GM has been displaying the Orlando concept for some time. The diminutive people-mover either seats seven people or allows ample room for cargo. Since it is built on the same compact delta platform as the Volt (and Cruze) it has the potential to easily receive the Voltec propulsion system. Former GM vie chairman Bob Lutz even once indicated GM was studying a Voltec Orlando.
The car would also represent a chance for GM to re-enter the minivan market with a vehicle that even with a gas engine would be expected to get good fuel economy.
In January of 2009 GM announced it planned to launch the car in the US in 2011.
In a sudden about face, on Friday, GM’s North American President Mark Reuss decided to scrap the vehicle.
“The best thing to do for Chevrolet is to focus on the brands we’ve already brought to market: the Traverse, Equinox, Malibu and, soon to come, the Cruze,” said Marget Brooks, GMs director of small car marketing said. “We feel that with those vehicles, Chevrolet has plenty of options for the modern family.”
GM will still sell the car in Asia, Europe, and Canada.
By cancelling this car GM will make room for increased sales and production of the larger Traverse, and five passenger Equinox and Malibu.
GM was concerned the Orlando could eat into sales of these already popular cars.
So for those of you who have been hoping for a Voltec Orlando, your dream may have just ended.
Technology marches inexorably to the future, ever changing and ever improving as the beat of human ingenuity propels it forward.
Just as the Volt represents a major paradigm shift for the automobile, so too one day even its technology and form factor will become outdated.
As much as we wait patiently for the Volt to roll into dealers lots and driveways across America, big thinkers sit pencil in hand dreaming up the next big thing. Not just about health and medicine, computers and technology, earth and space exploration but so too are people dreaming about the next generations of automobiles.
Chris Borroni-Bird is one such big thinker. Borroni is GM’s Director of Advanced Technology Vehicle Concepts and was in part responsible for the recently demonstrated EN-V concept.
The EN-V concept which stands for “electric networked vehicle” is a 2 person electric pod capable of autonomous driving via wireless networking to other pods. It is proposed for use in urban centers of the future.
Borroni along with GM’s former VP of R&D, Larry Burns who was responsible for the similar PUMA concept, and William Mitchell, Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, co-wrote a new book called Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Urban Mobility for the 21st Century.
The book takes the premise that today’s vehicles are fundamentally no different than the old Model T and that in the near future they should become “green, smart, connected, and fun to drive.” They argue the concept of cars with high power and speed to move multiple people along great distances is becoming outdated. Most of the world’s population is in densely crowded big cities, and a new form of low speed high efficiency electric transportation would be best suited for them.
Four central themes expected to revolutionize personal mobility are outlined and expanded upon in the book:
1. Base the underlying design principles on electric-drive and wireless communications rather than the internal combustion engine and stand-alone operation
2. Develop the Mobility Internet for sharing traffic and travel data
3. Integrate electric-drive vehicles with smart electric grids that use clean, renewable energy sources
4. Establish dynamically priced markets for electricity, road space, parking space, and shared-use vehicles
Are these leaders correct in envisioning the transition of the high horsepower two-ton chrome and steel roaring machines into the little self driving electric pod for two? I don’t know but you can tell them what you think or ask them what your want. GM-Volt is fortunate enough to be hosting a live chat at 2PM Eastern Time with the three authors in the chat box below. You can also order their newly published book by clicking the Amazon link below:
The EV-1 was GM’s first electric car, which was leased for a limited time beginning in the late 90s in California. The cars were recalled and the program was ended when California law requiring automakers to produce emissions-free cars was rescinded.
This created a significant PR backlash against GM which came to a head with the release of the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car.
Chelsea Sexton was the former GM EV-1 marketer who was prominently featured in the film. She has become a lighting rod for the cause of the electrification of the automobile.
I recently had the chance to speak with Chelsea, and have included the interview below. Also, if you are interested, Chelsea will be available to take your questions in the Chat Box below today at 2 PM Eastern Time.
Explain what your role is in the world of electric vehicles?
I play with cars. I’ve been doing it for a while. I started working with GM when I was 17, and stayed there for 9 years. Did Saturn, did EV-1.
What did you do with GM?
Marketing. Although I hung out enough with the engineers that I sometimes get confused with them.
I married an EV-1 technician along the way and eventually found my inner geek on the project.
So you were very excited about the EV-1 when it was in development?
I was. I was there from before start to finish. And truly I did’nt care about cars then I took the job just to pay for college. I worked in California.
This was in the mid to late 90s?
Yes. Then I became so enamored with the technology that even after I left GM I never left this field. I worked at X-Prize for a while, I created Autoprize.
