GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site

The Nissan Leaf wasn’t announced until early 2009, more than two years after GM first unveiled the Volt concept.  Despite their late arrival, Nissan’s CEO Carlos Ghosn has been pushing hard to place his company in the leadership position for electric cars.

The 100 mile range Nissan Leaf pure EV and the extended-range Chevrolet Volt are clearly of distinctly different engineering designs, but both are electric cars.

Apparently Ghosn doesn’t think the Volt, or anything else, will be much competition though.

“Frankly, I mean so far there is no competition,” Ghosn recently told reporters . “Let’s be serious. It’s not because someone is coming with a prototype and one car that this is competition. The question is how much capacity are you building.”

Nissan has plans to build 500,000 EVs in 2012 for global sale.

“What I am sure is that in 2011, I am going to be the only one on the market,” he said.

Ghosn announced that Nissan has already collected 56,000 hand raisers for the Leaf EV on the web, and the company plans to begin taking pre-orders next month.  He also expects 10% of automotive sales to be electric cars in 10 years.

“The numbers are big,” Ghosn said of the demand.  ”We are going to come with 500,000 globally.”

He did temper that with an admission that Nissan will need  some time to gauge market reaction until ramping up to maxium production.

Outgoing GM vice chairman Bob Lutz has indicated GM plans to produce about 8000 Chevy Volts in 2011, with the ability to ramp up to 50,000 to 60,000 units annually thereafter.

Is it true Nissan has no competition?

“You draw the conclusion,” Ghosn challenged.

Source (Bloomberg)

Electrification of the automobile is well underway, with the first mass produced cars expected to hit the roads later this year.

There have been many speculative reports about whether these cars will catch on and be sold in high volumes over the next few years.

These predictions hinge on cost to consumers, both for the cars and for gas.  Other than for early adopters, plug-in cars must offer better cost of operation than gas-powered cars to win in the marketplace.

The bulk of an electric vehicle’s cost, however, is the cost of its lithium-ion batteries.

Reports predicting low EV sales volumes often use $1000 per kwh as the price for lithium-ion batteries, but that is unrealisticly high and should no longer be used.

A new report issued by Deutsche Bank indicates prices that are considerably lower.  They write “we continue to believe that the market underestimates the potential for growth in this segment” and “we’ve noted evidence of steeper than-expected battery price declines which will likely bolster the consumer value proposition and potentially lead to stronger demand than we originally envisioned.”

The firm notes the average lithium-ion cell price in 2009 has been $650 per kwh, but claims automakers are already seeing bids for $450 per kwh from battery companies for delivery contracts in the 2011/2012 timeframe.

Furthermore, they predict an additional 25% decline in price over the next 5 years and a 50% decline over the next 10 years along with a doubling of performance over the next 7 years.

Previously LG Chem subsidiary Compact Power’s CEO Prabahkar Patil told GM-Volt he expected cell cost to drop up to four-fold in the next 10 years, and said lithium ion cells for non automotive applications is already $350 per kwh.

Furthermore, last March GM vice president Jon Lauckner stated GM is already paying “many hundreds of dollars per kWh,” less than $1000 for the Volt’s lithium ion cells.

If one considers the Volt has a 16 kwh lithium ion battery, at $450 per kwh its total cell cost would be $7200.

Fuel costs about 2 cents per mile using electricity, and about 10 cents per mile using gas. At $450 per kwh at today’s gas prices, after 90,000 miles of electric driving fuel savings will cover the added cost of the battery.

Source (Deutsche Bank, PDF)

The recent report that GM has cancelled the Cadillac Converj program, has led to some speculation that GM has revised its thinking of the value of the extended range electric or Voltec propulsion system. The report stated that GM could not find a value proposition in putting Voltec propulsion into a Cadillac.

As a Cadillac the car would have to be smoother, faster, and heavier than the Volt. This would necessitate more battery and cost, and thus GM has opted to use the 2-mode plugin parallel drivetrain for the brand. That system uses less battery, has less electric range, and uses the combustion engine whenever power demands are high.

Though this makes sense for the Cadillac brand, GM spokesperson Brain Corbett denies GM is moving away from Voltec.

“First of all we never announced the Converj was a production program ” he said.

“We’ve consistently said we’re going to increase our offering of electrified vehicles,” said Corbett. “We continue to develop the technology…Voltec is an active program.”

“There will be future plugin applications though we haven’t identified the vehicles or brands yet,” he added. “You’ll see multiple hybrids, plugin hybrids, and EREVs.”

He admitted that, “plugins are a little cheaper and the vehicles can be more capable,” than for Voltec.

But confirmed, “we’re not pulling back on Voltec.”

“We see both lineages evolving in parallel,” he added.

GM has placed a one billion dollar bet that range anxiety is important. The Chevy Volt was designed and engineered to allow drivers to do most of their daily driving on electricity but to have the option to keep going on gas when the battery is depleted.  This strategy eliminates any fear of being stranded by a dead battery.

This approach stands in contrast to that of pure electric cars which will stop going when their batteries die.

