GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site

GM has talked tirelessly abut how aerodynamic the Volt is, how its shape was born from the wind tunnel, and how important aerodynamics are for the car to achieve its 40 miles all electric range.

Yet for all that talk, the company has never released any official figure for the vehicle’s coefficient of drag (CD). This is the numerical measurement that indicates how slippery a car is, and unlikely to be slowed by wind resistance.

Bob Boniface who is chief of Voltec design finally provided us the details that were obtained when GM measured the Volt and its competitors on its own wind tunnel.

“We had the comparably-equipped 2010 Prius with 17 inch wheels, and the new Insight,” he said.

“The Prius came in at .30,” said Boniface. “That was a number that was verified in our tunnel, in Chrysler’s tunnel, and in Ford’s tunnel.”

“The Insight was 0.32, and the Volt was .28,” he said.

“I’d like to test the Volt in the same tunnel where Toyota got their 0.25 value,” he teased.

He expanded:

This number is for the Volt IVer which is representative of our production car. We were resistant to give out the number earlier for two reasons. One we wanted to wait until we tested our IVer. Also, we didn’t want to report it out until we saw where the competition was because we know that those numbers depend on how the tunnels are calibrated.

If I quoted 0.28 a year ago people would have said ‘aha’ the competition got 0.25. But its really all relative to what tunnel it was tested on.

The base Prius with the smaller wheels may come in lower, but we don’t offer 15 inch wheels.

EV-1
According to GM’s aerodynamics engineer Nina Tortosa, the old method of testing yielded .19, but with current testing methodology it would equate to .21.

“But that vehicle didn’t have a rollover and frontal impact structure of today’s standards,” said Boniface. “You could not sell that car today. That’s not to say we wont get to .21 again with another car. We always try to get drag down but we have to protect our styling flexibility.”

Corvette
The current base Corvette is the most slippery and its a 0.29, slightly less aerodynamic than the Volt.

GM vice president Bob Lutz gave the keynote speech at the LA Auto Show in place of the suddenly ousted former CEO Fritz Henderson.

His speech focused significantly on the electrification transformation underway at GM.

“GM is moving from a company that, for 100 years, has been based on mechanically driven automobiles, to one that will eventually be focused on electrically driven vehicles,” he said. “This is a big deal.”

Lutz summarized the Volt’s three-year development voyage and highlighted the fact that GM has decided to make pack assembly a core competency.

Even though GM will be sourcing the generation one Volt’s electric motor from a supplier, this won’t be the case in the future.

“We also determined that the design, development, and production of electric motors and power electronics need to be core competencies for GM – and we’re moving in those directions, too,” said Lutz.

Lutz spelled out GM’s plan to roll out the Volt gradually in limited selected US markets beginning with some in California. He admitted demand is likely to far outstrip supply initially.

He also publicly verified for the first time ever the actual production numbers GM is planning.

“In the first few months we will be producing 4000 to 5000 Volts,” he said. ” In the first full year we will make eight to ten thousand.”

“We are going to ramp it up slowly becasue it is all uncharted terrain for all of us once we start turning out (battery) packs in very high rates,” he said.

He also said full production capacity will be 50,000 to 60,000 Volts per year.

Lutz predicts the total plug-in car market including BEVs, PHEVs, and EREVS will be about 250,000 to 300,000 per year in five years. “They will mostly be our products,” he joked.

Not confirming the Converj is production-tracked, he said there are “many products” in the pipeline.

GM has just announced what we have all assumed, California will be the first US state to get the Chevy Volt late next year. The automaker has selected and will be selecting other markets as well. GM vice chairman Bob Lutz said in his keynote address, “some other lead markets will be announced in the next few weeks.”

GM is also parterning with three California utilities and EPRI to do a real world Volt demonstration project. They will be using a $30 million DOE grant for the study which will involve providing 100 Chevy Volts for a two year study fleet beginning in early 2011. The vehicles will use OnStar to provide perfromance usage and analytic data in real-time. 500 charging stations will also be installed in business, public, and residential locations.

