GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site

The complex saga of GM’s 2-mode plug-in SUV continues to take new turns.

The program was initially announced in 2006, six months before the Volt, and was supposed to beat it to market as a plug-in Saturn VUE. When Saturn was sold off to Penske, another host vehicle was needed.

GM then announced it would be reborn in the body of an upcoming unnamed compact Buick crossover and a teaser image was revealed to the public.

At the GM 230 event, members of the media and public, including myself were given a preview of full scale models of many of GM’s upcoming vehicles. Included among them was this Buick compact crossover.

I didn’t mind the look of it. It seemed a conservative if somewhat uninspired rebadging of the VUE with the addition of the classic Buick waterfall grille.

Apparently GM’s plan for the event was to take our actual feedback to make some decisions.

According to GM vice chairman Tom Stephens, “The Buick crossover we showed received consistent feedback from large parts of all the audiences that it didn’t fit the premium characteristics that customers have come to expect from Buick.”

As a result of this, he went on to write:

Last Friday, reaction to the Buick crossover was discussed at the meeting of our Executive Committee, the newly formed group that steers product decisions, and it was decided that if it didn’t belong, it didn’t belong. Buick crossover canceled. Fritz Henderson, Bob Lutz and I and the rest of the committee decided to take swift action to prevent a potential underperformer from reaching the marketplace. And we decided that the important plug-in hybrid technology would be applied to another vehicle, at no delay, that we’ll discuss in the very near future.

So there you have it, the plug-in Buick has died before it was born, and once again we are left wondering which SUV will get the plug.

The basic engineering architecture is a 3.6 L DI engine, two 55 KW electric motors, and an 8kwh lithium pack which orchestrated together via complex transmission and software controls should allow double the fuel economy of a standard gas version compact SUV.

The car is still slated for production in late 2011, regardless of its host.

Source (GM)

Since the Volt is at its core and electric car, people often ask whether it will be able to run without any gas in its tank.

According to Volt vehicle line engineer Tony Posawatz, “the VOLT can run without gas since it is an EV.”

Here’s how he explains it:

We will provide many tips to customers on how they can get the most out of their VOLT as we continue the education process, work our demo programs and train our dealers and customers at the point of sale. For example, we will recommend that they keep some gas in their tank to avoid range anxiety and if they are always driving in EV, we want to make sure that once every month or so, we can perform a maintenance run on the engine (for keeping the engine parts lubricated and the gas from getting stale).

This will be done automatically for the customer because of the intelligence built right into the car. We don’t want to have the customers worry about putting additive in their gas tanks like snowmobilers and boaters have to. If the customer runs primarily in EV mode, we would also suggest that they not keep their tank full. That’s a lot of extra mass to carry around. Prior to a long trip is the right time to gas up at one of our countries 170,000 gas stations.

As to whether the car can run without its battery he says “the VOLT can run with an injured battery but not without a battery in the car.”

Finally Posawatz declares “the VOLT is a very smart car, it will be the smartest device on the smart grid of the future.”

Now that GM has announced the Volt will average 230 MPG in city driving, we are interested in knowing more.

When the Volt concept was first unveiled in January 2007, GM said the car would get 50 MPG average when it was in generator mode based on computer simulations.

We understand the car will get up to 40 miles of pure electric driving from a fully charged battery, and that the average city driver will average 230 miles of cumulative driving on a gallon of gas, but what will the average fuel economy be in charge sustaining mode?

When the battery reaches a roughly 30% state-of-charge, its 1.4 L 4-cylinder engine will fire up, spin a generator, and produce electricity.

That electricity will purely be used to power the 110 kw electric motor, though the battery will still have that 30% hearty buffer and contribute to driving power demands as necessary. Furthermore, any braking, coasting or downhill opportunities will allow the recapture kinetic energy into the battery.

Clearly this series-hybrid design differs considerably then the typical power-split architecture of today’s modern hybrids like the Prius. It is of great interest to see how much fuel economy it can attain.

I recently asked Volt line engineer Tony Posawatz whether the production Volt would still get 50 MPG like the concept was promoted to. He said “that was just the concept,” though he didn’t specify what the real car will get.

Frank Weber when asked the same question said the story would eventually be told, but not right now.

