GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site

GM is now in an improved financial position compared to earlier in the month.  Primarily because of the first installment of federal loans received Monday, they can continue to operate.

In addition, the federal government just gave $5 billion to GMAC, GM’s financial company, and have allowed them to become a bank holding company. With this money, GMAC has now become much more able to loan money to potential carbuyers.  Lack of credit available to consumers with less than perfect credit has stymied any potential for auto sales recovery.

Immediately after the GMAC infusion, GM began offering 0% interest 60 month loans on select models to carbuyers whose credit scores are greater than 621.

GM vice-president of NA Mark LaNeve noted that December’s sales were actually better than November’s.  And the new available credit for car loans should continue to improve GMs position.

Of particular interest to us here was Mr. LaNeve’s revelation that GM has 10,000 pre-orders for the new Camaro set to be released this Spring (assuming they can get tools from a newly bankrupt supplier). Since the Camaro is a brand new car with pent-up demand, its release could be in some ways analogous to what happens when the Volt arrives. Except the Volt of course will be more regionally limited and limited to dealers willing to obtain the training necessary to service an E-REV.  Not to mention there would be a presumably different customer profile.

LaNeve did not specify exactly what was meant by pre-orders and I asked GM if that was at the dealership or corporate level.

“Mark didn’t specify. He did mention they were orders with deposits,” said GM spokesman John McDonald, “A lot of folks can’t wait for the Camaro!”

Of note, the official Camaro website states people have been only able pre-order the cars at local Chevy dealerships from October 13 2008.

So the question is what will happen with the Volt? Will the demand be even greater? And how can our GM-Volt.com unofficial waiting list of nearly 50,000 get into the mix?  These are some of the challenges that lay ahead for us.

The Chevy Volt has been designed to be able to drive for 40 miles on stored electricity when starting from the point of a fully charged battery. GM has specifically engineered the car around that goal. That range is based on a certain set of assumptions, which includes reasonable driving aggressiveness. Severe aggressive driving with frequent hard accelerations would be expected to reduce the electric-only range.

A question not fully answered is how air conditioning might affect range, considering how highly energy- demanding an application it is.

I recently had the chance to ask Frank Weber who is the Volt vehicle line executive.

Would you say running air conditioning at high capacity will reduce your electric range in the Volt?
It will.

Can you say how much?
It is so dependent on the ambient temperature and what your setting is.

How about maximum A/C on a hot day?
We haven’t discussed that (publicly).

Will it be less than 40 miles?
Absolutely. Physics are physics. Its like the electricity bill at your house. The moment you decide to switch the air conditioning on, it is a conscious choice that you will pay for it.

I recently had the chance to ask Bob Boniface who is the Chevy Volt’s design chief about how he perceived the public’s response to the cars redesign from concept to production form.

How do feel about the public’s response to the unveiling?
It depends which day. When the Transformer photos leaked people went crazy for it, but when the day the ones with us standing in front of it..it was the same exact car, people hated it.

When they saw the actual car, most people liked it better than the show car. I worked on both cars, I ran the concept car and I ran this one. This car compared to the show car is a much more sophisticated piece of product design. When you park the two of them next to each other, once you get over the fact that the other one had huge wheels and the wheelbase of a Chevy Tahoe. People don’t realize it bit that car had a 116 inch wheelbase, and a slanted roof. Once you get past those proportional pieces, you realize that this car, the integration of the volumes and the surface vocabulary is much more sophisticated. I love the concept car too, but I like this one better.

Design is two-fold. Styling is only one component to fit. Design has a problem solving component too. The problem we had to solve here was get 4 full sized adults in here comfortably, safely, in a sporty silhouette, and still provide on the promise of 40 miles of petroleum-free driving. That’s difficult.

Building a good looking concept car is very easy to do. There are no constraints.

Did you intend for the car to have more of a mainstream appeal, since it is intended to be a high volume car?
It had to have mainstream appeal, but it didn’t want to be plain vanilla or generic. Were talking about tens of thousands of these that we want to sell. I don’t think that the other car wouldn’t have done it. And frankly the other car, the layout, the powertrain it was the best we knew at the time. Remember it was a concept, we didn’t know it was going to go anywhere. We took an off the shelf gas motor and an off the shelf traction motor and placed them in tandem, and that’s what shoved the wheels forward. As we got into it, we have a much more efficient powertrain here, a much more efficient shape of the body, and a much more efficient interior package. It has more popular appeal. This is going to fit into more people’s lives.

