GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site

On October 22nd, GM announced a contest to allow members of the public to participate in choosing the name of the Chevy Volt’s signature silver with emerald hue paint color.

The decision process was in the form of a contest.

GM claims nearly 13,000 creative entries were received from which they were able to whittle down three finalists.

They are:
1) “EV-ergreen by Devin McQuarrie, 30, of San Jose, CA
2) “Viridian Joule” by by Dave Thomas, 40, of Sanford, FL
3) “environMINT” entered by Matthew Valbuena, 30, of Rancho Santa Margarita, CA

These finalists were decided “based equally on originality, creativity and the ability to capture the innovation and spirit of the Volt.”

Staring today you can vote for your favorite name below. The winner will be chosen by this public vote and will be flown all-expenses-paid to the LA Auto Show next month where it will be announced on December 1.

Not only will the winner go down in history as having named the Volts’ paint color but will also get an exclusive test drive of a pre-production integration Chevy Volt including in the now-ready-for-primetime charge-sustaining mode operation.

VOTE HERE

Editor’s Note:  There are reports on the Internet about an Ohio Chevy Dealer taking deposits on eBay.  The dealer claims to have Chevy Volt allocation.  This is denied by GM who report no dealer allocations have been given yet.

BMW started the MINI E electric car field test program from scratch in Spring of 2008 as a tool for their Project i plan to develop vehilces for sustainable mega cities of the future..

The trial has been ongoing since the first car was delivered in May of this year. Richard Steinberg of BMW group presented the company’s current progress and learnings from the program. You can view the whole sideshow here.

It was noted that 1800 applications were received and from that group 250 cars were placed in Southern California, and 200 in New York and New Jersey.

Steinberg noted that although public infrastructure is needed to limit range anxiety, this program focused only on consumer home charging infrastructure.  He said this program “placed us in
the infrastructure business.”

It was found that the wallbox installation process was more tedious and time consuming than expected leading to customer frustrations, and that post-installation servicing is a murky area as to who performs it and who pays for it. In the future he reported BMW will focus more on public infrastructure development and pay attention to vehicle to grid and load leveling solutions.

He reported that the purpose of the field trial was to evaluate BEVs in real world conditions and to determine the effect of temperature, weather, and driving behavior on range, reliability and charging status. Also what consumers perceptions of living with an EV was assessed.

It was noted that the MINI E driver community was “borderline evangelical” though there was an “extremely critical vocal minority.” Also noted was that many feedback opportunities evolved including a facebook group and over 30 driver blogs.

In conclusion, the following key leanings have been determined:
1) EV drivers are passionate and look forward to next generation vehicles
2) There is significant need to adopt a common charging port architecture (J1772) and to encourage and develop public charging infrastructure
3) Range anxiety remains a hurdle to be cleared. Options to do so, they say include either developing PHEVs (like the Volt) or expanding public charging infrastructure

Source (BMW) via (Wired)

It is fitting that on the day the Nissan LEAF began its US viewing tour I happened to forget to plug in my MINI E electric car the night before, and only had a few miles of range left on it. Luckily, I have a third backup gas car for just these reasons.

The Nissan LEAF offers up to 100 miles of electric range and will go on sale in selected US markets late next year.  According to Nissan executives the car will priced so that monthly cost of operation is equivalent to that of a fully-loaded Civic (including fuel). Nissan still hasn’t decided whether to lease the battery separately or sell it with the car.

The LEAF began a four day display in Los Angeles marking its first stop on a national viewing tour that ends in New York City next February.  It is a non-functioning car.  A Nissan Versa outfitted with the LEAF powertrain will be around for VIP and media test drives, public drives will not be permitted.

On the same day the LEAF tour began GM decided to put out a viral video.

This short and simple cartoon attempts to illustrate why EVs are cool, EREV’s are cooler and can be seen below.

If you forget to plug in your EV and it’s the only car you got, not cool.  If you have a Volt it won’t matter.

Of course, forgetting to plug one’s car in may not happen very often but needing to drive continuously beyond its electric range will.

May the best car win.

GM is set to launch a brand new version of its classic Buick Regal sedan.

Discontinued in 2004, the new Regal is a rebadged and slightly redesigned version of the Opel Insignia which is already popular in Europe.  The new Regal which will begin selling next year in the US as a 2011 model will initially be built in Germany for its first 12 to 15 months of production.  It will begin production in North America in 2011.

According to a report in Wards’ Auto, GM will begin production of a mild-hybrid version of the Regal later that year.  This would then be the first vehicle GM makes using its second-generation belt/alternator/starter or BAS+ hybrid system.  The system is reported to achieve 20% increase in fuel economy over standard gas versions of the vehicle.

The new BAS+ system has a 120 V lithium ion pack made by Hitachi and, takes up 24% less space, has 40% less mass, and has 33% more power than the current system, such as the one found in the Malibu Hybrid. That car was discontinued due to weak demand. The new system has slow speed EV only operation, electric assist during acceleration and engine off at stops.

The Regal will launch initially with a 2.4 L 4-cylinder direct injection engine. A 2.0 L turbo model, expected achieve 30 mpg on the highway will follow next year.

Jim Frederico, the Regal’s vehicle line director told Ward’s that the car has the appropriate dimensions to house not only the BAS+ system but also the upcoming 2-mode plugin drivetrain as well.

