GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site

Now that the Chevy Volt program is on the home stretch with an eye towards launch in less than a year, GM has created a new position, director of global Volt marketing.  Maria Rohrer has been assigned the job, and I had the chance to sit down with her for a brief Q&A.

What’s your position?
I am the director of global Volt on the marketing side.
I work on coordinating with all of the countries around the world developing the global Chevrolet brand. I will have global Volt launch marketing responsibilities including here in the US.

Is launch marketing a new chapter? It wasn’t talked about a year ago.
It was not. With my appointment, I came in so many days ago with global marketing responsibility already. And since Volt will be global in nature. It will be here, it will be in Europe, it will be in China, it will Be in Canda. It’s primarily global. From that standpoint it makes sense to look at it from a global standpoint. We do have very capable peole on the ground running the Chevrolet business. So we’re going to be coordinating with all of the countries where its going to be going.

How many countries will the Volt eventually be available in?
It’s a sizable list in Europe plus China, Canda, and the US.

How about South America?
Not right now

India?
Not right now.

Not Korea or Japan?
No.

Do you already have a clear internal roadmap for US rollout of the Volt?
We are putting the plan together as we speak. So stay tuned, we are going to make announcements as we get closer and closer to launch.

It will start regional and eventually get to national. Chevrolet is a national brand.

What are the pros and cons to a simultaneous rollout everywhere in the US at once as opposed to just California first? People on my site are all around the country and want it now.
There is a very strong sense of acceptance of this kind of vehicle in California. That’s number one.

You think the demand is greatest there?
The demand is absolutely the greatest there. It doesn’t mean we wont have demand elsewhere, we definitely will. Volt is the kind of vehicle that is gaining lots of different traction all over the place. I think people in California understand what it stands for, what its all about, are open to diffent propulsion systems, and this is a market that will receive it from day one very very well.

Absolutely it is our intent thought to make it as national as possible. Strategically the California market early on makes a lot of sense.

I am struggling with that, what’s the downside of letting everyone have it all at once?
There is no downside but, for example, I spent a lot of years at Saturn. My background is such that I am incredibly interested in pursuing the customer experience as we roll this out. So there is a whole separate element separate from the rollout which is making sure that everywhere we go that we can actually nail the custom experience as we go. That is incredibly important to this vehicle and to the company. Doing it haphazardly I think will jeopardize that.

So you’re saying a slow careful gradual rollout?
I’m not saying slow. I’m saying careful and calculated making sure that the customers that are buygin into us absolutely have the kind of treatment, the kind of service, the kind of experience that I would expect them to have for something that is as unique and unusual as our electric vehicle.

What kind of special treatment are the early buyers going to get?
We’re still working on that . Clealry with our renewed and refreshed dealer body, healthier with a greater sense of how we have to take care of our customers, at Chevrolet we’re absolutely going after the best experience. With an electric vehicle there are just going to be needs that are different than for the rest of the vehicles in the showroom.

You mean servicing?
Yes. Its a different propulsion system that they haven’t seen. It will require education training and a different level of attention. The role is to treat everybody wonderfully in the Chevrolet stores. The vehicle by itself technically will require some different knowledge bases and different certifications that we will have.

I want to be very sure that we are securing that relationship and that experience as we go.

How about the issues if installing 240V chargers being a unique part of the buyers experience. Do you forsee a potential problem there? For example BMW with the MINI-E program had a difficult time getting chargers approved by some local municipalities.
Im not worried about it but I’m cognizant of it because of some of the feedback we’re getting is just like what you say. We are looking at whether that is something that we would want to do. I think as I look at the nature of the consumers we are likely to get, there are a lot of consumers that already have 240 running. Most people have 240 lined up already, whether its in the garage is another story. I’m taking all of that into consideration. Is that something that we want to do or, if people coming to us are very capable in some cases they may just want to do it themselves?

You might give them that option?
We might. We are learning from all the feedback that we’re getting.

Can you give me a picture about how long its going to be from when the first market gets it until every market gets it in the US?
Hard to say at this point, but it all depends on how we secure the customer experience along the way.

Would you consider working with the GM-Volt.com Want List in some way?
I won’t say no at this point.

I had a discussion with Alex Cattelan, the Chevy Volt’s chief powertrain engineer about the engineering design and operation of the Chevy Volt’s charge sustaining mode.  This is the mode that occurs after the car has depleted the first 40 miles of  range and the gas generator has begun providing electric power.

When you first unveiled the Volt and it was a math model, the car was promoted as getting 50 MPG in generator mode. Now that there are real world parts and parallel hybrid like the Prius verse series. Can you speak about the efficiency difference between series and parallel hybrid operation?
We’re tuning our fuel economy right now. From an architectural perspective there are differences between series and parallel hybrids , there’s absolutely no doubt about that. The issue you mentioned the Volt is a series hybrid when we go into charge sustaining mode or when the engine comes on. We like to think of it not as a hybrid. You’ve got to understand that all of the decisions that we’ve made around this product are made because its an EV. That is the first and foremost thing that it needs to be. So because it is an EV some of the decisions that we’ve made around engine operation will be different than what Toyota makes in its parallel hybrid. For them they are always operating in hybrid mode so they need to optimize everything for engine operation.

In our case we’re optimizing everything for EV operation and the secondary is certainly going to be better than conventional vehicles, but were not necessarily totally optimizing the system for charge sustaining mode because we don’t want to compromise electric vehicle mode.

So to be optimally efficient in charge-sustaining mode you might compromise EV performance?
In the electric vehicle mode, and its not just performance, its efficiency in electric vehicle mode that we’re optimizing.

You mean those first 40 miles?
Right, so you’ve got to remember our principle promise is this is an EV and our engine is there as a range extender and so even when the engine is on, we operate as through we are in EV. All the primary propulsion is satisfied by the electric motor. The engine is really there to supplement power to keep the battery sustained. Now there are a couple of tricks of the trade that we do since we have the engine on more, but for example we don’t want to do a whole lot of gearing that you would do in a parallel hybrid, because none of that is beneficial to you in the EV state.

But doesn’t the fact that you could keep the engine at fixed RPMs also allow you better efficiency?
Actually we don’t keep it at a fixed RPM, we have a window of operation that is optimized. We have been able to optimize the engine for a window of efficiency but it is still best to charge your power and torque levels within that window as the customer torque request varies. We don’t want to always be operating at one state because really you may be putting too much energy into the battery or drawing too much energy out of the battery. It is still good to vary that engine power and torque. Not to follow exactly what the accelerator pedal does, but to optimize efficiency.

We actually have a very sophisticated efficiency calculator in our model within our software. It calculates on a very very short time scale what the driving conditions of the car are. Which mode you are in, whether you turning you engine on or off, and what power and torque you want to run than engine always with the optimization of efficiency in mind as well as managing trade offs for driveability and noise.

We took all of the model that’s in the two mode hybrid and we’ve basically been carving out pieces we don’t need, adding in pieces we do need for this architecture and optimizing that model for this particular vehicle. We didn’t build this from scratch, this is also software that we are using that is also on the 2-mode but we are modifying it for optimizing this architecture.

I’ve driven the 2-mode and notice you can see the switched in mode of operation without feeling it in the car.
Which is the goal, you don’t want you to feel it in the car, we don’t want the customer to know these transitions are taking place, but we need to be able to enable them for efficiency.

With the Volt, once you’re in CS mode you will have a few different windows of operation or just one window for the generator?
We’re optimizing the generator to have different power generating levels. But the beautiful piece of being able to decouple the engine or generator from the axle torque requirement is we can travel along and hit those power levels that we need to optimize the system for battery charging and discharging, we can maneuver across them at any rate of change we so choose.

So think of it as the beauty of being able to decouple the engine is we have a degree of freedom that we don’t have to follow the pedal at all. We can pick and choose the points that are most efficient, we can go between those point on the best path and the most pleasing path to the customer. Actually this is a lot of the work we are doing even on a Prius hybrid every hybrid does it to some extent but every engine is required to follow the pedal. It is much more coupled to the axle torque request than in our vehicle.

It seems to me then you should make CS mode even more efficient then in a car where the engine always has to turn the axle?
Right and it is more efficient than a conventional vehicle because they do have to have that engine coupled. Again were optimizing some of those efficiency point puts we are really doing is focusing on the optimization of the EV. There are trade offs because we absolutely consider this product an EV by nature.

Alex Cattelan is head of the Volt propulsion engineering team.  I had the chance to discuss the current state of Chevy Volt development from her perspective.

What is your role in the Volt program?
I head up the team that does all of the propulsion systems for the Volt. That includes motors, power electronics, we don’t do the battery but we work extensively with the battery team to do the integration of the battery, and the EV propulsion system

Are you only working on the Volt?
I am dedicated to the Volt and I heave a team of people that are dedicated to the Volt and I’m extremely enthusiastic about the Volt. We have segregated a team of people that are working on the Volt and the Volt only.

