GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site

Obviously the Volt can be driven without gas, in fact that the whole purpose. The range extender exists only for if you have to go further than 40 miles between charges.

One thing to consider is what would happen if the car ran out of gas after the battery has reached its depletion point, or was in charge-sustaining mode. Since there would still be charge in the battery, it is conceivable that the car could be engineered to dip into that a little and give the driver a “limp-home mode” that might allow 1 to 2 miles of slow driving to get you to the gas station.

The New York Times has just reported that Volt executive Frank Weber mentioned such a limp home mode might be available on the Volt.

Or will it?

I just recently had asked this same question to Mr. Weber’s colleague, Bob Kruse, who is GMs director of Hybrids and EVs.  My questions and his comments follow:

Will there be a limp home mode, if you run out of gas at the same time you’re at battery depletion, allowing the driver a couple of miles of low speed driving?
If it’s your Volt, are you willing to wound your battery for that convenience?

If it happens very rarely it may not impact the cells longevity.
Well I’m the expert on that and is that something that you’re willing to sacrifice, the longevity of your battery in order to overcharge it?

Ideally no, but I think if it were a dire situation the car could give you a big red button on the screen…
I could let you do it but you can’t expect me to give you a life of the car battery of you want to operate outside the norms. But we do have Onstar so if you use it they’ll bring you a gallon of gas.  I don’t know whether were going to do it (have this feature) or not.

So it looks like this idea is probably still up in the air.

Would you want this feature?

I discussed how and of the Chevy Volt battery pack all electric rage (AER) might change over the vehicle’s lifetime with Bob Kruse, who is GMs director of Hybrids and EVs.

If the AER is 40 miles at the end of life, what will the beginning of life AER be?
40 miles. What we’ve said is our objective is that we’re going to have up to 40 miles of electric-only range and we want the battery to last the life of the vehicle.

You have a cell phone with a lithium-ion battery in it right? After your cellphone is a year or two old, talk time is less, and if the battery is hot or cold, you can talk less too. Lithium ion batteries are like people, they like it to be room temperature. If you overcharge or overdischarge them you begin to wear the battery. We have intellectual property at GM that we’re particularly proud of. The first is a battery state of charge estimator, so we can estimate what the state of charge is. That particular piece of intellectual property is so good, other OEMs buy it from us. So we’ve got to know what it is. And in order to get the battery to last a long time we use a sweet spot. We never charge it or discharge it when its too hot or too cold. So there is a thermal management system of the battery pack. All of that knowledge as to what you have to do to lithium ion to get the 40 miles and last a long long time, that’s the intellectual property that I’m generating.

Its important to understand the solution for the Volt. When we did the EV-1 we learned that customers suffer from range anxiety. Our engineers used to drag little motorcycle engine generator trailer behind them to drive longer. Necessity is the mother of invention. So we moved the range extender into the vehicle.

So that fact whether its 38.2 miles or 40.2 miles when you’re out of electric range, the vehicle seamlessly generates its own electric power and continues to go.

If people drive very gingerly do you think they will be able to increase their AER?
I anticipate there will be contests out there to see how far people could drive before their gas engine goes on, or “How many days can I drive without using a drop of petroleum?” Our analysis tell us it take about 80 cents of electricity to go 40 miles, that’s about 2 cents per mile. At $3.40 gasoline its about 12 cents a mile in the average mid-sized car.

So there will then be no more range at beginning of life than end of life?
No, because if we do that, we will wear it out prematurely. I could use more of the energy capacity of the battery and give you more range, but the trade-off to that is that the battery will wear out sooner. In order to have a life of the vehicle battery I can’t use all of its capacity or it will wear it out soon.

Clearly we are at more than one crossroad in automotive history. This site was started to encourage GM to build the Volt and help propel a future of petroleum-free driving. Since then great strides have been made.

Unfortunately along the way, GM, the Volt, and in fact the whole world has been sideswiped by financial crisis. Due to an unprecedented plummeting of US and global auto sales, the drumbeat of GM financial collapse and bankruptcy for has been steadily beating louder.

But, GM and even their vice-chairman Bob Lutz has said “bankruptcy is not an option.”

The solution GM has come up with has been a proposed merger with Chrysler, who as well has been experiencing record sales drops, but has an $11 billion cash coffer, and an owner named Cerberus that wouldn’t mind an ownership stake in a combined GM-Chrysler when the auto recovery takes place.

However, lacking capital, the expensive merger proposition cannot be financed.

Enter Uncle Sam.

Reports indicate that GM’s CEO Rick Wagoner has been in private meetings in Washington trying to secure a $10 billion rescue package, $3 Billion of which would go to a preferred merged automaker stock purchase. This money would be in addition to the combined company’s share of the $25 billion in low cost government loans that have been approved for use in building more fuel efficient vehicles.  These could potentially be rigged for a more generalized bailout purpose.

The US Treasury Department is now considering Mr. Wagoner’s request, and a decision and even money could come this week. All parties reportedly would like this resolved prior to the election, although ever-outspoken Bob Lutz has said there is no urgent timeline, and Cerberus may need until mid-November.

GM/Chrysler because of significant ownership in GMAC and Chrysler Financial has also be approved to access part of the $700 billion Wall Street bailout since these entities have been exposed to the bad mortgage debt too.

The loss of GM, Chrysler, or both would lead to a potentially catastrophic loss of jobs including 350,000 direct American workers and up to an additional 4.5 million workers in related fields.

In the end we must decide if a tax payer bailout is the right thing to do.  It seems like it will be needed if we want to see the Volt on the roads and in our garages in 2010.

What’s your opinion?

Source (Reuters)

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An issue often debated when it comes to electric cars is what sound should they make. There are indeed legislative efforts underway to ensure EVs make some noise, to protect the visually impaired. Some manufacturers such as Fisker have gone so far as to engineer artificial engine sounds played through external speakers.

We often wonder, exactly what sound will the Chevy Volt make.

I previously had the chance to ask this question of Frank Weber, who is GM’s E-Flex vehicle line executive.

He went on to describe what the sound will actually be:

“The sound of the car should be highly technical, but should have no relation at all to a combustion engine, it should be highly pleasing, almost imperceptible as to what’s (actually) happening. I always compare the sound you would expect from the Volt is like when on spaceship enterprise you hear the doors close, or use the transporter.  This is the type of character you would expect from power electronics, you cannot hear it, but the car would have its own sounds rather than imitating (a combustion engine)”

I asked whether GM was planning any artificial sounds on the Volt, with respect to the visually impaired.

Frank alerted to that and said “This is a different thing, we have something that’s called a pedestrian friendly alert. You would activate it as a driver. It is more pleasing (than a horn) and you would activate it much like you would your high-beam.  This is how you would use it below 25 miles per hour.”

“The other thing that you have to do since the car is quiet, when you start it, today the experience today of turning on a conventional car is an important experience when it provides confidence power feedback, many things are happening psychologically in this moment.  What we definitely will do is considering some of the competitor hybrids today are weak in that regard, is we will provide very clear and intuitive feedback from the car telling you what state it is in.”

“I can’t tell you more about it but it is in the process of being worked out.”

Many here are familiar with a secretive Texas company called EEStor.

The company was founded and is led by Dr. Richard Weir who has patented a specialized ultracapacitor called the EESU. The technology uses a barium titanate powder and is theoretically able to store 52 kwh in a 336 pound package. Also, the technology is less expensive to produce than lithium-ion batteries and has a functionally unlimited lifetime.

If verified and commercialized, the technology has the theoretical potential to leapfrog lithium-ion and rapidly revolutionize the automotive industry.

EEStor has VC funding and partial ownership by ZENN Motors. In a previous interview with ZENN’s CEO Ian Clifford he advised us that production-grade EESUs were to be shipped by the end of 2008 (see post).

I figured this was reasonable time to see if I could find out the status of that, and fortuitously, despite a policy against interviews, received a response from Richard Weir himself.

His comment:

As we have provided certified information on EEStor, Inc. this information certain indicates the excellent progress that we are making.

As we stated in the beginning of 2008, properly funded EEStor, Inc. would anticipate in being in production status late in 2008.

The funding that we did receive was not sufficient to meet the production status late in 2008 but as identified by our last news release, EEStor, Inc. has made excellent progress with that level of funding.

EEStor, Inc. has secured a contract with Light Electric Vehicles, Inc. and this has allowed EEStor, Inc. to expedite or progress toward a production status.

GM will soon be introducing a Saturn VUE with a 2-mode hybrid drivetrain.  This complex strong hybrid drivetrain is presently only available on the Chevy Tahoe, Cadillac Escalade, and Chevy Silverado pickup truck.  More robust and complex than Toyota’s synergy drive system, the two mode system uses 2 electric motors, one for low speed driving and the other for high speed assist.  A 300 V nickel metal hydride battery and regenerative brakes are on board as well as complex controllers which continuously decide between running the combustion engine or one of the two electric motors depending on the driving needs of each moment.

The 2009 VUE marks the first entry of this drivetrain into a smaller form vehicle.

GM invited a few bloggers out to test drive the vehicle at Bear Mountain just outside of New York City, including representatives from Jalopnik and Autoblog.

It turns out the car is fairly powerful.  It uses a V-6 engine which generates 262 hp and 250 ft-lbs of torque, and is capable of performing 0 to 60 in 7.3 seconds and towing 3500 pounds.  It achieves a projected 28 mpg city/31 mpg hwy and a projected sticker price of less than $33,000.

Of note the currently available mild hybrid VUE achieves 25 mpg city/32 mpg hwy for a sticker price of $28,265.  This current mild hybrid VUE uses a 4 cylinder engine to achieve those numbers.  I too wonder as Jalopnik did, why GM wouldn’t mate the 2-mode system with an efficient 4 cylinder engine and perhaps have been the first automaker to market a 40 mpg SUV.

In any event, the car will launch by year end.  A plug-in version is due in 2010, which uses lithium ion battery and is expected to achieve double the mpg of this car.

Source (Autoblog) and (Jalopnik)