So with this uncertainly why not a little speculation? What will the series hybrid mode fuel economy be? And how important is that number to us?

After the Chevy Volt has been driven 40 miles on electricity, the gas-powered generator turns on supplying electricity along with a buffer in the battery that the electric motor needs for continued operation.  Though GM has been developing this function for a while they have not shown it publicly.

I had a chance to discuss this extremely important and unique mode of Volt operation with Volt executive Tony Posawatz who explains what functions GM still has to work on.

When the generator goes on will it come on gradually?
We’re still playing with it. The initial transition we like very much, it is almost imperceptible. We want to tune it and exercise it more for production readiness, but we have an algorithm of software that feathers it in so that its almost imperceptible.

To many people it is imperceptible, to those that are a little bit more tuned in…Frank (Weber) says its not quite perfect, he wants it so that no one can hear it.

That transition isn’t handled in most hybrids that well, particularly when you stop at a light an the engine shuts off and you get that shudder. We have this benchmark we set, that we’re going to blow them away.

By the way, our motor is so much bigger than theirs, the power output of the electric motor, that effectively is the starter. We’re in the point of tuning it and it’s a very very complicated tuning exercise if you want to make it perfect.

It’s a balance equation. Here lies the challenge. You will get some feedback from the car about its environment, or the road load. You’re demanding so much power from the car, and you will get some feedback. That’s one input that you have to be able to respond to to deliver the right amount of power. The other aspect that we have to play with is this area of OK when I respond to it, the engine generator will run in different modes or RPMs. How do I transition from mode to mode, a timing issue, do I smooth it, do I try to react immediately to that response? If I act immediately to that response how will customers receive that? such as a wild of swing of RPMs?

There’s the responding to the car’s demands based on the loads number one, then there’s the affect on the customer, we want that to be really pleasant. The transition to charge sustaining, we’ve got that down, it’s the operating in the very different modes we’ve got to figure out. The next leg is making sure the engine is running the most efficiently that it can.

Generators are typically run at a sweet spot that’s very efficient. We could do that. The question is, does the amount of output of power that results from that manage or balance with what the car needs?…hmm how do you do that? That’s another reason we have this battery buffer reserve.

How often do you turn the engine off and on is another question. These are the factors that have to be balanced.

People ask why can’t you show it to me? Because we want it just right.

This requires a lot software. The other interesting challenge is the regulatory issues. Theoretically you could run the engine enough to build a surplus of energy. The regulatory guys are not going to let us do that, it’s a five legged stool.

Is the EPA sitting on a committee while you engineer the car?
This is more CARB than it is EPA. EPA is interested from the perspective that they need to understand how to label it. CARB really doesn’t want you to burn fuel if you don’t have to.

The message on charge sustaining mode is we’ve got a good beat on it, its the four or five things that have to be balanced together and the team needs time to work.

Will the engine rev higher when you step on the accelerator?
Yes, but the question is, if I have a little battery reserve at that time, do I turn the engine on right away to follow that or is it a smoothing function?

Also lets say you just went up a monster hill and the engine feathered up a little to support you and you get to the top of the hill and hit a light. Should the engine keep on running to allow you to recover or do you turn off the engine because the customer expects it too because they’re stopped at a light?

Technically are these difficult challenges? No. Its hard development work balancing the calibration of a lot of software.

GM has invested over $1 billion and significant human capital developing the Voltec propulsion system that will power the Chevy Volt.

When the company first announced it had changed the name from E-Flex to Voltec, and that it would be doing its own pack assembly in house, it came to me that selling Voltec to other automakers might be a good business plan.

At the time I actually asked Bob Lutz about it and he said that GM actually hadn’t thought about it at the time.

It seems they are thinking about it now, at least a little.

According to GM CEO Fritz Henderson he, “wouldn’t rule that out if the opportunity were to arise.”

Though the opportunity apparently isn’t there yet, and he also doesn’t expect it to be too promising in the future.

“I wouldn’t necessarily see that as a large revenue stream,” he said.

GM has recently opened a 160,000 square foot battery pack assembly plant in Brownstown Michigan where the T-packs both for the Chevy Volt and its European sister the Opel/Vauxhall Ampera will be made.

Of course before GM sells Voltec to any wanting automakers, they will have to “actually get (Voltec) into production ourselves,” said Henderson.

It is widely known that GM themselves will not be making profit on the first or maybe even seconds generation Volts.

“The cost of Generation I technology is relatively high, so we need to get it down to Generation II,” said Henderson. “That’s our focus today. I don’t rule out anything in that regard (selling electric-vehicle technology).”

Source (Wards Auto, subscription)

Fair Warning: Perhaps you have already spotted the ‘subtle’ tone change in the title? Yes, Lyle has not penned this post. Which can mean only one thing, that I have hacked his administrator password and locked him out. Actually, Lyle has asked me to be a regular guest writer, and who says no to Lyle? Not I. Perhaps he wants a day off? (deservedly so) Or maybe he doesn’t have enough things to worry about it life and wants to add just one more thing…my reckless abandon. Regardless, it is my privilege to do it, as it is to come here to read every post/comment on what I feel is the finest online community of electric car enthusiasts the internet has to offer.

This week brought a new media frenzy to market by GM, with the center of it being the corporately induced viral media campaign “What is 230?” and we saw the spawn of another ‘social media’ website from GM. (How many is that now?)

At the heart of this campaign is a number so large (230MPG) it seems to render itself almost inert, that is except for this phrase tucked inside the press release, “GM expects the Volt to consume as little as 25 kilowatt hours per 100 miles in city driving”

As many people know, I am not one to gloss over the details, or avoid doing math, so I asked John Lauckner how this did not translate to a 32 mile AER in the city (at best), to which he answered:

“Hey statik. We are still confident that we will deliver 40 miles of autonomous electric range (AER) on both the official EPA city and highway tests, so no change there. The EPA draft methodology reduces the laboratory result take into account a number of factors such as the use of air-conditioning, more passengers in the vehicle, cargo, etc. So, that’s the difference between the “up to 40 miles” that we stated for some time…”

To my ears, I heard this:

“Hey statik. We believe the typical driver is a orphaned 18 year old girl, with no friends, personal belongings, and that is allergic to the both the A/C and heater, and never uses the radio…and the Volt will never, ever carry the average family of 3.14 people, a set of golf clubs, or all the other random useless junk that families tend to pile up in the trunk.”

Ok, most people don’t hear like I do. But for most people, deep down, we really don’t believe…well, lets say we have a healthy skepticism, and these types of undercurrents give us pause. 230 is just too big a number. (Nissan wasted little time ‘tweeting’ out their own dreamy, tri-centurion number in response, 367).

To the public, we see the asterisk beside 230 as surely as we see the asterisk beside Barry Bond’s 73 homeruns. For the most part this has been the media response in general to the campaign, ‘catchy number…but c’mon’

That skepticism is akin to the statement, “We expect more than 80 percent of Volt owners will never use or burn gasoline because they commute 40 miles a day or less,” and references/links to that study again, (‘How many miles one-way do you travel from home to work’ http://tinyurl.com/U-S-DOTStudy), which sounds great, until you realize that people working 5 days in a row don’t go straight to and from work. If you even add on 10 miles of need ranged to that lowered 32 mile max expectation, for ‘picking up a loaf of bread, going out for lunch/supper, visiting friends, or just being a poser and driving around in their electric car where people them in it,’ that number slips to 50% of people will burn gas each workday. It is all perspective and hyperbole.

Therefore, my suggestion to GM is that it is time. Your Easter 2008 is now. It is time for those first public test drives, you know what I’m talking about…the real ones. The ones that make Frank Weber get so nervous he only speaks in German. The kind where you hand the keys over, and you let them drive off by themselves.

While 230 MPG may well indeed be the average mileage overall, it certainly will not be the norm for most Volt drivers. Also, most Volt drives themselves will be in a ‘untypical’ configuration ie) number people, cargo onboard, driving styles, situations, etc. We want to draw our own conclusions on our own AER, extended range MPG…and overall gallons we will burn in a typical week/year.

On July 20, 1969 we all didn’t step on the moon, but we all got to see and live it first hand, we didn’t just hear the president say, “yupe, we did it…it all went as planned.” Likewise, it is time for your moonshot to become more than just PR. The competition is at the doorstep now, and pretty soon orders are going to be taken. It’s time to start handing out keys and say, “Have her back by sundown. We think you’ll be pleased.”

/we are ready. Are you?