GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site

GM is about to launch a new corporate advertising campaign, beginning with a commercial to be aired on June 22 during NBCs Meet the Press.

The TV commercial will apparently begin with the following Dear John letter from GM:

“Dear Oil,
We’ve had this great relationship for many years. We think we will both be a lot happier and healthier if we see less of each other.”

It truly remarkable to see the changes that are underfoot. A massive industry, and a leading giant within it is beginning to swear off the stuff that made it all happen for the last 100 years.

Source (Automotive News, subscription required)

On a related note, GM has just announced a partnership with Clean Energy Fuels Corp to build a new hydrogen fueling station in Los Angeles near LAX. GM has been engineering hydrogen fuel cell vehicles for some time and already has a fleet of 100 fuel cell Equinoxes in consumers hands called Project Driveway (see my test drive video). The fuel cell generator Volt is also production intent (2012′ish), and now has Nick Zielinksi as its vehicle line director.

Despite GMs clear desire to bring fuel cells to the masses, they have been stymied by the lack of infrastructure. Apparently reluctant to wait for the infrastructure to build itself, and spurred by the latest gas and oil prices, GM has obviously decided to help do it themselves.

In the words of Mary Beth Stanek, director of energy and environmental policy & commercialization at GM, “Developing and growing hydrogen infrastructure is vital to GM’s efforts to bring larger volumes of fuel cell vehicles to the market.”

Source (GM)

First on this Memorial Day my heartfelt thanks and appreciation to our troops on the battlefield, and my wishes for their safe return, and thanks too to all those veterans who have gone before them, and let us remember those who have lost their lives for our freedom.

When the Volt was first introduced in January 2007, oil was roughly $60 per barrel. Now it has touched $135. Timely as the Volt concept was then, GM couldn’t have predicted how important this car rapidly would become.

U.S. gas prices are now around the $4.00 mark or greater. Analysts point out that although oil prices have increased 33% since the beginning of the year, gas prices have only increased 22%. Refineries have been absorbing some of the cost increase, but this may not be able to continue. The oil price bubble may grow further, and Goldman Sachs predicts it could hit $200 barrel within the next 6 months to 2 years. This could translate into a $6-$7 per gallon gas.

Source (MarketWatch )

In a New York Times editorial, Ben Stein paints a very bleak picture. Conjuring up images of 6000 pound SUVs being used to chauffeur 100 pound teenagers, and the apocalyptic chaos of Mad Max movies, he writes “the prognosis for gasoline is grim in the long run.”

He points out that 2/3 of U.S. gas is imported and mostly from countries whose governments and people don’t like us, and asks what will happen, for example, if Venezuela decided to stop sending us oil.

Further, the threat of peak oil and the likelihood we are already there is put forth. Equally dismal is how woefully ill-prepared he feels the country will be to handle rapidly diminishing supplies.

He tells us we have become deeply and inextricably dependent on oil, and that if nothing is done about it, the future is terrifying.

His solution. Turn coal into oil, build nuclear plants, drill everywhere and “brush aside the concerns of the beautiful people who live on coastal pastures.”

I agree the situation is an emergency and drastic measures are needed, but Mr.Stein forgot to mention one obvious thing. Build and drive electric vehicles. And then very well, not only might the Volt save GM, but it may go along way to help save this country.

Source (New York Times )

As we know, the Chevy Volt should be able to drive for 40 or more miles on pure electricity when fully charged. Since most drivers travel less than 40 miles per day, it is quite possible gas could sit in the tank without ever or hardly ever being burned. Indeed, GM engineers decided to downsize the tank from 12 gallons in the concept to some smaller amount perhaps around 7 gallons. We were also advised that the car could run without any fuel in the tank at all should the driver desire.

It is frequently asked then how the Volt might deal with gas sitting for too long in the tank and getting stale. I discussed this with Volt lead engineer Andrew Farah, who in fact confirmed the Volt team is thinking about this:

GM-Volt How can you deal with the gas getting stale if not used?

