GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site

A number of important GM related news items recently broke that are worth recognizing.

General Electric Commits to Deploying 25,000 Electric Cars
The first was an announcement from General Electric that the company plans to deploy 25,000 electric cars into its global fleet by 2015.

It will acheive this goal both by converting half of its global fleet of 30,000 cars to electric and by purchasing electric cars from autmotkers.

Its initial purchase will be 12,000 Chevrolet Volts from GM. Cars from other automakers will be added as they become available.

“Electric vehicle technology is real and ready for deployment and we are embracing the transformation with partners like GM and our fleet customers,” said GE Chairman and CEO Jeff Immelt. “By electrifying our own fleet, we will accelerate the adoption curve, drive scale, and move electric vehicles from anticipation to action.

GM CEO Dan Akerson said, “GE’s commitment reflects confidence that electric vehicles are a real-world technology that can reduce both emissions and our dependence on oil. It is also a vote of confidence in the Chevrolet Volt, which we will begin delivering to retail customers by the end of this year. We are pleased that the Volt will play a major role in this program, which will spur innovation and benefit our companies, our customers, and society as a whole.”

Dont worry about GE taking all the Volts away from consumers. “It’s between now and 2015,” says GM spokesperson Rob Peterson. “So the volumes are manageable.”

Cruze Eco Officially Gets 42 MPG Highway

GM also announced that its Chevrolet Cruze Eco model had been given an official fuel economy designation by the EPA. The $18,995 sedan received an impressive 42 MPG on the highway, and 28 MPG city, the highest of any non-hybrid vehilce on the roads.  These impressive numbers are only for the manual transmission.

GM points out this compact car’s fuel economy is better than the Ford Fiesta sub-compact, the Honda Civic, and hybrids including the Ford Fusion, Toyota Camry, and Nissan Altima hybrids.

The Cruze Eco achieves its success though a combination of aerodynamics tweaks similar to the Volt that give it a CD of .298.  It is also mass optimized and uses the efficient 1.4 L turbo Ecotec 4-cylinder engine which can produce up to 138 horsepower.

“Chevrolet Cruze continues to redefine the compact segment, offering class-leading standard safety features, upscale amenities – as well as hybrid-like fuel economy without the price,” said Chuck Russell, vehicle line director. “The Cruze Eco is in a league of its own and will challenge perceptions of the efficiency available in a more affordable non-hybrid.”

Opel Ampera Pricing Released

Finally GM announced pricing on the European version of the Chevrolet Volt known as the Opel Ampera.  The car is identical from an engineering perspective though exterior design as mildly different, and tailored to the Opel brand and the European market.

Unfortunately for them, our European brethren will have to fork up quite a few Euros for the pleasure of Voltec-based driving.  The car will start at 45,900 Euros which translates to almost $59,000 dollars.  There is a 19% value added tax (VAT) in Germany which brings the cost to 36,050 Euros or about $49,000.

Online reservations started on Thursday on opel-ampera.com.

Living with the Volt Update

In my second day of driving the Volt, my love for the car grew stronger.  It’s really an amazing car.   Solid, sleek, satisfying and brimming with technology and real-time connectedness.

I began the day with a charged battery reading 36 miles of EV range.  I reached my first destination 22.7 miles away with 15 miles shown remaining.  My office was another 7.5 miles and I got there with 7 miles EV range remaining.  I was able to charge at 120-v at my office from 9:30AM to 5:00 PM and when I left for home, 33 miles of EV range remained.  I made it home for a total daily drive of 59.3 miles with 4 miles of range left, and never burned any gas.

Thus for my first two days in total I drove 122.8 miles using .32 gallons of gas, or 384 MPG.

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This week BMW took a giant step fully into electrification of the automobile.  The company has gradually been working towards a production electric vehicle program beginning with the MINI E test fleet it leased to 450 Americans starting in 2009.

Next it plans a small scale test program of an Active E electric 1-series.

BMW has just announced, however, that it would be investing €400 million, or $568 million, to bring the third stage vehicle in this program, the Megacity into production.

The money would be for development and to retool and prepare their plant in Leipzig, Germany for electric car production.

The company also announced it would bring to production the rather complex and dramatic Vision Efficient Dynamics electric sports car that is a mixture of pure EV, PHEV, and extended range electric drivetrains.  The car has a 3 cylinder turbo 163 hp deisel engine and two electric motors.  The first motor is situated between the engine and the transmission and produces up to 51 hp.  The second motor is positioned at the rear and can produce up to 139 hp.  Combined, the the powerplants can produce 328 hp, enough to propel the car from 0 to 60 in 4.8 seconds while at the same time managing over 60 MPG.  The car has a lithium ion battery pack and can also travel up to 31 miles on electricity alone.

This car will be a low volume dramatic and expensive statement that will be available in 2013.