Why did you leave GM?
They laid everybody off when they killed the EV-1 program, or should I say when they ended the EV-1 program.
Was that 2001?
End of 2001.
I never really left the industry. For the last several years I’ve been advocating EVs as an independent for a non-profit. I helped start Plug-in America and ran that organization for awhile. I left them last year but am still an advisor. I started another little non-profit as a mechanism to do what I do.
Then a few years ago a few EV-1 drivers decide to get together and make a movie that originally I wasn’t supposed to be in at all. I was rather shocked when I saw it at Sundance. It’s been a bit of a ride since.
That really catapulted you to celebrity status?
I don’t know about celebrity status.
Don’t people recognize you on the street?
One time ever.
They called you ahead for the Volt reveal?
Yes.
How do the former Ev1 people feel now that the Volt is becoming a reality?
We’re still going to have a group of skeptics.
Have they disappeared by now?
They have absolutely not disappeared. There are a few people that will never come around again, that will never come around again on the technology or the company. Its not just GM. Recall that all of the big six manufacturers took their cars away from people and destroyed them and all of that. GM is the iconic example, but it was really an industry behavior. Some did it more elegantly than other.
There’s another group of people that are skeptical but will come around as they see evidence. And that’s starting to happen.
Some have new EVs like the MINI-E and the Tesla.
What did you think of driving the Volt?
I liked it, and you know I drove the Cruze mule too. The agreed with gist of all the reviews about range extending being underwhelming. Yes, the engine went on. Not a big deal, not loud or disorderly. Its what we all thought it would be.
GM is more than a little bit brave in letting people drive these cars ahead. They set the bar for transparency, and they get it. They have some ground to recover and this is the only way to do it.
The other automakers seemed to have fallen behind here.
Yes I agree. Now there’s an expectation of transparency. It didn’t exist before. Its all GM’s fault.
They do more than any other of the car companies, their solution has been to humanize themselves. The downside if there is one is that we’re in a point of tension. People are very excited. All these cars are coming whether its GM or Nissan or whoever. We’re still nearly a year away from cars.
California gets all the EV attention. Why are you so far ahead of the country in terms of interest in electric cars, is it just the smog of the 70s?
Candidly I don’t know that California is that far ahead. Market wise we do have a very progressive set of constituents, environmentally and otherwise.
Why is that?
We’ve always been a center of environmentalism.
Is that from the smog of the 70s?
Im a native of California, I grew up in the smog and drought. There was always a focus of environmental awareness. Twenty years ago it was more about air quality than anything else. Climate change wasn’t on anybody’s list. It started in that way. The CARB mandate was very aggressive.
When was that?
Is was passed in 1990 and went into effect in 1998.
That was the statement that automakers had to produce zero emission vehicles?
Right if you wanted to keep selling cars in this state and your above a certain sized manufacturer you have to do X number of zero emissions cars and you have to sell them here.
How did they know in 1990 that they could make a zero emission car?
Actualy ironically GM is responsible for the CARB mandate. Because at the auto show of 1990 they showed the Impact. In April of 1990 Roger Smith announced, pretty much off the cuff like a Bob Lutz remark, “I think we’re going to build this thing,” much to the chagrin of his company. September of 1990 CARB passed the mandate. They looked at GM and said you say you can do this, well if you can so can everyone else.
The minute the mandate was passed, GM began to fight it because they did’nt want to be told what to do.
Isn’t it hard for the company to make cars special for just one state though?
Well all the states have the option to copy what CARB does. So between California and the other CARB states that covers about half the buying public of the US. Its like 16 or 17 states.
Wasn’t it repealed?
It was watered down and watered down and watered down. Technically the program is still intact.
Why do you think the automakers didn’t want to do it?
Part of it was a mandate thing like CAFE. Also to be part of an EV program, how can you reconcile selling an EV1 when you also sell big Suburbans where you make all your money?
The transformation of the whole industry from the day the Volt concept was revealed to now has been breathtaking?
I agree. I’ve been watching to for 17 years now, its incredible.
I had the following discussion with outgoing GM vice chairman Bob Lutz about the Chevy Volt and pure EVs.
How do you see the difference in demand between the Voltec vehicle and the pure EV? You said the pure EV was your initial idea, and now Nissan now is racing to get the public affection for it. How do you see the split? Im worried there could be difficulty with public comprehension. For example when you were on Dave Letterman, even Dave got it wrong when he first heard of it.
Well he got it badly wrong. That’s why we got the session with him was to straighten him out. We have stopped calling it an extended range electric vehicle and we now call it an electric vehicle with range extension. We’ve kind of swapped the emphasis on that.