Farah: We have talked about it. Remember its (the tank) a complete sealed semi-pressurized system. What make gas go bad is some of the volatile evaporate as well as the absorption of water. The good stuff evaporates and the bad stuff condenses. The tank is special to prevent this, but will it be enough? We don’t know. Over the next couple of years were going to do some work to make sure we’ve got that understood. But we still like to say,’ maybe you will change your fuel rather than change your oil’.

There is also some debate about how big we should make the tank. During the discussion in New York (Volt Nation) some of your guys said maybe it should just be a gallon, they said “I’m always going to run on EV, I just need a little backup to get me to another gas station. This is something the customer can choose whether to put a gallon in or not.”

Farah also noted the tank will likely contain a specialized system for sensing water accumulation, and that perhaps a dashboard light might advise you if your gas has indeed finally gone bad.

70% of respondents of a new international poll believed that world oil production has already peaked, and only 22% believe enough new oil will be found to allow it to remain a primary fuel source.

Steven Kull director of the poll’s publisher WorldPublicOpinion.org said "What’s most striking is there’s such a widespread consensus around the world that oil is running out and governments need to make a real effort to find new sources of energy,"

Also there is a report of an attack Sunday on a Japanese oil tanker off the coast of Yemen, by a rocket fired from a small ship. This helped push the cost of oil to a new record of over $117 per barrel.

Source (Reuters )

Ethanol supply produced from corn grown on U.S. croplands has been increasing and is thought by some as an opportunity to reduce petroleum consumption. Indeed carmakers like GM have been promoting E85 engines, and the U.S. government has been subsidizing farmers to produce corn.

The use of corn ethanol as being net energy positive is controversial with estimates ranging from 1 to 1 – 1 to 1.3 in terms of energy put in to energy gained. Burning ethanol produced from corn has been proposed to have a net decrease on carbon emissions, the theory being that the corn absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere as it grows, releasing it as in burns in a 1 to 1 ratio, whereas fossil fuel use produces new atmospheric carbon dioxide (greenhouse gas) from sequestered stores.

Today the leading journal Science published an expedited study which calls this second potential benefit into question.

The study by Searchinger et. al. actually looks at the global effect when U.S. farmers use land to produce ethanol. As a a result, farmers in other parts of the world will have to ramp up crop production in order to make up for the net loss from the U.S. They will clear grassland and forests to do so. The study suggests that the net effect of this behavior will be to double greenhouse gas emissions over 30 years. Also if U.,S. farmers use cropland to produce switchgrass for cellulosic ethanol, greenhouse gas emissions will increase by 50%. The authors conclude that if ethanol is produced from waste materials, however, there will be a net reduction in GHG emissions.

The study concludes that U.S. policy should take this potentially deleterious global effect into account before continuing to endorse and subsidize corn production from ethanol.

GM admits to planning for 50% of its cars to be flex-fuel capable by 2012, but also has partnered with waste-ethanol producer Coskata.

Source (Science, subscription req’d)

Corn can be converted into ethanol, but yields only about a 30% increase in energy over what is put in and of course requires food crop to make it. Being able to use other sources of carbon such as biomass or switchgrass is important if ethanol use in the U.S. is to become widespread.

Making cellulosic ethanol from renewable sources other than corn and sugarcane has been difficult, expensive, and inefficient however, until now that is.

GM’s CEO Rick Wagoner has just moments ago announced a partnership with a company that has been in “stealth mode” since 2006. The company, called Coskata, is based in Illinois and has venture capital funding from among other sources Vinod Khosla.

Today they have broken their silence with an announcement of an ethanol from renewable sources production breakthrough.

The company uses a gasification process to convert organic matter (including garbage, and old tires) into CO2 and hydrogen gas. Using proprietary microorgansisms, the gases are converted in a highly efficient manner into ethanol reaching 97% purity.

Now if that isn’t enough, their process is also inexpensive – it costs under a dollar to make a gallon of ethanol. Whatsmore the energy conversion process is remarkably efficient, for every one unit of energy put in (the gasification process requires heat), up to 7.7 units of energy is returned.

Furthermore, the technique results in an overall 84% reduction in CO2 emissions versus gasoline.

The company has plans to scale up massively. Their first commercial demonstration facility will go online this year, and a plant capable of producing 100 million gallons of ethanol per year will go online in 2011.

Read the full press release below.

 More