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???

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.