A study released by the University of California Davis suggests that range anxiety isn’t as important to a cohort of people currently driving electric cars.  The study surveyed 150 MINI E drivers and found the majority of them believed their needs were satisfied with the car’s 80 to 100 mile effective range.  It also showed they were completely satisfied by home charging and did not need to use public charging, suggesting that an extensive public charging network may not be needed to encourage EV adoption.

The director of automotive research at Frost and Sullivan, looking at a wider audience, found that range anxiety was actually more important than it was for this MINI E sub-group.

“There is real range anxiety, and people are concerned about being stranded,” Veerender Kaul told msbnc. “We found a strong preference for a plug-in, range-extended electric vehicle like the Chevrolet Volt.”

I have personally logged over 10,000 miles in my MINI-E, and did not participate in the UC study. My daily commute is 60 miles round trip, and at least twice per month I have to drive round trip greater than 100 miles.  In the cold weather my range is closer to 60 miles, as I drive almost all highway at more than 65 mph, which demands a lot of power.  As such, I rely on charging during the day at work to eliminate range anxiety, and cannot use the car for long drives  instead using a second gas-powered car for those occasions.

The participants chosen for the UC study appear to be a very selected group who are  likely to overlook any inconvenience in exchange for the cause of driving petroleum-free at all times.

To reach a mass audience appeal, however, range anxiety must be controlled.  The Volt is the perfect solution.

Source (msnbc)

After releasing some conceptual art a couple weeks ago, the public got its first chance to get a “taste of the future” from Opel in person at the Geneva auto show. GM bills the Flextreme GT/E as giving customers the ability “to enjoy zero CO2 driving emissions Opel-style “while illustrating that size doesn’t matter.”

As reported earlier at GM-Volt.com, the Flextreme GT/E is based on the same Voltec powertrain, featuring the same 16 kWh battery pack, 1.4l 4-cyl engine for extended range driving as the Volt, but with a slightly larger electric drive unit, rated at 120 kW. This is were the similarities end.

Seeing it in person, the Flextreme GT/E is big. Really big. In fact it is 4762mm long, (almost a foot longer than the Volt) and its wheelbase is over 114 inches, thats Cadillac STS territory, and it is just as wide. Like the Volt, and despite its size, the Flextreme seats four.

In the US, this E-REV would be classed at the very top end of the large family/mid-sized car segment, but in Europe, (where it would be theoretically sold) most cars in this segment are much smaller, it would certainly be classed as a full-size or large car. (The Volt at 4,500mm is right on the cusp of being a mid-size in the US…one mm less, and it is a compact).

But what of the range and spec forecasts? Since announcing the GT/E, another GM EREV (Cadillac Converj) was cancelled, and part of that reason was that range would have be halved due to the performance requirements and additional amenities, therefore you would expect a projected electric range on this car to be not dissimilar, maybe even less. (both use the same electric drive unit)

Not so. And here is where the line between concept and reality gets blurred. GM claims this car has the same 40 mile electric range as the Volt, can sprint from 0-60 in the 8 second-ish range, and of can go faster than 200 km/hr…all the while rolling on 195mm, 21″ tires. Yet the Converj could only go 20?

Working from what we know from the Volt, these performance specifications seem highly unlikely. The only place where the Flextreme has it over the Volt is the drag coefficient, which is a sparse .22 (which is helped by some very conceptual vertical fins that pop out when the car is travelling over 30mph to extend the tail). Side note: It also has no side mirrors…those pesky things are always messing up the drag.

For its part, Opel suggests the new concept “expresses its mission of offering accessible German engineering,” and is the “logical next step in Opel’s unfolding strategy for the electrification of the automobile”

From looking at the design and spec, logically I would say the first buyer of the Flextreme GT/E would come from the planned ‘mega city’ of San Angeles in the year 2032…and the glove box may or may not contain 3 mysterious seashells with instructions for people of that time on how to use them.

Ever since GM-Volt.com started one of the most common comments people make, either on the site or via email is that they would like to sign up to be an early Volt “beta tester.”

BMW has such a program with its not-ready-for-prime-time MINI E that I’ve been driving, but GM has never confirmed such an option will be the case for the Volt.

Indeed as we recently learned there is a lot of push and pull within GM regarding launching an early imperfect consumer test fleet versus waiting to launch a perfect production model in November.

Most recently Tom Stephens, GM vice chairman of product development weighed in publicly with his own thoughts.

He does see some value in an early consumer test fleet.  “We might be using those to get additional customer input,” he said.

There will be a captured test fleet driven by GM employees, which is typical for all new GM cars.  The final decision on whether to let consumers participate in that has not been made.

“We’re actually building more vehicles in that fleet than we would otherwise build. The potential exists that we could get additional people evaluating those types of vehicles or working with us to evaluate those types of vehicles,” Stephens told the Free Press. “I would say the decision still needs to be made (on) if we’re going to put the vehicles in some of the other hands or not.”

Rightly so, Stephens is more concerned about the car being perfect than getting it  into consumers hands early.

“I’m much more worried about making sure that we have a totally bulletproof launch at the start of regular production,” he said. “I think it is so critical for this vehicle to come out and be a smash hit, and I think it’s got all of the makings of being able to do that.”

Source (Detroit Free Press)

Should GM let consumers participate in an early Volt fleet?