GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site

General Motors CEO Dan Akerson

And finally production of the Chevrolet Volt for consumer delivery has commenced, and with it this country’s first big steps from oil dependence.

The Volt has turned out to be a success from a technology perspective and from the perspective of industry accolades, sweeping four key vehicle of the year awards.

GM has long expected demand for the car will far outstrip supply. Only 10,000 to 15,000 Volts will be produced in 2011, and 45,000 in 2012. How much the demand is remains unknown. As of this writing, GM has now signed up 240,000 interested parties or potential buyers through the Chevrolet.com website.

If there are really that many buyers surely GM will have to build more.

According to reports, outside yesterday’s launch ceremony, GM’s CEO Dan Akerson said the company is actually now studying how they could either double or triple production of the car if the demand materializes.  ”(We have) studies underway to see what we could do if we had to double production [or] triple production,” said Akerson.  ”I have a sense this is going to be a game changer, we have to be prepared to meet that.”

GM North American President Mark Reuss confirmed that the major bottleneck for increasing Volt production is the production and supply of lithium-ion battery cells by LG Chem. Though the Koeran company has massive capacity, only a a certain volume is earmarked for Volt.

Akerson also disclosed GM plans to begin exporting Voltec in the form of the Opel Ampera starting in 2011, increasing the need for supply even more.  Akerson also admitted there is almost no profit per each Volt sold at this point, and that they are being sold “for close to cost.”

E85 capability was also discussed. Though the Volt was initially planned to run on E85, this will be not true at least for the first model year of the car.  Actually, according to VP Tom Stephens, GM has not definitely decided if it ever will be an option.    If they do decide to make the car E85 capable, it would not become available until 2012.

GM will start delivering Volts to dealerships this month and will roll them out to the seven locations already announced (NY, NJ, CT, TX, MI, CA, DC) over the next 12 months in limited supply. Over the first half of 2012 it will become available nationwide.

Source (Automotive News)

Freshly back from my trip to Detroit where I was named to the Volt Consumer Advisory Board, and new news has already started to break.

After more than three years of debate on how large the Volt’s gas tank is, the real number has finally materialized.

One of my fellow advisory board members Colin Summers of California, who is a former EV-1 driver, was able to extract this detail from someone he ran into at our drive event.

“The gas tank on the Volt is 9.3 gallons,” he writes.

At no point has any official Volt team member or engineer confirmed this value to me in the past, and it is expected that we advisory board members will figure it out anyway once we take possesion of our cars in a few weeks.

After pointing out Colin’s report, I was able to confirm this number is indeed true.

It still doesn’t exactly tell us miles per gallon in charge-sustaining mode though as we don’t know total gas range. GM says it will be at least 300 miles, but perhaps more. At 300 miles, charge sustaining combined MPG would be 32.

We need to realize this inoformation is not as important as we think though. The Volt is really about the total car experience and the fact that the majority of driving will be done on electricity alone.

Source (Voltaday)

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)

Peak oil is the theory and study of the time when global oil production reaches its maximum rate and then declines terminally, despite growing demand. Peak oil is a fact of nature that either will shortly occur or is presently occurring; oil is a finite resource and at some point remaining reserves will decline and not be able to keep up with demand.

It is a very compelling reason to move towards electrification the automobile.

Generally large western democratic governments do not publish reports on the study of peak oil or its consequence, for fear of causing public distress. However a document produced by the German military was recently leaked to the media via the German outlet Der Spiegel.

This document was never meant to be seen by the public and outlines some very dramatic, drastic, and sobering consequences of peak oil.

The report claims there is “some probability that peak oil will occur around the year 2010 and that the impact on security is expected to be felt 15 to 30 years later.”

Analysis of the report has led to seven key findings.

• Oil will determine power:
  Oil producing nations will gain considerable power in the international landscape and will use this power to expand their domestic and foreign policies in their own best interests.
• Increasing importance of oil exporters:
  Oil importing countries will have to compete with each other to obtain oil from oil exporters. This will allow the oil exporting countries to implement their political, economic, and ideological goals on dependent nations including the use of aggressive and assertive tactics.
• Politics in place of the market:
  The global oil market will retract from free-trade mechanisms and degenerate into two-way contracts between oil producing and oil importing nations.
• Market failures:
  The report paints a bleak picture of the global economy as oil shortages develop. Since all goods depend on oil to transport them, shortages and price escalations of vital goods will arise. “In the medium term the global economic system and every market-oriented national economy would collapse,” the study authors conclude.
• Relapse into planned economy:
  Since all economic sectors are reliant on oil, peak oil could lead to complete or partial failure of all markets. This could lead to goverments’ rationing of vital goods.
• Global chain reaction:
  There will not be enough time to restructure oil supplies among dependent nations.  Since those nations are so closely intertwined, including Germany, economic crises or crashes will rapidly will spread throughout the developed world.
  
