GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site

When the Chevy Volt concept was first introduced, GM indicated that when the vehicle was running on internal combustion engine (ICE) generator power, after the batteries charge was depleted, it would get 50 mpg.

Recently we found out that GM had decided on a different engine than it planned in the concept. Instead of being a 1-liter 3 cylinder turbo engine, it will be a 1.4 liter 4 cylinder normally aspirated model.

This led some to worry that the car would get less than 50 mpg in the ICE-mode.

In a new conversation I had with Volt chief engineer Andrew Farah, those fears are allayed.

The reason the larger engine was chosen was “a combination of will it do the job? and will it do the job on time,” said Farah implying the very tight time frame to production was the primary reason for this change.

Asked whether the chosen powerplant will change the 50 mpg projection, he said “not significantly”.

This engine is expected to get more than 40 mpg when used in a non-hybrid model, such as the upcoming Chevy Cruze. Therefore it shouldn’t surprise us that when used in the Volt’s series hybrid system with a massive lithium-ion battery and regenerative brakes, that 50 mpg could be achieved.

Carl-Peter Forster is GMs European president.  He wrote a blog post about the Volt , inspired by all the media interest he witnessed at the London Motor Show.

He wrote how the US will get the Volt in late 2010 assuming "we will continue to attain all of our goals and milestones for the battery and integration of the power electronics."

He then confirmed Europe will get the EREV one year later, or late 2011.

Then he finally clarified under which brand it will appear.  Since GMs goal is to get the technology into a high volume brand, for Europe is will make its appearance as an Opel/Vauxhall and will "be derived directly from the Chevrolet Volt to get into the market quickly".  He then adds that Chevrolet will get the car there several months later.

He assures the European market that "more variations for Opel-specific designs of EREVs are already in the works," but gave no clues about them.

He added that European production capability for EREVs will be essential, and continued to support the idea of consumer government incentives and a super CO2 credit for GM for these vehicles which would increase GMs average CO2 credit for its entire fleet for a smaller volume of EREVs.

Source (Driving Conversations )

It looks like more fighting words in the OK Corral as GM vice-chair Bob Lutz has taken to calling the electric car competition arena.

Nissan’s CEO Carlson Ghosn has long stood by a pure EV approach. He recently told the New York Times  that any electric car he would sell in the US would have to have at least a 100 mile range to be practical.

He was quoted as saying “I want a pure electric car. I don’t want a range extender. I don’t want another hybrid,” and “It’s not going to be zero emissions in certain conditions. It’s going to be zero emissions.”

Ghosn has said Nissan would bring a pure EV to the US within 2 years, and he further went on to say “Everything that we develop, we develop for profits. We make money on all our cars. We do not have loss leaders.”

With this statement he contends that his company would be able to pull off the seemingly elusive task of actually making a profit on first generation electric cars. This stands in contrast to GM’s claim that at a selling price of $40,000 the Volt would just about break even.

Ghosn has not given any details about these initial EVs and has noted production quantities would be meager, saying “we’re talking about hundreds of vehicles first.”

Source (New York Times )

Today GM CEO Rick Wagoner gave a speech at the Dallas Chamber of Commerce and took the opportunity to dispel some rumors himself.

He acknowledged a belief that the consumer shift from trucks and SUVs to cars is “by and large, permanent,” but he pointed out that despite the sagging U.S. auto market, GM’s global growth remains robust, in particularly in emerging markets like China and Russia.

Taking a specific jab a the famous documentary he said “the electric car is not dead at GM,” and went on to discuss the Volt telling us to expect “more than 300 additional miles” of driving range after the generator kicks in for a “composite fuel economy of over 100 miles per gallon.”

He also confirmed the Volt battery packs are performing well stating “we’ve run prototype packs through numerous tests since last fall… including some pretty severe ones… and the results to date are quite encouraging.”

He pointed out the need for government to provide consumer incentives and tax credits to help get the technology underway.

After the meeting in talking to reporters, he indicated that bankruptcy speculation was “inaccurate” and that GM had no plans to eliminate any other brands except Hummer.  He said that GM has “no thoughts whatsoever” of bankruptcy and noted it would be better if “we had less speculation along lines that we think is quite inaccurate.”   Wagoner said he felt that critics are overblowing the concerns and that he is “taking the tough but necessary actions to keep GM competitive over the long, long term.”

Source (GM) and (Reuters) and (Bloomberg)

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) proposed earlier this year that automakers must achieve a 25% increase in fuel economy from 2011 to 2015 model years.

That goal was set based on carmakers automotive plans at the time and not including any plug-in vehicles.

Now the NHTSA is asking automakers to revise their submitted plans in particular having GM include the Volt, whose fuel economy is obviously not so simple to calculate, but certainly quite high.

GM filed the following statement back to the NHTSA in response to that request:

"for the purposes of the NHTSA rulemaking, GM’s game-changing EREV technology should be treated as a low-volume application during the time period under consideration. We strongly discourage NHTSA from applying either PHEV or EREV technology in any significant volume in its … model during the 2011-2015 timeframe.”

GM is apparently arguing the Volt will remain a low volume application in that timeframe, and as per GM spokesman Greg Martin, “We’ve been very cautious in terms of the volume, just because of the innovation and the technology associated with that vehicle. There’s a note of caution that, yes the technology is breakthrough, it is a game-changer, but as with any new game-changing technology, there needs to be a reasonable expectation set in terms of volume."

GM sources supposedly told the Detroit News that only 200,000 Volts would be produced in the first five years of production any many of those may be exported.

GM of course wasn’t alone in this request, Chrysler, Toyota, Ford and five other automakers argued against the potential of raised mpg expectations.

Source (Detroit Free Press ) and (Detroit News )

With SUVs fast becoming obsolete and Americans making the Europe-like shift to small cars in the face of unyieldingly high gas prices, GM has to act fast to adapt to this new marketplace.

Obviously the Chevy Volt is the key in this regard but its still 28 months away.

Per a new report GM now plans to bring its newly designed and publicly voted for Chevy Beat to the U.S. market.  This is a small car (just 32 inches longer than the Smart) in the mini class, and able to get 40 mpg. While pricing isn’t known, GM vice-char Bob Lutz has previously stated cars in this class could start out at $10,000.

Insiders also suggest GM may roll out a diminutive pickup truck similar to the Montana which is currently sold in South America.

In another remarkable clue, the report quotes an outside expert as saying "the Volt is going to have far more variations than people imagine."

Clearly there are massive internal GM shifts underway moving engineers away from building SUVs to building cars, and while the Volt sounded like a great idea when the concept wast first announced  at $60 a barrel oil, they couldn’t have predicted it would take on this importance so soon.

Source (Bloomberg )