GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site

I have long dreamed that GM-Volt.com will morph into a Volt owner’s site when the cars finally arrive at people homes later this year and next. I still hope and expect that will be the case. GM has similar dreams for such a website too, and plans to leverage OnStar data to make it especially compelling.

Volt marketing director Tony DiSalle describes the unique Volt owners site that users and their cars can interact with. That site finally went live (sort off) this week and its called MyVolt.com.

“It will be something for owners,” says DiSalle of the site. “It will be a really cool experience.”

“When you boot up (the site) the car and the website will talk to each other and the website will get all the latest data off of the Volt,” he adds.

He explains that the site will load the data from the vehicle and populate the owners’ unique page with that information which can be graphed, trended and shared.

Owners will also be able to interact with each other on the site.

“You see on your site how engaged these folks are,” said DiSalle. “Just imagine all the stories that are going to surface once this vehicle hits the market.”

The site will also allow users the functionality of remotely controlling their Volts like can be done via a smartphone.   Apparently it can only begin operating when you enter your VIN# and the server can start to interact with the car’s OnStar , which we know is included free for five years.

Here’s how Chevrolet officially describes the site:

MyVolt.com, an owner website like no other, lets you control your Volt online. You can communicate with the vehicle to start charging, pre-condition the interior, lock and unlock the doors and program the vehicle charging schedule. The driver can also check the charging status, EV range and other pertinent vehicle information.

Enhanced OnStar Vehicle Diagnostics monthly e-mails are specifically designed to address the unique characteristics of an electric vehicle.

I suggested to Mr. DiSalle that perhaps GM would give me a module to plug that site’s data into GM-Volt.com. He didn’t answer, but hey it was worth a try.

Terri Quigley is the plant manager of the Detroit-Hamtramck (DHAM) plant were the Chevrolet Volt is being built. I just had the chance to ask her a few questions about the current state of progress there.

So what’s happening over there at DHAM right now?
We’ve got a lot of excitement in the air. We are currently in the state of our product development life-cycle that we are building what we call salable Volts through our normal assembly process. So they travel through the paint shop and the general assembly on the same line as our current products. We are building them in buckets. Total production here thus far as has been about 140 units of Chevrolet Volts and those are various stages; pre production builds, we’ve got non-salable builds and we have built 40 of the saleable builds. Those kind of vehicles go to captured test fleets, so its internal customers and several marketing and powertrain engineering customers for those builds.

Are they indistinguishable from the cars that will be sold?
They’ll be very very similar. W’ell continue to make improvements and iterations in both the software and the technology as well as appearance improvements and improvements in the manufacturing process.

So you might make changes in the salable builds based on the captured test fleet results?
Exactly. Subtle improvements. No design theme changes or anything like that at this point in time.

So when you build these cars, do mostly of the control units arrive already programmed or do you program them there?
We do some and some. Some are already preprogrammed. The car’s got 32 to 33 different control modules in it so its a carefully orchestrated piece of technology that’s in a pretty little package. We do program the car here and then we test it for functionality in our dynamic vehicle testing, put it through all the paces it will see in its normal day to day use before we ship it to our internal customers. So we’ve done all the process checks, we call these manufacturing validation builds, you’ll hear some people say MVDs. This is all about validating that the car is ready to go, that I’ve got the operational setup and people trained and we’re ready to go to build these for the paying customers when that time comes later this year.

When will the first consumer Volt be built there?
Right towards the end of the year, the November/December timeframe is our target.

When did you build the first preproduction car there?
The very first one would have been March 31 when I drove the first one off the line.

So your building them very slowly at this point?
Right.That early build over the span of two months or so was only about 36 cars, and then we went to the salables. We take a little brake and incorporate all of our learnings, whether it be at the assembly plant, the supplier community, or the calibration community, and then we go again into this nonsalable bucket that we went through in the June, July timeframe and that was about 63, 64 cars, and then just recently we started the salable bucket over the last two or three weeks as we got through late August.

These might becalled non-retail salables then?
Yeah, in layman’s terms that really what we’re talking about.

What the difference between these and the ones you will actually ship to dealers for consumers?
There really is no difference other than we will continue to do some learning cycles. That’s what this captured test fleet portion of this last build will be. There are quite a number of cars that will go to pre-identified internal customers and we’ll be putting miles on the cars just to make sure we’ve got everythgin tidied up and ready to go for the consumers.

