GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site

If and when the Chevrolet Volt is mass produced and marketed we will all be happy, right? Happy about not spending money on gas and helping to avert oil dependence, Peak Oil, and not contributing to global warming.

Indeed George Bush has requested that Americans reduce our gasoline consumption by 20% in the next decade.

Certainly if GM produces a high quality, safe, effective and enjoyable electric car they stand to make a lot of money.

We need to consider what the effect of widespread acceptance and adaption of the Volt and similar cars will have on our economy.

Here are some interesting facts:

-Number of cars in US 240 million, ~100 million passenger cars

-Number of licensed drivers 196 million

-Each car has 23 mpg avg EPA and is driven 12000 miles per year

-75% of all drives less than 40 miles, that’s 900 billion miles

-This would amount to a savings of 40 billion gallons of gas saved, with a retail cost of ~100 billion dollars

-U.S. consumes 146 billions of gas per year.

This would mean 100 billion dollars of revenue yearly would be lost by the major oil companies, and only partly (we hope) recovered by the utility companies. The largest U.S. oil company, ExxonMobil had revenue of 370 billion in 2006 (a record) with 36 billion in profit. Would they be happy with 75 billion less revenue? We need to figure out how to keep Big Oil from squashing the electric car revolution. Let them make the batteries? We’d love to hear your thoughts…

By now we’ve all heard about DaimlerChrysler’s woes in terms of financial losses. Reports are now beginning to surface that GM may be in talks to buy the Chrysler division. As we’ve reported in a previous post, DC has already released a fleet of 20 lithium-battery powered PHEVs for a pilot program. There could be significant synergy in the development of the E-Flex system if GM buys Chrysler. There have also been reports about how GM hopes to be able to roll out the E-flex PHEV (Volt) on a worldwide level by fitting it to the already low cost high economy of scale Cobalt platform. Gm has said that that platform will physically receive the E-flex motor and batteries well.

Another good review on the current crop of battery companies, their current projects and their future projects appeared in USA today over the weekend. See article here. An interesting note is that A123 is considering an IPO. Yet another politician with the Volt appears in the accompanying photo.

Here’s what we know and don’t know about the battery so far:

The Volt has a 400-pound, 16-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack attached to the 160 hp electric motor.
Since 1 kilowatt-hour = 1000 watts expended over 1 hour,the battery can produce 16000 watts per hour. Peak output is 136KW.
At 40 mph battery will discharge in 1 hour, at 60 mph battery will discharge in 40 minutes.

The current cost in the prototype of the Li-ion battery pack is about $20,000 (reference) , the goal price for production will be $5000.

We don’t know how long the battery will last considering the likelihood of frequent deep-drain cyclings, and a car should last at least 100K miles (that would be 2500 cycles). We also don’t know at how low a temperature it will operate.
GM has awarded contracts to develop Li-ion batteries with four companies connected in two joint ventures:

One is Cobasys combined with A123Systems. Cobasys is a joint venture between Chevron Technology Ventures LLC, a subsidiary of Chevron Corporation (NYSE: CVX) and Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ: ENER).

The other is Johnson Controls (NYSE:JCI) combined with Saft.

The government is also closely working with these companies for military applications.

We have invited Keith Watson at A123 to give us some comments, and hopefully shed some light on the don’t knows..

An excellent article can be found here, in the Wall Street Journal about how gas pricing can affect the Volt. We know of course that low prices cannot possibly last as demand is likely at a tipping point for outstripping production.