There are those people who have not seen the car in person and say ”Oh they just built a Prius.” This doesn’t not look like a Prius at all. We’ve many times had them parked together, and its crazy but they don’t look alike at all. Yeah they both have four wheels and a smooth shape, but that where the similarities end.

What people can’t tell from photographs is the stance of the car, the width of the track versus the height of the car. The size of the wheels and tires. These are 18 inch. The base will be a 17 inch with an optional 18 inch. This is the production overall diameter. This roof is about 2 inches lower than a Prius. And our wheel diameters are about 2 inches greater than a Prius and the track is wider. So this car has this hunkered down stance in person that our competitor’s just doesn’t have. This car is athletic.

An electric car future is inevitable. Instead of running on gasoline, of course, those cars will be powered by grid-charged lithium-ion batteries, as shall the Volt.

Currently, Asia is already far ahead of the US in lithium-ion battery production, and if that trend continues will assure future US dependence on Asia for batteries to run our cars.

A consortium of 14 US companies want to prevent that outcome and help jump start US lithium-ion battery production. They are called the “National Alliance for Advanced Transportation Battery Cell Manufacture.”

The founding companies include 3M, ActaCell, All Cell Technologies, Altair Nanotechnologies, Dontech Global, EaglePicher Corporation, EnerSys, Envia Systems, FMC, MicroSun Technologies, Mobius Power, SiLyte, Superior Graphite, and Townsend Advanced Energy.

The group is being advised by the Argonne National Lab and is led by a Chicago lawyer named James Greenberger.  The group hopes to establish one or more advanced battery production and development centers in the US, with a price tag of $1 to $2 billion over the next 5 years.  The group is requesting these funds should come from the US government.

Greenberger said “We think this is the most effective way that government can leverage public money to both establish lithium ion battery manufacture in the United States and revitalize the automotive industry in the long term.”

The group has already begun lobbying congress and working to inform the Obama administration.

“I don’t think it’s good enough that the American consumer is going to have a vehicle that’s electrified or have hybrid capabilities,” said Greenberger. “It doesn’t help us if we have no capability in the U.S.”

Indeed it is well known that Asian battery firms have long been highly subsidized by their respective governments to make them what they are today.

In fact both battery companies GM has worked with on the Volt project, Korea-based LG Chem and Massachusetts-based A123 build all of their cells in Asia.

Source (Wall Street Journal) and (New York Times)

Toyota has recently announced its intentions to unveil an all-electric car at the Detroit Auto Show in January.

The only information Toyota has confirmed is that the car will be a new and original subcompact design and a limited range vehicle meant only for “town” driving, unable to handle longer driving needs.  Reports say it will be priced under $20,000.  There is no confirmation that the car is production intent at this time.

Since the Volt concept was first introduced, Toyota has repeatedly come out against its series-design , arguing that the parallel configuration used in their hybrids is more efficient.

So you might imagine when the Wall Street Journal and Detroit News when covering this new EV also published reports that Toyota was planning a range extended electric vehicle for a 2009 launch it was pretty shocking (no pun intended).

Per the Detroit News, “For more versatility, Toyota is developing a so-called extended range vehicle, an electric car with a small gasoline engine on board to charge its battery when it runs dry to offer longer driving when needed. That vehicle is scheduled to be introduced in late 2009.”

This news prompted me to contact Toyota.  Sticking to their guns  Toyota spokesperson Jana Hartline advised me, “We will be bringing a fleet of plug-in Priuses, powered by li-ion batteries, to commercial fleet customers in late 2009. We’ve never made an announcement about an extended-range vehicle – especially one for 2009. The EREV report was inaccurate.”

And so the parallel versus series debate goes on.

A few weeks before GM unveiled the production version of the Chevy Volt, some spy shots got leaked from the set of the upcoming film, Transformers 2, which is expected to premier this summer.

It is now apparently confirmed that the Volt will indeed be a transformer by the name of Jolt. Some transformer fan websites have even gotten some photos of Jolt in production toy form, shown above.

Per the text, Jolt has been outfitted with lashing “electro whips” and is a “whirlwind of crackling energy.”

I suspect no little ones found one of these under their trees yesterday as the toy is clearly its marked NOT FOR SALE.

If Transformers 2 winds up a hit film it should be co-incident with public release of the final Volt prototypes which may order in the dozens by the summer of 09, making for good publicity.

Source (TF08) and (Seibertron) via (Jalopnik)