The three utilities are Pacific Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison and Sacramento Municipal Utility District. The learning will be used to improve future driver’s ownership experiences with electric cars.

“It is natural that California is the lead market for Volt. Not only is it the largest automotive market, Californians are known to be leaders in adopting groundbreaking new technologies,” said Brent Dewar, GM vice president, Global Chevrolet Brand.

Source (GM)

On the same day a Florida man named Dave Thomas won the Chevy Volt color naming contest with his entry Viridian Joule, and I published my first Volt test drive, GM’s CEO Fritz Henderson has resigned.

Henderson will be replaced by Chairman of the Board Ed Whitacre.

The decisoin was made at this morning’s board meeting, and clearly came as a surpsie to GM employees including those involved in the Volt who I was with at the time the news broke.

Whitacre issued the following statement:

At its monthly meeting in Detroit today, the General Motors Board of Directors accepted the resignation of Fritz Henderson as Director, President and CEO of the company.

Fritz has done a remarkable job in leading the company through an unprecedented period of challenge and change. While momentum has been building over the past several months, all involved agree that changes needed to be made. To this end, I have taken over the role of Chairman and CEO while an international search for a new president and CEO begins immediately. With these new duties, I will begin working in the Renaissance Center headquarters on a daily basis. The leadership team – many who are with me today – are united and committed to the task at hand.

I want to assure all of our employees, dealers, suppliers, union partners and most of all, our customers, that GM’s daily business operations will continue as normal. I remain more convinced than ever that our company is on the right path and that we will continue to be a leader in offering the worldwide buying public the highest quality, highest value cars and trucks. We now need to accelerate our progress toward that goal, which will also mean a return to profitability and repaying the American and Canadian tax payers as soon as possible.

In closing, I want to once again thank Fritz Henderson for his years of leadership and service to General Motors; we’re grateful for his many contributions. I look forward to working with the entire GM team as we now begin the next chapter of this great company.

This also comes on the eve of the LA Auto Show when the initial selected Volt markets in California will be announced and Henderson was set to be the keynote speaker. Vice Chairman Bob Lutz will give the address in his place.

Henderson took the position in March after former CEO Rick Wagoner was ousted by the Government Auto Task Force.  He pulled the company through it’s rapid bankruptcy proceeding.

Good news or bad? You decide.

There are a few times in life when one’s hard work is rewarded, when one can get to see the fruits of one’s labor and the stuff of one’s dreams come true.  Such was the day I drove the near-production Chevrolet Volt in both EV and charge-sustaining mode.

After nearly three full years of following each and every development, after discovering and discussing every detail imaginable, I drove for the first time the fully production-intent car that emerged from the back of Jon Lauckner’s and Bob Lutz’ proverbial napkin in 2006.

I may not have been the first to drive it nor the first to write about the experience, nor the least biased, but my voyage was the deepest of all.

The car was in its full production glory, with every gleaming detail full sculpted and bathed in its signature paint.  It appeared far more aggressive and athletic than any show model I’d ever seen, gone the roughness notable in its integration vehicle brethren.

This car was also one of the 80 hand-built pre-production models assembled over the summer.  It had reached a late stage of refinement though according to lead engineer Andrew Farah, some units were actually further refined than this one.

The refinements this car was still lacking had to do with acceleration, generator behavior, handling, and graphics and driver interface functions.

I found the egress and ingress very open and inviting.  The driver’s seat was well situated and I had ample shoulder, leg and knee room; it was a very generous seating area.  I drove the car with three other people in it and all had plenty of room and looked comfortably spaced.  The interior was bright and cheerful and seemed very spacious including head room.

The driver’s seat position was manually controlled.  Levers allowed forward and back movement, up and down positioning, as well as recline.  Farah said a motorized system was left out to reduce mass.

