GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site

Vice Chairman Tom Stephens is announcing today that GM is expanding its in-house core competency to include the design and manufacture of electric motors. This will make the company the first major US automaker to mass produce its own electric motors.

Electric traction motors are a critical component for both hybrid and electric cars. Stephens likens them to the combustion engine, and the battery to the fuel tank. “In the future, electric motors might become as important to GM as engines are now,” Stephens said.

Doing this development and production in-house will allow the company to improve quality and reliability while at the same time reducing costs.

The first vehicle to launch with a GM-built electric motor will be the next generation rear-wheel drive 2-mode hybrid expected to arrive in 2013.

“Electric motor innovation supported the first wave of automotive growth a century ago with the electric starter, which eliminated the need for a hand crank, and revolutionized automotive travel for the customer,” said Stephens. “We think the electrification of today’s automobiles will be just as revolutionary and just as beneficial to our customers. Electric motors will play a huge role in that.”

GM has already gained considerable experience designing and building electric motors during the last seven years, and over that time has spent $44 million dollars quietly building up expertise and competence.

The new electric motor production project will receive an investment of $246 million which will go towards converting the Baltimore Transmission plant in White Marsh, Maryland into a mass production high volume electric motor plant.

GM says it will build some but not all of its electric motors, but also claims their expertise will better help them better understand the supply chain and to become better customers for buying some motors from outside suppliers.

Pete Savagian is GM’s Engineering Director, of Hybrid Powertrain Systems.  He notes that electric motors are made up of a few core elements, including steel, wire, magnets, bearings, mountings, and cooling systems.  H explains that it is important to optimize these elements to create motors that have high power density, low cost, and excellent longevity and performance. Reducing noise, vibration and harshness is another major tactic for improving customer satisfaction.

This new electric motor core competency and assembly plant adds a new thrust towards the goal of electrification of the automobile in addition to GM’s already operational Brownstown Volt battery pack assembly plant.

Make no mistake about it, this time the electric car is here to stay.

Chevy Volt Powertrain

Clearly GM played a major role in designing and engineering that motor as it appears to be unique in the industry. It is actually composed of two motors.  The more powerful one acts as the primary driver traction motor, and the other acts as a generator to retrieve kinetic energy during braking and coasting. At times, if needed, both motors can act in parallel, and the system has an electronically limited 111 kw maximum output (150 hp).

The company supplying the Volt motor to GM is unknown. “We haven’t announced that yet,” states Volt spokesperson Rob Peterson.

GM is very serious about the future of electric cars, and doesn’t plan to source its motors indefinitely.

According to a report in USA today, later this month GM will be announcing plans to build or operate its own plant to build motors for electric cars. This announcement will possibly take place at the Washington DC Auto Show which opens on January 27th. Likely the DC initial market announcement will be made then as well.

GM already has opened its own battery assembly plant. Electric motors, according to GM vice chairman Tom Stephens is the “second leg of the stool” for electric cars.

The third leg is the power electronics that control the manner in which the battery and the motor interact.

Stephens didn’t specifically say if GM plans to build those in house as well, but presumably they will.

“Electric motors, batteries, power-control electronics — you need core expertise in those,” he told USA Today.

Source (USA Today)

He invokes images of the famous VW (hippie) microbuses that had 40 hp engines, and recommends that PHEV’s would be better off emulating them.

He recommends PHEVs use a 10 hp microgenerator that could propel highly aerodynamic cars at 60 to 70ph when the battery is drained, and be able produce heat, so that energy of heating the car won’t have to be drained from the battery.

We don’t know the final specs of the Volt’s on-board ICE , but we do know it will be a ‘family zero’ 1.0 L engine with 3 or 4 cylinders turning a 53 kW generator. Of course, the electric drivetrain motor is powerful, giving 0 to 60 of 8.5 seconds and peak speed of 100 mph.

GMs argument is that people still want to maintain and enjoy powerful driving, even when going electric. Allen counters that it may be time for a change in driving expectations in this more energy economical world, aka the VW microbus analogy.

So do we think it would be better to have a smaller on-board microgenerator presumably paired with a less powerful electric engine?

I don’t know about that, but I like the picture that came with the article (above) of the Cont/A123 li-ion prototype pack being raised into the Chevy Volt prototype mule.

Source (Popular Mechanics )

Argonne lab grew out of the Manhattan Project, portions eventually looking at the peaceful uses of the atom. Then the mission became to look at things that are threats to competitiveness of the U.S. economy. The biggest threat right now is recognized as the importation of and dependence on petroleum, with the biggest use being transportation. So Dr. Hillebrand’s lab looks at technology that will enhance displacement of the use of petroleum, and this represents about 10% of Argonne’s overall activity.

His lab is 80% funded by DOE, and 20% through contracts with individual companies. His lab relates to the big three automakers though FreedomCAR, a consortium working to coordinate government and industry resources and efforts. Ideas and challenges, data and information are shared. Some competitive things are not shared, but may be for some individual entities through confidential contracts. In some cases they work with foreign companies as exceptions if they have a technology that will benefit the U.S.

The lab enables the car companies by relating to groups the companies cannot, such as in making fuel economy standards, or giving them access to U.S. grid data. He significantly notes that people should not charge electric cars during the day, that it should not even “enter people’s minds” to top off the battery during the day. He tells us that charging the Volt will have the same current draw as running two plasma TVs for 6 hours. He cautions about maintaining a “slow slide” to the electric car to not overwhelm the grid.

He thinks it could take about 15 years to get to a 5% penetration of the auto fleet by plug-ins.

We talked about GM and the Volt, the idea began 2 years ago. Like everyone else who is very knowledgeable, he is convinced about how real and realistic the program is, and how committed engineers are truly involved.

We also discussed an interesting method Mike Duoba in his lab developed to calculate fuel economy in electric range extended cars like the Volt. In this method the car is driven repeatedly through federal city cycles (6 miles) until the ICE kicks in, then it is driven one more. The fuel economy would then be calculated as the amount of gas used divided by the miles and controlling for electric consumption.

ANL’s site: (LINK)

Part 2 of the interview will be forthcoming

I just had the chance to speak with Nick Zielinksi about the most recent Chevy Volt developments including among other topics, the rationale for recent executive restructuring and a discussion about highway driving range. See video below:

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk0YOekzhNI]

This was a question I had posed early on after the car was first introduced. Engineers responded that it should be pretty quiet.

Humans have been used to driving combustion engine powered vehicles for 100 years.

Electric engines by nature do not make much of a sound. Hidden deep in the body of a high tech, well-insulated car, perhaps no noticeable sound at all to a driver in the cabin.

Of course, the Volt also has an on-board ICE-generator which will kick-in after 40 miles of driving.

This then presents a dilemma, which we’ve discussed before. Will the driver be shocked when the ICE kicks in? Will he/she be puzzled when the acceleraotr is depressed and the ICE continues to hum along at a constant RPM?

We have reported that GM might be planning to artificially program the RPMs of the ICE to give it a more natural interaction with the accelerator pedal.

Now, in an interview with Cars.com, Dave Lyon, GM’s executive director of interior design for North America, admits “One thing we’re debating now is whether an electric should make noise.”, and “We’re debating whether we can dial up noise, just like you can by adjusting the ringer level on your cell phone,”.

He alludes to the fact that the car could alert us to how many all-electric miles it has left, and notify us that the generator is about to fire up.

He says, “the car could advise that if you lower your speed by so many miles an hour, or turn the radio off or turn up the temp on the air conditioning or do all of those that you can make the 20 miles needed to get home.”

Clearly, to design a car like the Volt, many new issues have to be considered .