What are you doing now?
The specific stage of the program that we are in, for powertrain, is building on our third level of hardware which is integrated in the the vehicles. We’re doing all of our validation testing on that level of hardware; we’ve got past development where the architecture needs to be, through two generations of hardware we’ve confirmed all of our performance requirements with that architecture.

There are three major areas I’m focused on right now. Making sure that all of our hardware that has been built to date, that third level of hardware is in testing. We are validating all of our parameters for it; durability, that’s the hugest piece, the reliability, making minor fixed to areas that we’d like to improve.

The other major area that we’re focused on is the calibration of the system which is huge, because it’s a very complex system from the perspective of the torque generators we have, the engine, the motors, the power electronics. So we’re tuning all of those systems to make the vehicle fun to drive, to meet all of our efficiency requirements, our drivability requirements, noise vibration and harshness requirements, and we are now entering the phase of program where we will do all of the development for certification. So that’s fuel economy label certification, and that will continue for some months now. We’re going to test per the procedures that are being developed for this program and verify that all of our calibration is tuned in for optimization of the driving experience along with the efficiency of the vehicles. And that’s really the stage that were tuning into now.

In addition the third element that we’re working on is tuning in the manufacturing systems. So we’ve been building our production in our manufacturing plant and we’re right now preparing for what we call pre-production level hardware. That before we build saleable parts we’re going to build pre-production parts in the assembly plant so that its ready for volume. Make sure that our suppliers are prepared for that, make sure that our supplier’s tools are prepared for that and tweaked for quality, our manufacturing plant is tweaked for quality. I was just there last week and walked through all of their systems and systems development to make sure there ready for the production phase.

So those are kind of my three major areas of focus right now.

When you mention the production plant are you talking about Detroit-Hamtramck (DHAM)?
No that’s vehicle assembly plant but ahead of that we’re going to our suppliers and their manufacturing plants for individual parts and systems. And in addition, our drive unit and engine have their own manufacturing facilities that we are walking through and making sure they are ready.

Is GM building its own electric motor for the Volt?
The motor is actually supplied to us but we will be integrating that motor in our drive unit so its encased in our drive unit, we provide tooling, rotating components and all of that which is built in a manufacturing plant owned by GM. We are getting ready to do all of that manufacturing , so the housings, for example we take the castings from a supplier we do all the machining of the housings, the bearing the gearing, all of that kind of stuff.

So you get some of the parts from outside but you put them all together?
Exactly, so it’s a manufacturing step that happens and we send that drive unit and that engine to the assembly plant in DHAM for installation into the vehicle.

Have they done anything at DHAM yet to get ready?
There’s a ton of work going on at DHAM to get ready, and we’ve built our what we call our integration vehicle, and we’re towards the end of that phase. That is being built in pre production operations, however the DHAM team has been very integral in those builds. They have been overseeing the builds they’ve been doing slow builds, they’ve been identifying all issues for their production processes. They’re currently working on tooling for the body. There’s a number of things that DHAM’s doing to get engaged and ready. Because the next phase of vehicle, which is not a saleable vehicle yet, but its our next phase of product, will be built in DHAM so they are getting all of their systems tuned, the personnel trained and ready to go.

When will the first vehicle be built at DHAM?
We’re tuned towards first quarter of next year for that date.

Hydrogen powered vehicles is a topic that tends to bring out debate. Before the recent explosion of interest in battery electric cars, talk of a hydrogen superhighway and fuel cells cars being the next big step were all the rage.

Interest appears to be waning.

Tom Stephens is vice-chairman of GM and is responsible for product development. I had the chance to ask him his thoughts on hydrogen and what GM is doing with respect to development and production of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles

Is the Volt the endgame or is it the fuel cell vehicle?
No. Each of them will continue going forward. My thesis is if you look at what’s going on for energy demand especially in the developing countries, the energy demand is going to continue to grow exponentially and we’re going to have to learn how to utilize energy from all sources if we’re going to have sustainable mobility. We haven’t done that in the last one hundred years. We’ve stayed on petroleum and that’s not a smart thing. It just doesn’t make any sense.

So going forward we are going to break it up

So are you still planning to produce fuel cell vehicles?
Right now what we have is a fuel cell demonstration fleet, Project Driveway, and we’re in one county and we’re going to four more countries and we’re trying to get a lot of customer feedback. We’re doing a lot of work on fuel cells right now to try and continue to move those forward.
At some point in the future we’ll have to decide whether we want to actually go into a production program.

So you haven’t made that decision yet?
No, not at this point. We could do it, but there are a lot of factors. One is our part which is the fuel cell stack and the fuel cell vehicle and how much it will cost. The other part happens to be the infrastructure in order to support the fuel cell and we’ll have to develop both of those.