That drivetrain was initially intended for the Saturn VUE. After Saturn was terminated, GM next said it would appear in a similar-sized small Buick SUV. After those plans were also scrapped from negative public feedback GM hasn’t announced where the drivetrain would debut.

Placing it in this mid-sized sedan may be just the right solution.  What do you think?

Source (Wards Auto, subscription required)

I had the following discussion with Alex Cattelan who is the Chevy Volt’s chief powertrain engineer. She has a very deep understanding of how the car operates and recently drove in a fleet of integration Volt prototypes through rugged mountains of Knoxville Tennessee.

Do you feel the charge-sustaining (CS mode) experience is now pretty solid and are you pleased with it?
We are definitely pleased with the level of progression we’re at. We are right on track to where we need to be in terms of the next stages of development we need to do to meet our target. Is it commercial right now, no, but that’s why were taking the time to get it to be commercial. Does it have the capability of being commercial, absolutely. We’ve proven that to ourselves.

We just took our leadership through a test drive in Warren (Michigan) and comments are that they cant tell when the engine is coming on or off. Those are the kind of things we like to hear.

You drove the IVs around the mountains of Tennessee. What about those big hills and the generator. It sounded like it drove very briskly powerfully and effortless is that true?
Yes, absolutely. Some of our control capability to utilize the battery, the engine, and the motors and to be able to optimize for high load and low load situations we’ve been working on developing that stuff for the last year and half an I couldn’t tell you how happy I was when I was in Knoxville because that’s when I had the opportunity to see it all come together. A lot of those bits of software all came together on one trip and it was a joy to drive.

So you took it up some steep hills and mountains?
Absolutely. We were in the Cherokee area taking it up through those hills and a lot of situations following it. It was a very touristy area. Following the speed of traffic, absolutely no problem, and where I had opportunities I certainly like to push the limits of the vehicle, and we did on those mountains, and I could not get it to degrade in performance.

That’s in charge sustaining mode?
Certainly in charge depleting, we have no issues because we have battery power, I’ve got it all at my fingertips. Now in charge sustaining we know that the engine power is slightly less than the peak vehicle power but we have controls ways to manage that and to utilize the engine in conjunction with the battery to get a little bit of extra power when we need it, and replenish it back when we don’t.

I know the battery runs down to roughly the 30% level before for the engine comes on. Is that 30% itself the whole potential buffer band?
We certainly don’t utilize the full 30% but there’s a portion of that that we utilize as a buffer.

You wouldn’t go to zero ever?
No. When the engine cannot meet peak load requirements we’ll suck a little bit out of that buffer and as soon as we have a situation when we can, we’ll put it right back in. All the controls that we work do that to optimize not only the driveability but the efficiency as we’re doing it, NVH (noise vibration harshness) as we’re doing it, the total driving experience as well as to protect the battery from a life experience. This is what allows us to give really good warranty life on our batteries as we’re doing I all in a controlled fashion.

NEW: Discuss this story in the GM-Volt Forum

As the story goes, GM planned to leapfrog the Prius with what was called the ‘iCar’ in 2006.  Starting with Bob Lutz’ idea of a pure electric car, GM VP Jon Lauckner recommended adding a gas generator to eliminate issues of range limits and the Chevy Volt concept was born.  The resulting tremendous public interest caught GM by surprise and they had no choice but to produce the car.

Moving to production brought about many technical and engineering challenges, and few have followed in GM’s footsteps with most companies opting instead to go with simpler pure EVs.

Tony Posawatz is the Volt’s vehilce line engineer who has been involved in the Volt program since day one. Here’s how he answered the following question.

Does GM plan to offer a portfolio of electrical vehicles or just Voltec and its derivatives?

GM’s general position is going forward we will have a broad choice for customers. We see the option of a Voltec system continuing forward. How many alternatives off of that is interesting. Theoretically a pure battery electric vehicle would still be a Voltec. That’s one of the beauties of why we like the option we’ve taken, because it has that level of optionality.

This issue is now, for example, if you start with a pure EV there no place to put a range extender, or if you start with a hybrid that has at its roots an internal combustion engine, you take the engine out and it does nothing.

We will still do hybrid systems, further enhance them, get costs out because there are certain applications they work better in until we get further development on pure electric systems.

Many people ask us why there aren’t others following us in droves in developing EREVs. It’s a very hard configuration to make work. Once an engine is burning it changes the game, and we have non-intentionally thrown some agencies for a loop, like EPA and CARB, because their existing rules don’t apply. A lot of regulatory compliance stuff goes along with it not to mention the pleasability, the noise, the efficiency of the operation and the maintenance of it.

Therein lies the challenges associated with it and why maybe some companies never made the leap, because its hard.

In an absolute technical sense its hard because of its overall complexity, and the balance and interface and integration of all these things together add to the challenge.

It doesn’t mean the Volt can’t be a second or third car, but (if it is) you can never get to the volume we want, the building of interest to drive the cost down to get suppliers engaged and involved, and to get competitive bids for our components. This is the big picture. Everyone is so focused on the price of the car, but remember the price of the first cell phone.

We are in this for the long haul. There was a lot of deep thought in how to play the endgame here. Even there’s still debates such as shouldn’t it have been a Cadillac. Maybe in the near term it would have been great, because maybe we could have lost less money or even made money because we could have charged more.

/Special thanks to our Veterans today.