The Megacity electric car will be the bread and butter vehicle.  A design freeze has reportedly been achieved and advanced prototypes will soon begin road testing.  BMW will likely produce tens of thousands of these vehicles starting in 2013.

The Megacity will be marketed as a sub-brand and will likely be a 5-seater similar in size to the MINI.  It will be ultralight weight and made out of carbon fiber supplied by a company in Washington state.

Like GM and Nissan before it, BMW is trying to keep the development open to hook early adopters.

“We have never been this open about an ongoing development process. We sense a hunger for information,” said BMW chief of design Adrian van Hooydonk. “People will see that it’s a BMW, but they will also see that it’s a BMW like no other.”

“By producing the Megacity Vehicle in Germany the BMW Group is demonstrating a clear commitment to Germany as a high-tech location. With this vehicle we are revolutionising automotive design and production, and offering our customers the first purpose-built electric vehicle for urban areas. This will be the world’s first volume-produced car with a passenger compartment made from lightweight CFRP, as less weight enables a longer range,” said BMW Chairman Norbert Reithofer. “We made a conscious decision to produce the car in Germany, at our plant in Leipzig – our newest and most cutting-edge facility with the most flexible structures,” he added

Source (New York Times) and (BMW)

Once in a while in this long saga that is GM-Volt we have to turn our eyes to financial news.

Late Wednesday the company released a trifecta of positive news; sales were up, profits were up, and terms of the IPO were released.

Sales
In the month of October GM sold 183,392 vehicles, 13% more units than it did in Ocotber 2009. By brand, Chevrolet increased 7%, Buick increased 39%, GMC increased 30%, and Cadillac increased 15%. The growth was fueled mostly by crossover and full-sized pickup sales. In fact over 47,000 of the vehicles sold were GMC Sierras and Chevrolet Silverado pickup trucks. GM did sell 5048 units of the newly introduced all-important Chevrolet Cruze. Chevrolet sales made up 68% of the total.  GM picked up 2% market share.

GM also became the first automaker to sell 2 million vehicles in China, and in October alone sold 199,641 units there, more than in the US.

Meanwhile Ford sales were up 19%, Chrysler 37%, and Toyota actually dropped 4.4%.  In October the SAAR for car sales overall reached 12 million.

Profits
GM also decided to release preliminary third quarter financials. The company reported it expected revenue of $34 billion for the quarter, with net earnings on that of $1.9 to $2.1 billion attributable to comon stockholders which amounts to $2.2 to $2.4 billion in earnings prior to interest and taxes. The company even says it expects profit in the fourth quater, though lower due to increased cost associated with the launch of the Cruze and Volt.

“We are extremely pleased with the level of progress the company is making,” said Chris Liddell, GM vice chairman and chief financial officer. “We will deliver a solid and profitable first year post-bankruptcy, and we are continuing to improve our balance sheet and most importantly, the quality of our vehicles.”

IPO
GM also announced Wednesday it had commenced its long awaited public offering of stock expect to yeild $13 billion. The company will issue 356 million shares of common stock (to be sold be certain shareholders) that will be priced between 26.00 and 29.00 per share. There will be an additional 50 million shares of preferred series B stock sold at $50.00 per share.

After the IPO there will be 1.5 billion shares outstanding and the US gover,ment will have reduced its holding to 43% down from 61%. It is expected the stock will be priced on November 17th and enter the secondary market on the following day in the NYSE under the old symbol GM.

The IPO would put GMs value at around 41 billion currently and it will still take a few years for the government to sell off the rest of its stake.  If GM can eventually reach a market capitalization of $70 billion, or around $43 per share, the government will be able to recoup all its investment and break even. That value would put the company greater than Ford and less than Toyota.

The stock sale is being underwritten by Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan. BofA Merrill Lynch, Citi, Goldman, Sachs & Co., Barclays Capital, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank Securities and RBC Capital Markets will be the joint book-running managers for the offering.

Source (GM)

In following the Volt for nearly four years, we often consider whether GM will offer other Voltec variants or perhaps even a pure electric car for the US market.

Though GM has shown a few scattered electric concepts over the year, only the Cadillac Converj was known to be production-ready. Unfortunately, that program was cancelled at the height of GM’s financial distress. It was also largely believed GM would have struggled to create a Cadillac performance car with only the same 16 kwh battery the Volts uses.

The dearth of information about any additional GM electric car plans often frustrates enthusiasts.  It also inflames critic who often call the Volt a one-off niche car.  A new report from the Detroit Bureau may shed some light on why things have been silent so far, and how soon that might change.

GM is known to be studying several options and ideas for electrified vehicles other than the Volt, but at this point apparently nothing has been internally greeenlighted.  Reportedly the birth of any of these future elctric cars hinges on how successful GM’s upcoming IPO is.