The EEStor, Zenn Motor Company saga isn’t over yet. Most people think its all just hype and vaporware, and after famously publishing that the infamous EESU would be unveiled “imminently” in July 2009 my credibility may have taken a hit. Actually I was only publishing what Zenn CEO Ian Clifford told me in an exclusive intervierw at the time.

Well it turns out despite more than a year later being without an EESU, Zenn is still alive though their cash resevers are dwindling fast, they are waiting for Texas-based EEStor, of which they are 11% owner, to deliver fully-functional electrical energy storage units (EESU) so that they can package them into brand new ZENNergy drivetrains that would be sold to other OEMs to propel their electric cars.

For those who aren’t up on this story, the EESU is a low-priced solid-state capacitor/battery hybrid device that would be several times as power and energy dense as lithium ion cells and therefore much more compact and lightweight. It could be recharged in 5 minutes and experience essentially no degradation over time. To boot it would be several times less expensive than lithium-cells and made out of readily available barite which is found in great abundance in the US. It is the holy grail of electric cars.

Too good to be true right? So far still seems so.

A blogger who goes by the name of “B” and intentionally remains anonymous has been incessantly and methodically researching and blogging about these two companies. I respect B and have emailed and spoken with him on numerous occasions. He recently pointed out new news to me he obtained by wielding the powerful tool of the FOIA (freedom of information act) with which he and his team was able to retrieve an email and many other documents from the US Air Force pertaining to EEStor.

The documents revealed that a senior staffer in the USAF Research Lab received a phone call on July 8th 2010 from Dick Weir, founder and CEO of EEStor, and co-inventor of the EESU technology. Weir told the staffer he was “almost ready to demonstrate” his capacitor, and was calling to invite the USAF to see a technology demonstration.

The staffer asked point blank if Weir had finally fabricated a fully working EESU. “Not quite,” responded Weir. “But we are so close.”

The email also noted that both Sandia National lab and Lockheed-Martin personnel were being invited to the demonstration as well. Lockheed has a partnership agreement with EEStor to produce military and possible grid-leveling applications based on the EESU.

B was also able to determine from anonymous sources that Weir wanted Sandia to perform testing of the EEStor technology, and provide third party verification of its properties, something that Sandia has reportedly “fully agreed” to. He also obtained information that the reason Weir was setting up this demonstration was that he needs more funding to expand his Texas production facility to go into commercial production. Third party testing would be needed to secure funding which may well be from the government.

The date of this demonstration is unknown and may have even already taken place. As usual, my request for information from Mr. Weir was not returned.

And so the story of EEStor lives on in real-time remaining filled with military and political intrigue, nail-biting excitement, and dreams of endless riches to hopeful Zenn shareholders and limitless inexpensive US made electric cars for the world.

But will it have a happy ending or are we blathering on about nothing. Only time will tell.

Source (Bariumtitanate.blogspot.com)

Korean carmaker Hyundai has now officially entered the electric car race. The company unveiled its first full speed all-electric vehicle called the BlueOn at a Korean state ceremonial event where it was test driven by Korean President Lee Myung-Bak.

The car was entirely produced in Korea and is based on its compact i10 hatchback city car only on sale in Korea. Starting now the company will deliver 30 vehicles to test fleets for the Korean government to use.

BY the end of 2012, Hyundai plans to have produced 2500 of the vehicles.

The car uses a highly efficient 16.4 kwh lithium-ion battery pack which powers a 61 peak kw electric motor capable of producing 210 Nm of torque. The BlueOn has a maximum speed of 81 mph and can do 0 to 60 in 13.1 seconds. Hyundai says it has already performed “hundreds of thousands of miles” of testing on its lithium ion battery pack.

Hyundai say the car can travel up to 87 miles per charge, and using the built in 380-v quick charge system can be about 80% recharged in under 25 minutes. Using 220-v household power it takes about 6 hours to charge the car.

The car is similar in size and performance to the Mitsubishi iMiEV, though gets about 10% more range from the same sized battery pack due to efficiency improvements such as an active hydraulic booster system for the regenerative brakes.