• Crisis of political legitimacy:
  So potent is the grip of oil dependence, the report predicts that it is possible even democracy itself won’t be able to survive peak oil.  The would create openings for extremist forms of government, intense political distress, and even open violent conflict in the streets.

Clearly these predictions are drastic, but it is important to take note that this report wasn’t written by some fringe psychopathic recluse, but by the military of one of the largest democratic economies in the world.

I’m not sure what I can do about it, but hopefully buying a Chevy Volt is a first step in the right direction.  Let’s hope we have enough time and ingenuity to avert this potential outcome.

Source (Der Spiegel)

We already know the Volt offers normal mode, sports mode, and mountain mode.  There will also be a fourth mode of operation called maintenance mode.

The purpose of this function is to maintain the gasoline engine-generator in cases where it is rarely or never used. If the engine is never run, fuel may go stale, and mechanical parts may seize.

“We’ve initiated somethingcalled the maintenance mode,” Volt director Tony Posawatz told Automotive Engineering.

“Just like having fuel and oil monitors and other smart sensors, we have a system in this vehicle that will be able to keep track of how long the engine hasn’t run,” he said. “It can then give an update to the customer and run the maintenance mode to burn off fuel and lubricate the powertrain’s moving parts.”

The exact parameters of maintenance mode havent been finalized yet, but since many users may rarely use the engine its role is very important.

I asked Tony if maintenance mode will go on automatically or if drivers will be prompted to activate it when the system sense it is needed.

“Driver will be prompted and can select when to engage jut like software updates on your computer,” he said. “At some point and time, the car will override and initiate maintenance mode to protect the car and the customer.”

I also asked Tony that if only a little fuel was burned once in a while in maintenance mode, since gas could still go stale after a year, whether there will be another way to drain the fuel.

“There are other ways to burn off the fuel, like using mountain mode, for example to build additional battery charge buffer,” he said. “You can also not plug-in for a day, drive longer distances, or heaven forbid, not put much gas in the car in the first place and only fill up before longer journeys.”

“More to come,” he added.

An interesting attribute of the Chevy Volt is the fact that gas in its tank may rarely if ever get used. GM has recommended the tank be kept about half full though some people who drive less than 40 miles per day may very rarely if ever experience the generator going on.

Gas doesn’t last forever and has a tendency to go stale.  One way GM has dealt with this is to require the use of premium gasoline, which takes longer to go stale than regular gas.

Another method is keeping the tank water tight.  The presence of water in gas accelerates the aging process.

Autoblog may have uncovered a third mechanism GM is planning for the Volt.

Application 20100186702 was filed to the US Patent Office on January 29,2009 by GM.

It is a for a system that delivers fuel additive on-board a plugin hybrid having both an electric and hybrid mode of operation.  The system has a reservoir to hold the additive, a pump and conduit to deliver it to the fuel tank,  and a controller.

“The systems and method minimize spoiled fuel and fuel deposits, and therefore minimize damaged fuel system equipment for plug-in hybrid electric vehicles,” the author writes.

The controller uses sensors to detect several properties of the fuel; “elapsed time interval since previous fuel additive addition to the fuel tank , temperature, fuel quality, level of the fuel tank , and/or level of the reservoir.”  The system would then determine if additive to prevent spoiling needes to be pumped into the tank.

The system would also detect if no fuel had been uses for a period of 11 month inwhich case a dashboard display would light up, telling the driver the fuel needed to be replaced, as the limetime of fuel is considered to be one year.

The patent application also proposes the system could be used to work with diesel, hydrogen, bio-diesel, and ethanol, pointing to GM future ideas for  Voltec propulsion.

The additive reommended for use in the application is STA-BIL.RTM., commercially available from Gold Eagle Company of Chicago, Ill.

Now it looks like we know what Volt vehicle line director Tony Posawatz meant when he once said “there will be a few that will have their gas go bad, we have ways to address that as well.”

It is unknown if this system will be employed in the first generation Volt, though since the patent is not yet granted, probably not.

Source (USPTO) via (Autoblog)