has a right to express his or her feelings, but that should not come at the expense of insulting or denigrating one’s ethnic makeup. As a black american, I know first hand the atrocity that racism brings. But in spite of, I make it a lifelong effort to not look at the actions of a few immoral, uneducated and uncivilized individuals as definition of their race. I’m not really mad per se, but I pity that blogger, as his short-sighted intellect will prevent him from ever truly getting to know people such as Lyle or the many people here to which I share a kindred interest and have come to respect. I ask everyone here to not let yourselves be deterred from getting to know someone based on ignorance similar to those who feel that offending others is a way to define their own worth. I have endeavored to post respectfully to and of everyone here and I hope I haven’t said anything that has offended anyone. If I have, then I sincerely apologize. This site is devoted to an aspect of technology that we all find fascinating. I hope that it can continue unimpeded by those of lesser character.
With respect to all, until the first rolls from the assembly line…
Jan 25th, 2008 (11:40 pm)#58. Well said, Haid D’ Salaami.
The first two posts from that guy were racially inflammatory. I read them and they were offensive. I don’t much care if he was attacking me directly. But he was attacking all of us.
Firefly, I’m glad you missed it. He was not kind to your race. I found it offensive and so did most people here, including Lyle.
After he left the third post, I couldn’t resist the urge to respond. But I may have ended up offending people myself. That was never my intent.
I agree with what you say about ignorance.
I am sad to say that I am not without some of it. I agree with what Anti Oil Jihadi has to say, but I carry it further.
Hopefully we will meet someday, and I will be proud to call you Friend.
Jan 26th, 2008 (12:39 am)From the article:
“The future of automotive transportation will be based on electrification of our vehicles,”
Like I have said in previous posts the drivetrain concept of the Volt could become the bowtie standard similar to what the 350ci V8/auto tranny was for so many GM models and so many years. Serial hybrid in sedan, coupe, mini van, and mid-sized pickup.
Jan 26th, 2008 (3:22 am)You guys are either not reading or not paying attention.
The guy who wrote the first two posts used racial slurs in a mocking, sarcastic, ironic way.
Our country has done him a disservice because he is a foreign national. His posts had the tone of, “hey, sure, let’s all be racist, isn’t that great.”
If he is to be believed, the guy is Japanese and decided to give us whites a shot. And we took away his driver’s license. No wonder he’s pissed.
Jan 26th, 2008 (4:44 am)Hey, GM impressed Guy Incognito! Maybe there is hope after all!
Jan 26th, 2008 (8:57 am)Something’s been bothering me. The GM announcement of a new international engineering team whose task is the electrification of vehicles may conceal an answer to my concern. I’ll explain what’s bothering me this way…
The Space Shuttle (& every commercial airliner) contains an APU as a source of electrical power, but although the APU is very important it’s a very small part of the aircraft or spacecraft size, weight & cost. The Volt’s little 1L/53KW ICE/Generator is essentially an APU …a self-contained, compact, single-purpose electric power source. And it represents only a fraction of the vehicle’s mass, required space, cost & risk. By contrast, an E-REV’s battery represents a very LARGE portion of the vehicle’s mass, required space, cost & risk.
Here’s my concern… if GM continues to buy these high-tech batteries from outside suppliers, a substantial portion of the vehicle value (and an extremely-critical vehicle subsystem) is dependent on other relatively-new if not start-up companies who may not be able to adhere to their contractual requirements with GM when faced with the overwhelming world-wide demand for batteries by other OEM manufacturers.
Suppose GM decided to buy its high-tech 550HP CTS-V engines from an outside supplier & that supplier defaulted …no engine, no CTS-V! …no battery, no Chevy Volt! And ramping up production numbers in the start-up E-REV battery industry is obviously bound to be much harder (& risker) than buying other more conventional parts like those needed for the Volt’s APU or even its 160HP drive motor. So I believe GM has no other long-range option than to license the battery technology and design their own battery for in-house manufacture. And, reading between the lines of this topic’s international vehicle electrification engineering team announcement, I believe a major task for the team will be to design & production engineer their own batteries for manufacturing within the Corporation. They’d simply give up too much potential profit and accept too much risk to do otherwise!
Jan 26th, 2008 (9:57 am)For what its worth, GM had to abandon their Delco batteries in the EV1 because of reliability problems.
Having a single source for your batteries is a bad idea. Better to have a competitive environment where many are working to develop a better solution. Pick the best cost/performance.
Jan 26th, 2008 (10:16 am)Storm #66:
You say… “Having a single source for your batteries is a bad idea. Better to have a competitive environment where many are working to develop a better solution. Pick the best cost/performance.”
You’re absolutely right!!! We almost never single-source anything in the space program for the reason you give, but it’s not unusual to have internal NASA R&D work & even limited assembly done aby more than one of NASA’s many facilities when the item is extremely critical & involves new or emerging technology.
I should have said that I believe GM should have 2 or more of its new facilities (i.e., Detroit, Germany and/or China) BOTH or ALL do the R&D & the production engineering of GM E-REV batteries in competition with each other, as well as maintain outside battery suppliers.
Jan 27th, 2008 (9:13 am)nasaman 65 & 67:
I generally agree with you about multiple sources of supply when purchasing from others. But, things change somewhat when the manufacturing process is internal.
Perhaps you will recall my posting a couple months ago. I threw out the possibility that GM might acquire one of the battery companies. This would allow GM to become their own battery supplier and to others as well.
Jan 27th, 2008 (12:25 pm)Estero #68:
I agree …acquistion would be one of the BEST ways to develop an internal battery R&D and manufacturing capability. Could GM’s new Shanghai group be thinking of buying (or buying into) BYD or another Chinese company with A123-like lithium iron phosphate technology???
Feb 3rd, 2008 (5:44 am)I have a simple concept to improve the Volt. It is a simple idea but I am not an engineer and I have no idea if this idea is laughable. How do I contact someone in Volt’s Research & Development team?
Feb 3rd, 2008 (5:55 am)Hehe this is to the guy onboard that plane going to Japan or something. We all know where your Japanese women come to find REAL men, LOL. Have you ever met an asian lady that don’t try to catch herself a white man? yes, Japanese are smart, especially the women !!!