It is equipped with a pedestrian alert sound system called the Virtual Engine Sound System (VESS) and a 4.2-inch TFT LCD Supervision Cluster that provides voice guidance. The power steering, electric water pump, and regenerative brakes were electrified to be adapted to the BlueOn.

“We are proud to introduce the world to BlueOn, which was fully developed in Korea and displays Hyundai’s latest technological advancements,” said Dr. Hyun-Soon Lee, Vice Chairman at Hyundai’s Corporate R&D Center. “Consumers’ interests and demand for eco-friendly cars are rising and securing such advanced technology is critical in becoming an industry leader. Hyundai is dedicated to reducing its carbon footprint and satisfying market needs.”

Hyundai Motor America spokesman Jim Traynor, told the New York Times he was  ”not aware of any plans to introduce or market the BlueOn in North America.”

Source (Hyundai)

Brad Berman is the editor of Hybridcars.com and Plugincars.com. He apparently had the chance to experience firsthand filling up a Chevy Volt with gas and was told and wrote about how the car manages rare gas and generator use.

Of course we hope filling up the Volt’s tank will be a rare and minimally utilized occurrence. The idea is of course to carry out as much driving as possible on electricity. The tank, and generator, are there for those rare trips that must go beyond the electric range, and to prevent anxiety.

What makes the gas tank and fill-up process so unique in the Volt is ties to the fact that gas will be so rarely used. It must be kept from going stale, and the engine must occasionally be cycled to keep parts lubricated so that they don’t seize.

First, to release the gas nozzle inlet says Berman, the driver must touch a small gas release button on the driver’s door, hard to see, but right above the electric charging door release button.

After pressing the button there is a mandatory wait period signalled on the dashboard screen. During the wait, a vacuum pump decompresses the pressurized tank and pumps vapors into a “carbon canister.” This is a specialized system that normally keeps the gas tank sealed under pressure to prevent seepage of water and other factors that might lead to stale gas.

The car’s computer is always monitoring the gas situation. It knows how long its been since gas was last placed in as well as when the last time the engine was run. It also knows if you open the gas door but don’t actually fill up and even monitors the temperature of the gas to ensure it isnt “cooking.”

The car, of course needs to know all this because after a ceratin period of time the risk of gas going stale increases and the engine needs a cycling.

At that certain point, if fuel hasn’t been burned, the car will display a message encouraging the driver to drive beyond the EV range and let the generator go on. The driver can apparently ignore the warning but after two times the car will “take matters into its own hands,” writes Berman.  This means the Volt will start its generator to burn some fuel, lubricate the mechnical parts, and “pressurize the engine system.”

After completing this “engine and fuel maintenance mode,” the gnerator shuts off allowing the car to go back into pure EV operation, until the next time some gas needs to be burned.

Source (Plugincars)

The Chevrolet Volt is going into production with several different interior and exterior options visible in the image above and gallery below.

Previously I reported that I had ordered my Chevrolet Volt, but chose the white as opposed to dark console because though I’d prefer it, the dark console wouldn’t be available immediately at launch. How could I not be the first guy on my block without a Volt?

This led to some confusion and speculation both on this site and others as to exactly what options will be available at launch.

Volt marketing director John Hughes was kind enough to shed some exact light on this issue.

“Looks like AFI interior will be limited for the first three weeks of production and then should be okay after that,” said Hughes. “Not a real big deal.”

The AFI interior is specifically the jet black leather seats with dark console.

It is not the leather seats themselves that are delayed nor apparently the neutral leather with black console combination (AFF).

Hughes did not say why the delay is taking place. It is possible this combination is proving most popular, and/or that it was added latest in the development cycle.

Angie is a Customer Service Advisor who regularly checks in and posts on the GM-Volt Forum. She offers the following comment on the matter:

Chevrolet is working hard to have all interior color options available at start of production. At times there may be a delay with various vehicle options. When the dealer submits an order for production, they will be made aware of any options that are not available at the time. The dealer will be able to consult with their customer accordingly before the order is placed. The Jet Black Seats/Dark Accents Interior (AFI) was added to the vehicle build plan earlier this year, and we are working to have it available at start of production or shortly thereafter.

So what combination did you order? Take the polls below: