GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site

We have heard for some time that GM plans to sell a variant of the Chevy Volt in Europe beginning a year after the car is released in the USA.

The vehicle will likely be nearly identical down to the sheet metal except it will first be sold under the Opel and Vauxhall brands. Eventually the Chevrolet-branded Volt is expected to appear in Europe too.

So one question that arises is what the first European E-Flex vehicle will be called. A concept known as the Opel Flextreme had been shown a year ago mainly to illustrate the shape and the diesel generator, but the design has never been confirmed by GM as production intent.

It turns out that GM UK applied for a trademark for “Vauxhall Electra” on June 4th 2008.

Of course, Buick had used the same name for its famous gas powered full sized premium vehicle that was built from 1959 to 1990.

That is a good use of the name. Will we one day see the emergence of an E-Flex Buick Electra too? Time will tell.

Source (Greenmotor.co.uk) via (Autobloggreen)

The financial crisis is fast upon us, and the US automakers appear to be caught right in the crosshairs.

GM’s turnaround effort is fast being scuttled by economic conditions that Chrysler’s CEO Bob Nardelli called “truly unimaginable.”  As GM is rapidly burning through its cash reserves, auto sales are plummeting globally, possibly to levels GM couldn’t survive in its current state.

The company has slashed production, workforce, stock dividend, employee 401K matching, GM Style event, and big ticket advertising campaigns.  They are trying to sell their headquarters, the Hummer brand, and a French assembly plant.  They are even making sure they are keeping their offices cooler and turning off the lights at night.

There is some flicker of hope that by merging with Chrysler, GM could get access to Chrysler’s $11 billion cash, but since credit to fund the merger may be unobtainable, there is now talk about possible government intervention.

Today, reports have even indicated that GM might have to delay its exciting highly efficient Chevy Cruze from a planned 2010 to 2011 launch to further save cash.

Also a poll of 400 Michigan residents showed that only half believe the Volt cold be produced within 2 years as intended.

Since the Cruze and Volt sit atop the same compact delta platform, and the Volt requires a lot more specialized and expensive parts and tooling, is delay or even death of our beloved car possible?

I asked GM spokesperson Nancy Libby whether the Volt would be delayed.  She replied “the Volt is on schedule and targeted for a November, 2010 release,”  and GM Volt spokesperson Rob Peterson said “the Volt is the top priority program within General Motors.”

As for whether the Cruze might be delayed Libby said “There are many media reports, speculation, rumors all the time about GM and its products and for those, I have no comment.”

Source (Businessweek) and (Detroit News)

We have just heard from Reuters that anonymous sources confirmed that LG Chem is supplying the Gen 1 Volt pack.

I have been speculating for a  while that LG Chem would be the winner, I had also recently interviewed CPI’s CEO Prahbakar Patil (see post).  Patil had indicated that the GM deal would be for more than 50,000 packs, and that he would build a facility piggybacking the Volt Hamtramck assembly plant.  He also noted that LG Chem was already making 40 million lithium-ion cells per month so adding the Volt demand wouldn’t require any additional factory build-out, just a new cell line within it.

Below is an interview with Bob Kruse, GMs director of Hybrids and EVs, that I had about the battery contract, that took place prior to yesterday’s report.

If you’ve internally chosen the Volts battery supplier, why delay the announcement?
What we have publicly announced Is that we are working with the two suppliers as a result of our development contract, one is LG Chem/CPI and the other is A123/Conti. We have not signed a production contract with anybody at this point and time. Its our anticipation that we will finalize that contract and be able to publicly announce who that battery supplier is by the end of the year. That will be the supplier for our initial Volt application. We will continue to work with other battery suppliers, A123 included, to look for the next step in battery technology lithium-ion or otherwise for future generations of the Volt.

Right now we have a pretty good idea of the cell chemistry and the cell that is most suitable for our generation one vehicle, but part of the long-term success of the Volt will depend on the economic equation that goes along with it. Part of that requires my organization to drive through generational iteration to drive costs down that cost curve. As volume goes up as efficiency goes up as experience goes up we’re going to drive down the cost curve. Part of what were anticipating is that there’s a lot of investment going on in electric energy storage. We’re positioning ourselves to be able to adapt our vehicles to the right technology at the right time. If I pick LG I’m going to maintain an advanced development contract with A123 and if I pick A123 Im going to maintain an advanced development relationship with LG. I’m working with many many companies evaluating their cell chemistries.

So you will go with one supplier for gen-one?
Yes

But you wont rule out the other supplier for gen-two?
Or multiple suppliers.

How many charge discharge cycles have your oldest Volt packs undergone at this point?
I would tell you. When I take folks through the battery lab, I have early Volt T-packs that have gone through charge/discharge cycles. We can take those energy profiles and covert it to miles. So I have some 30 something thousand miles on battery packs. You have a limited amount of time and you’re going through lots of iterations so at some point in tome you’ve understood the trends and the projections. Some of it is developmental some of it is long term life evaluation. Some of the long term life evaluation I can do at the cell level I don’t have to do at the pack and module level.

I would think if the packs are simulating 60 mph and running 24/7 you should be able to get up to 100,000 miles very quickly, in a few months?
Yeah, but there’s a lot of iteration in the hardware at this particular point in our development cycle. Typically right now I’m focused on bringing packs. We have now announced we are into our mule phase. The Malivolts were our pre-mules. I have a very rigorous process by how I take a battery pack from a supplier and put it in a vehicle and turn it on.

First it comes to my lab and I hook it up to a cycler, I cycle it and I make sure it is operating within certain parameters. Then I send it over to my experimental build shop and its put into a vehicle and everything is wrung out before they hook up the power and turn it on. Then in my build facility I don’t actually turn it on. I send it out to my Milford proving grounds and I wring the vehicle and the battery pack out separately while they’re in the vehicle. Then I bring them together and I start to generate torque electrically. Because all the torque in the Volt is done electrically. Then I bring the internal combustion engine on and I get that all working. There are layers of security that are built into the control system. Then I get to a level of torque security, where Im confident the commanded torque and the actual torque are operating how I want. And only after Ive gotten to that point do I allow my developmental engineers to actually being driving the vehicle on General Motors roads in side the proving grounds.

Thats a a high level summary of the steps. Not long, but it’s a detailed purposeful process to ensure that by going through those steps, there is a growing sense of accomplishment withing general Motors and an optimism towards that November 2010 date and that’s all generated by not hope and prayers by experience and knowledge with the hardware and the software.

The current mules are on the compact global delta platform. What shell do they have?
I don’t believe we’ve said what the donor vehicle is. Its Astra-like. The mule will look much more Volt-like than the current mules. I expect well have some type of media event with the mules. I have certain milestones and deliverable to meet before I’ll let the media drive them. At this point in time we are right on track to where we thought we’d be at this time.

Note: GM vice chair Bob Lutz later confirmed that the current Volt mules are in Chevy Cruze shells.  Some versions of it with an approximate Volt design and are supposed to appear before the end of this year.  In total there will be 50 running mules by the end of 2008.

Reuters has just reported inside sources have confirmed that GM has chosen LG Chem along with Troy, Michigan-based Compact Power Inc. to supply the lithium-ion battery packs for the first generation Chevy Volt.

The contract will be announced in November and the terms are still being worked out.

GM and Compact Power are apparently working out the details of the commercial agreement and how to split warranty costs for the batteries.

GM hasn’t confirmed these reports but an LG Chem spokesman in Korea stated “we were informed that the results are due in November, but we didn’t get any official answer from GM yet. We hope for and expect a good result.”