The Detroit Bureau has quoted well-placed senior GM source as confirming that research and development of future Voltec vehicles “is moving ahead,” but offered no specific details. These sources also confided that GM’s decision-makers must “watch to see how well the IPO does,” to determine if sufficent funds are avaiable to expand the electrification program.

Indeed CEO Dan Akerson had previously suggested GM needed to make decisions about their next electric steps very shortly. It is expected his keen interest in expanding electricification is why Akerson has said he thinks GM “will be very different five, 10 years from now.”  Akerson also told GM-Volt in direct communication that he was “a STRONG advocate of the Volt and the erev technology.” He added “I think it is fair to say that this will be a top priority at GM.”

When GM begins selling its stock later in the year, a large portion of the proceeds will go towards paying back government debt accrued during bankruptcy re-organization.  It is the magnitude of what is left over for the corporate cash coffers that will directly influence how much money GM is able to use for R&D efforts to build more electric cars.

If the IPO is a windfall expect plenty of Volt brethren. If not, some analysts beleive GM will still be willing to “scrounge and scrape” to further the electric cause.

Source (TheDetroitBureau)

Will the Chevrolet Volt bet pay off for GM?

This is a very big question.

It’s hard for me to believe I have followed the development of this car so closely for so long, and that we are now actually only days from the first retail sale. GM has poured tremendous resources into developing this car both from a financial as well as human resources perspective, not to mention to propagating an exhaustively voluminous stream of news, PR, and media along with it. All through oil spikes, the nation’s financial meltdown and even the company’s own bankruptcy and restructuring.

All the while the Volt has been held up as GM’s great hope. The hope that this car and how it reflects what this company is capable of will finally persuade a disinterested if not downright bitter public to switch to GM-made vehicles.

The Volt will arrive, but will arrive in very low volumes, and very few locations, and at a price point above what the average household can afford.

Many times over the years critics have called the Volt a halo car, meaning simply a trophy to symbolically cast the company in a better more environmentally sensitive light. It is well known that GM has spent over 1 billion dollars to develop the car, and that profit margin on each unit will be razor thin at best. At this point it still isn’t a great business case, or is it? You see GM executives are confident the Volt will lead people to buy GM cars even if they cannot buy the Volt.

“When consumers see that (car), they quickly go to the notion that you are smart enough to design and engineer and manufacture a vehicle that’s this capable and this innovative, [and] you just must make better vehicles overall,” said Volt marketing director Tony DiSalle.

DiSalle thinks the Volt will lure people into dealerships only to leave with lower-priced more-profitable high-volume conventional gas cars.

“People would come in to look at it, and not necessarily be in the target for a Volt — and become extremely interested in a Cruze,” he said.

Despite GM’s confidence Volt-lust will sell Cruzes, analysts are less certain.

“They’re learning about the market, they’re learning about the consumer, they’re learning about the technology,” says Brett Smith of the Center for Automotive Research. “Give it 10 years, look back and I think it will be interesting. But right now, it’s a great experiment.”

An expensive experiment at that.

Source (NPR)

One thing us enthusiasts hope for is high demand and production of the Chevrolet Volt.

The exact planned number had been in flux for a number of years, but in the Summer Volt marketing director Tony DiSalle announced GM would produce 10,000 Volts in 2011, and 30,000 in 2012.  Shortly after that the 2012 number was upwardly revised to 45,000 reportedly based on demand.

At this point GM says Volt orders are coming in “hot and heavy.”  DiSalle also advised me in personal communication that GM already has 150,000 handraisers for the car, not including the 50+ thousand on this website.  He noted GM was “hearing from dealers that many have significantly more demand than allocation.”

At the recent Volt media launch, vehicle line director Doug Parks has further revised the numbers.

He said GM would be building between 10,000 and 15,000 Volts in 2011, and likely will build to the maximum capacity of 60,000 in 2012. This number realigns with the old projections Bob Lutz used to give.

Parks concedes maybe even that won’t be enough.  “Starting in ’12, we’ll be at this max rate of 60,000,” Parks said.  “If we think this thing is crazy higher volume than we thought, we have the ability to increase volume and crank that up.” GM’s Browstown battery plant where the packs are produced is believed to be expandable to at least 100,000 units annually, if not more. Supplier LG Chem has substantial cell capacity in Korea and is already building a Michigan plant which will go into operation next year.

Parks did note that 5000 cars from the 2011 production run will be exported to Canada and other countries like China.

He also acknowledged the high initial price of the Volt is a barrier to mass adoption, and that many people who would wan’t the car couldn’t afford it. The $7500 tax credit and superb $350 per month lease price will help, but GM does plan to get costs down in time.

“Our business model for the Volt is not finalized yet,” he said. “We need to continue to make that (price) better as we go forward.”

Source (Detroit News)