We did some research in various areas but predominantly on the West coast, and we conducted this research several times. We have reason to believe that Nissan conducted the same research and is now somewhat less bullish about the volume for their vehicle.
We asked people to pick from three concepts. Once is an electric vehicle of about 40 miles range but with a gasoline powered generator that would permit when necessary another 250 to 300 miles of range. Choice B is an electric vehicle with quick charging of a range of a hundred miles, and Choice C an electric vehicle with swappable batteries, with a range of 100 miles and you find a battery swapping station and you swap out.
83% of the vote went to the Volt concept.
If that’s true then the small EV market is so small then why bother? You went on the record in the past saying you could just simply take the engine out of the Volt and you have an electric car.
I will tell you that there is a high probability that we may well do some pure electrics. Maybe not necessarily for the US market but there are markets where traffic is extremely dense , it moves at extremely low speeds and the daily driving distance are very low. Im thinking of markets like India where we have announced our intention to do a pure EV off of our mini car architecture. So selective we will do pure EVs.
You haven’t committed to the US for that?
No, not yet. Its not to be excluded, we might do some of that.
It seems interesting to me that Nissan is pursuing that so aggressively and GM is not.
No No Look the whole control technology and all that stuff for the pure EV is trivial compared to the development effort that we what to put into the Volt. Trivial. Because you’re only dealing with one power sources.
So it would be quick and easy to do if you decide to?
Yes. Once you’ve got experience with the lithium ion technology, you’ve got the cooling down pat, you’ve got the charging down pat. Whether its more or less lithium ion bigger or larger batteries whether there’s a piston engine going along with it or not, its just doesn’t matter.
In this segment I discuss with outgoing GM vice chairman Bob Lutz the topic of Chevy Volt production volumes and expected consumer demand.
You said the volume in the first year of the Volt will be 8000 and many of us fans want to get the country off the oil, and Nissan says they’re going to build 100,000 Leafs. What makes you choose that modest volume? Its just a ramp up and getting comfortable with the lithium ion battery pack that we’re producing, getting comfortable with the production process and taking it slow to guarantee absolutely perfect quality.
The first model year which will be sort of roughly from December though July or August will be four to five thousand and then again that many in the second half of ’11. And then starting in ’12 that’s when we’ll really crank it up.
My guess is the initial demand for the vehicle will be so high that we will decide to expand capacity as fast as we can and as much as we can. The studies for this are starting, but we have to actually wait until the vehicle is on sale to see what the true world-wide demand is. But right now our production is being laid out for fifty to sixty thousand a year once we’re in full swing which will be the calendar year 2012.
I believe that’s at least fifty percent too low. I believe the true word-wide demand is more like one hundred to one hundred twenty thousand and that may not be enough.
It certainly seems that way to me too but what do I know?
Well but you and I are both doing the same thing, we’re reacting to our gut whereas the official volume estimators look at the size of the car and then they look at the relatively high price for a car that size and they say not many people are going to be willing to pay that much for a car that small just to save a little gasoline.
I say if you look at it that way, you’re right. But we don’t buy cars for rational reasons alone. If we bought cars for just rational reasons there would be no Porsche Motor Company. We wouldn’t sell a single Corvette, and the Chevrolet Camaro would be a non starter because they’re both stupid cars because you can’t put a lot of people in them.
And its the same thing with something like the Volt. The Volt will be bought partly for rational reasons but at $2.80 gasoline you’ll probably never really get your money back from the fuel savings but that’s not why people buy it. People are going to buy this car because it’s the coolest technology on the planet.
Frankly to me its way sexier than a pure electric.
Do you see the early adopters more that they are interested in the technology? How large do you think the early adopter crowd will be and how many types of people do you think they are?
I think it’s going to be larger than we think.
I think every politician in the country and in most other countries is going to want one, and don’t forget, this is destined to be a global car. The Volt is designed to meet the regulatory requirements of every major nation in the world. It will be available in left hand drive and right hand drive and in terms of lighting and exterior protrusions, pedestrian protection, all of that. It meets every known regulation in every country. The way it is built in Hamtramck, it can be shipped anywhere. So you’re looking at not only at US demand but you’re potentially looking at the global demand including now the world’s largest and the world’s richest automobile market called China.
Its going to be exported to China and it will be available in Australia as a Holden, in Europe as the Opel Ampera. So when you put this worldwide demand together, it’s going to be a lot of cars. As I say everybody who is in show business is going to want one. It s going to completely displace the Toyota Prius as the vehicle of choice in Hollywood. I think every state governor is going to want one too.
There’s just an enourmous latent demand for vehicles of this type.
Bob Lutz is the vice chairman of GM and set to retire on May1st. He is an outspoken highly successful and provocative automotive executive with 50 years of experience in the business who is credited with creating the Chevy Volt. I had the exciting opportunity to ask many questions of Mr. Lutz during a one hour one-on-one exit interview. In this first segment he explains how the Volt was born and eventually made it into production.
I wanted to say that I and the GM-Volt readership wanted to thank you for conceiving the Volt concept and for carrying it through to completion, as well as for all the very interesting commentary along the way.
You’re quite welcome. Its an act of love and enthusiasm.
When you first conceived the Volt what was you’re primary intention? Was it just to float an idea out there or did you have production in mind from the very beginning?
I think the very first time I surfaced the thought at the automotive strategy board was for a purely lithium ion powered battery only car, somewhat akin to what Nissan is doing with the Leaf. The more we talked about it the more we realized we didn’t want to live with the range limitations and everybody still had a bad taste in their mouth around here from the EV-1 debacle and the amount of money we lost on that. So there was very little enthusiasm for a pure electric car and there was some hostility also towards lithium ion batteries where the story was that they would never work in an automotive cell.
My desire was to put an electric car concept out there to show the world that unlike the press reports that painted GM as an unfeeling uncaring squanderer of petroleum resources while wonderful Toyota was reinventing the automobile, I just wanted something on the show stand that would show that hey we’re not just thinking of a Prius hybrid here, we’re trying to get gasoline out of the equation entirely.
And then I just couldn’t get enough of a consensus in the company to do that.
Then when Tesla came out with the announcement of the Roadster my point was that if some group of California software guys can make a viable electric car using lithium ion laptop batteries and they can claim a 200 mile range, 0 to 60 in 4 and a half seconds and 140 mph top speed, it seemed to me that we as still the world’s most competent car company, we should be able to do likewise, and I suggested we start talking to Tesla and find out as much as we could.
That’s about when we decided,’ OK alright, lets do a show car.’
Sitting down with John Lauckner he really convinced me that all-electric really wasn’t the way to go, that we should have a small piston engine in it as a ranger extender and that way we could get by with a relative small relatively inexpensive lithium ion battery and people would not be on a tether.
As the owner of several electric vehicles from Segway to Vectrix motor scooters I can tell you that range anxiety in a pure electric vehicle is real. Your range varies so much according to conditions and temperature.
John sketched it out on a pad, then we talked to design and we got going on the original Volt prototype.
Frankly at that point John Laucker and I decided there was nothing about this concept that couldn’t or shouldn’t make it to production.
Our thought was we’ll dazzle everybody with the showcar and once we’ve dazzled everybody with the show car, people will start clamoring for production. That’s exactly how it worked out.
So you actually anticipated the response that it got?
I anticipated half of it. Even my incredibly large expectations were handily exceeded by the response that it got.
How did that reaction affect the company, the people in the company, and the leadership?
I think it changed a lot of minds. Our board of directors contained some technologists on it, for instance Kent Kresa who was formerly CEO of Northrop Grumman. He has always been an advocated of electric propulsion. Northrop Grumman was during the time he was on the Chrysler board, they actually did some lead acid powered electric minivan that was a project they were doing with the defense department. So he’s always been a pusher for advanced technology and he became very vocal and he said there is absolutely nothing he could see that should prevent this company from building this vehicle. He became a very strong ally.
We very quickly did a business case, did some cost estimates, and some investment estimates, a lot of which turned out in retrospect to be somewhat naively optimistic. All in all we were able to put together a credible business case and lay out a credible way of getting car like that into production. There was enough enthusiasm for the concept in the company to carry the day.
I recall Rick Wagoner didn’t announce production until June of 08, was that prior year still in flux as to what would happen?
That was still the year when we were putting the whole thing together. Don’t forget we completely changed the vehicle’s appearance, because the one we had at the auto show looked nice but had a poor drag coefficient. The package was no good the layout of the engine, electric motor, and the generator were all kind of in the wrong place. Then we had to re-execute the car off our global compact car architecture. That whole design development, getting the car with a decent interior package and getting it to look halfway decent, in fact I think very decent. We’re all in love with the way that it looks because it rides so low to the ground and its very sneaky looking.
Then we had to get that drag coefficient down to 0.27 or 0.28. All of that the business plan really was tied in to the drag performance of the car, because if we couldn’t get a good looking car down to .27 or .28 then we weren’t going to get the range and then it would make the acceptability of the car questionable. It all kind of had to come together. It really didn’t come together until we had a winning style.