As we have heard before in a subtle way from GM vice-chairman Bob Lutz, GM was only using one supplier’s packs in the mules. Concurrently, we had heard from Compact Power’s CEO that his batteries were being used in the mules. Sources have now confirmed this is the case and that the mules packs are performing flawlessly.

A123/Continental could still potentially supply Volt packs in the next generation.

Source (Reuters)

I had the chance to speak to GM VP of global program management, Jon Lauckner about how the Volt will be rolled out, and what GM’s plans might be for pre-production test fleet rollout.

Will you launch the Volt globally all at the same time when production begins or will you start US first and then gradually move it worldwide?

It hasn’t been finally decided. Lets put it this way, we will have a rollout plan. We haven’t decided exactly what we’re going to do because frankly the work is development. We are going to start in North America and then depending on what makes sense we’ll start exporting the vehicle to other areas around the world.

We think we have a line of sight on all the major markets of the world with an opportunity to make the Volt a reality in those markets as well.

When it comes to rolling out the car in the U.S., do you anticipate starting out with a small fleet and gaining information about how the car is functioning, like you are doing with the fuel cell Equinox, or are you just going to release it?
First of all as part of the development program we typically have small numbers of vehicles that we put out in the hands of people that drive them on a daily basis. That’s a part of our development program that occurs prior to production. We call that a “captured test fleet”. Captured meaning we know where the cars are and we know who the drivers are, and test fleet because the cars aren’t in production yet. We use the versions that we build at the tail end of the development cycle to really put them out there on a daily basis to get better understanding of whats going on with the vehicles.

We will be doing that with the Volt as well. We will have the typical development program that will result in a captured test fleet prior to starting production. And then, once we reach production, then we will start ramping up.

Again we haven’t decide exactly how we are going to do it, but I would anticipate that we will do it in a fairly measured way. And this is not unusual for us, we do this in Europe as well. In Europe its not unusual for Opel/Vauxhall to start production in one market and then as they build volume in that market, they add additional ones down the line.

The point is it makes no sense if you’re ramping up production to have people frustrated because the car is in theory able to be sold in every area but they cant get their hands on one because the amount or volume is relatively small.

So I am sure that we’ll use a cadenced approach but typically we ramp up our plants reasonably quickly and beyond that its too early to talk about volumes and specific geographic areas.

Is the captured test fleet something that people would buy or will it be a leasing scenario?

Typically we put these in the hands of GM folks, when we do it prior to the start of production; employees, people in the technical community, people who work in the plants, manufacturing, etc.

The idea is to put those with a small group of peole where you can get rapid feedback on what’s going on. Now thats the way we’ve done it for our regular production programs. What we do for the Volt could be a variation of that. There’s nothing to say that we couldn’t do a program much like Project Driveway.

BMW’s Mini division has announced that they would be launching a test fleet of 500 electric Mini (Mini E) cars in 2009. The cars will be produced in 2008, and vehicles will be available for lease to “select” private and corporate customers in NY, NJ, and CA. Apparently the one-year lease will be about $850 per month, and could be renewable.

Mini says:

Putting some 500 cars on the road under real daily traffic conditions will make it possible to gain widely applicable hands-on experience. Evaluating these findings will generate valuable know-how, which will be factored into the engineering of mass-produced vehicles.

The vehicle winds up as a 2-seater because the rear seat has been removed to make room for the lithium-ion battery pack.

The car uses a 150 kw motor that will allow it to accelerate from 0 to 60 in 8.5 seconds with a top speed of 95 mph.

The battery pack will have 35 kwh of maximum capacity, a range of 150 miles, and be capable of charging in 2-1/2 hours using a special charger that must be installed in the driver’s home. I checked in with BMW who would not say who the battery is being made by, but it will contain a massive 5,088 cells grouped into 48 modules.

The car will be officially unveiled at the LA Auto Show on November 19th, at which time more information will be made available, including media test drives.

If you live in NY, NJ, or CA, and are so-inspired you can sign up to test drive one here.