The dashboard displays were beautiful.  The screens were bright, vivid, crisp and conservatively artistic and looked to be in high definition.  There were several display menu configurations on the driver dash that could be scrolled through and chosen with a dash button to the left.  The center display was touch sensitive.  The ipod-like white center stack had interestingly unique capacitive finger-sensing buttons that gave audio feedback in the form of a slight subtle chirp when the touching finger was detected.  There was no tactile feedback, nor was it needed.  The buttons were a little unreliable, something Farah said still needed work.  The green leaf eco display was also not yet operational.  For my task I found that I could set the display to show MPG. I reset it at the start of my drive. It read >500 MPG while in EV mode.

To start, the keyfob simply has to sit anywhere in the car and then the start button is pushed while the brake pedal is depressed. The screen then comes to life letting you know the car is on.

The test track was a 0.4 mile winding pylon flanked path set up on an uneven parking lot surface, so some slight grades were included, but nothing steep.

And so with one small step for me and one large step for all of us I hit the accelerator.

The car accelerated precisely and assertively and felt very spirited.  There were two modes of operation.  Normal mode offers 90 kw peak power and felt to be in the 9 second 0 to 60 range.  Sport mode delivered noticeably more intense acceleration below a 9 second 0 to 60.  I was not permitted to time 0 to 30 or 0 to 60.  It was not an outright sports car feel, but definitely sporty.  Clearly it would outrun a Prius, Insight, or Fusion hybrid all of which I’ve driven.  It’s top speed of 100 MPH would also easily top the Nissan LEAF’s 85 MPH.

I did bring a decibel meter as requested, but this too was not allowed by the team.  Beyond any doubt however the car was extremely quiet in EV mode.  Even the whine of the electric motor that can be heard in the MINI E or Tesla was very dim and muted by what seemed to be excellent sound insulation.

I spent about 50 minutes continuously driving, but did not have enough space to go beyond about 50 MPH.

I started out with about four miles of EV range and I watched intensely for the changeover to generator mode.  The only change that coud be observed was the disappearance of the battery graphic on the driver’s screen which became replaced by a fuel tank symbol.  With intense critical straining I could detect the slight muted whir of the gas engine but did not find it at all unpleasant.  After all we must realize the car is burning gas, that’s its advantage over pure EVs, limitless range when needed.  Combustion engines make noise. Period.

Once the car enters charge sustaining mode there’s no turning back to EV mode until the car is plugged in again.  The car’s central processor continuously monitors battery state of charge and the rate at which it is being depleted.  It will turn on the generator whenever the low point is reached.  It may go on at one of several different RPMs depending on the car’s momentary requirements and depletion rate.  The engine will turn off again when no longer needed, and when the car comes to a stop.

I found that when I drove reasonably and moderately I didn’t hear the generator go on at all.  When I suddenly floored it, the generator revved for a couple of seconds.  I did not find the need to use the words jarring, disconcerting, or off-putting as other journalists did.  My word is appropriate.  You floor a gas burning car, it makes noise.

The car felt very solid and well balanced.  The uniquely low center of gravity due to the four hundred pound battery in the center gave a notably beneficial hugging of the ground.  Yet the car felt light and spry, the power steering was perfectly tuned and the car handled wonderfully.  Farah all but admitted the car weighed 400 pounds more than a Cruze, or about 3500 pounds.  He wants it to be lighter and there are plans to make it so for the next generation.

When the car switched into generator mode, I reset the MPG meter.

After about a half hour of driving with the generator the reading was between 32 and 36 MPG, and would increase if I was gentle with the accelerator.  Farah claimed this wasn’t a true number and that the display wasn’t accurate, so take it as you may.  He instead explained to me about how when he used it for a weekend, driving a total of 200 miles and charging the car every time he came back home with it at 240V, he used a total of .2 gallons of gas for an overall efficiency of 1000 MPG.  And in fact, this is the better way of looking at it.  We should not be focusing on the generator mode MPG but the car’s overall fuel consumption over time, because that’s what practically matters as it determines how much gas you will burn.

In the end, I found myself delighted and excited about this highly refined, competent and wonderful car.  I would take it home as it is right now if I could.  But we’ll just have to wait those 11 months and let the engineers do their final tweaking.

There is really nothing to complain about here.  GM has taken a great idea and made it into an even greater reality.  And our dreams are starting to come true.