Right now Germany and Japan are putting in an infrastructure for fuel cells and what we really need is for big US metropolitan cities to decide they want to put in the infrastructure and then it would make sense to go forward.

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Mr Stephens appeared on Autoline Detroit TV today and took some of our questions. You can see the show below:

This is Frank Weber, Global Vehicle Chief Engineer, Chevrolet Volt. I read with great interest “Dave G’s” post comparing the cost and range of extended-range electric vehicles (EREV) like the Volt to that of BEVs. While many of Dave’s numbers are estimates, his analysis is spot on and worth noting. EREVs have a distinct cost advantage – today and well in to the future – over pure EVs when vehicle range is the primary consideration.

Dave G’s Comment:

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OK, lets look at how a 70kWh BEV would compare against a 16kWh EREV if batteries were 1/4 of the price they are today.

The CEO from CPI (the company that builds the Volt packs today) puts the Volt’s battery pack cost at $8K. He is also the one that predicts the cost going to 1/4 of what they are today in the next 5-10 years.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/02/profile-li-ion.html

Specifically, he says:
• The ratio of end-of-life to beginning-of-life is 75%.
• The AT application is sized for a 70% depth of discharge…
• A vehicle pack battery pack has non-cell costs such as a monitoring system.

These items together justify a 2.5x premium for the AT application (or approximately $ 1,000/available kWh) …

From a historical perspective over the past 17-18 years the cost has come down by a factor of 15x. In the next 5-10 years we should be able to come down by an incremental 2-4x and we will have to do that to accelerate the penetration of the technology.

So this says that the Volt’s battery costs $8K ($1000/ available kWh x 8 available kWh). We can also use the figure of $500/total kWh, since he says the total to available ratio is around 50% (i.e. 75% of 70% from first 2 points above). That means a 70 kWh battery pack would cost around $35K today. This sounds about right, since we know the 53kWh Roadster battery pack costs Tesla around $23K, and that uses high volume consumer electronic chemistry.

Now if batteries were 1/4 of today’s prices in 6-8 years, then the Volt’s battery would cost around $2K and a 70kWh battery would cost around $9K.

We also know that the ICE range extender (ICE, radiator, exhaust, etc.), costs around $2K. Keep in mind that we are talking about the wholesale cost for GM, not the retail price you or I would pay.

So the Volt’s range extender and battery pack would cost a total of $4K, while the 70kWh battery pack would cost around $9K.

Bottom Line: If battery packs cost 1/4 of what they do now, the 70kWh BEV would still cost $5K more than an EREV-40.. Since BEVs have serious issues refueling for long trips, the EREV is the clear winner for me. I don’t think I’m alone here.

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Below are two hypothetical examples of the cost advantage of the EREV approach.

The first chart compares the EREVs and BEVs based on today’s costs. This takes the very conservative approach of assuming manufacturers of BEVs have managed to drive battery technology costs to comparative levels (red line). The cost of GM’s battery technology is represented on this line. The cost of the range-extender moves the EREV technology slightly off the cost curve. However, even with the added cost of the range extending engine generator, the total cost of the system is still significantly below that of a limited range BEV, and the benefit – in terms of range – exceeds that of adding additional battery costs (pink area).

The second chart, applies the same logic, only this time under the assumption that battery costs will decrease by 50 percent. Again, the EREV approach has a significant cost advantage. However, it’s important to note that cost is just one of the reasons we believe the EREV approach is technically better. There are no compromises associated with an EREV. It offers the benefits of petroleum-free driving while overcoming range-anxiety. When the battery’s energy is depleted from driving in pure electric mode, the engine generator produces electricity to extend the Volt’s driving range to more than 300 total miles. And it can be the primary car for customers from places as cold as Kapuskasing, Ontario to as hot as Yuma, Arizona.

My compliments to Dave for his insightful post.

Bob Boniface is the chief designer of the Chevy Volt. In this GM video he discusses what the current pre-production state means from a design standpoint and what work is yet left to do.  We are treated to some new moving footage of the pre-production vehicle in black.

Boniface explains at this point his team is now looking for fit and finish, gaps and flushness.

He says cars are meant to be seen in motion and this is the first time he can do so with the Volt and thus “its like Christmas morning for me,” he says.

“It looks like a different car to me,” he adds.

He says buying cars is an emotional purchase and that cars are very much a fashion statement.

“We were able to strike a good balance between aerodynamic performance, and those visual cues that excite a buyer,” he says.

He closes by stating the car is “meeting the aerodynamic performance,” that GM had set out for it.

Below the video you can also join in a real time webchat with Bob today at 2PM EDT.