GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site

After the Volt unveiling the Toronto Star had a fruitful Q& A with GM vice-chairman Bob Lutz.

Lutz told reporters that because things have gone so well, the Volt is actually ahead of schedule. He indicated that he was now 99.9% sure the Volt will be a success, and that as a result it will have a transformational effect on the public’s perception of GM’s technological and environmental prowess.

He also discussed issues being worked out for apartment dwellers, and noted one idea would be to persuade garage owners to set aside an area for car charging and discussed the way public chargers would have to be designed so thieves couldn’t steal power. The charger would have a sliding door that locks the cord in place, opening only when a credit card was swiped.

He also publicly confirmed that GM will unveil the Volt’s photovoltaic roof option at the Detroit Auto Show in January. The roof, he said, will be able to charge the battery from 1/4 to 1/3 over 3 hot blazing days of sun, such as in an airport parking lot, and could function keep the A/C on when parked on hot summer days, avoiding battery draw to cool up the car when the driver gets in.

Lutz also denied present plans to put E-Flex into other vehicles yet, although he remains excited at the prospects for doing so.

Lutz also describes the Volt’s cold-weather algorithm. If the driver turns on the car when its too cold for the battery to properly function, the ICE will go on automatically to condition the battery before shutting off and going to electric drive.

Source (Toronto Star )

I had a wide-ranging discussion with Robert Kruse, to whom I posed many of the questions readers here asked. Bob is GMs executive director of EVs and Hybrids. In this segment we discussed Volt production.

How many Volts are you aiming towards producing in the first year?
We have not announced a specific number for the first or subsequent years, but I can tell you were not going through all this effort and to this extreme to be a little niche player.

You will see significant and substantial volumes in the first and subsequent years. We see plenty of demand out there.

Is it true that the Detroit-Hamtramck (DHAM) plant where the Volt is expected to be built is only capable of producing 60,000 vehicles per year?

The DHAM plant is probably capable of producing at full capacity close to a couple of hundred thousand vehicles per year. The Volt is intended to be built at DHAM assuming the state and local packages are successfully negotiated.*

Has any retooling began at that facility yet to prepare for the Volt?
No, I would say that we haven’t actually started cutting metal at the plant or moving metal. I would say that the manufacturing and engineering organization have begun their plant designs and layouts. I have the Volt done completely virtually and analytically now. They’re working on the design. I don’t believe they have actually started installing any tooling yet. They have initiated orders for some of the longer lead items as it relates to equipment and manufacturing plants as it relates to the specific model of production.

How long would it take to tool up the plant for the Volt?
Obviously we have announced that the Volt will be in production by November 2010 recognizing our development program. We will be building non-saleable Volt units at the DHAM plant long before November 2010. So everything backs up from there.

So when will the first non-saleable units be produced there?
Right now I’ve got mule vehicles, integration vehicles later on, and manufacturing non-saleable vehicles will happen earlier in 2010.

Is that the captured test fleet?
First we have our non-saleables then we have our captured test fleet which are usually our first saleable vehicles.

Do the non-saleable vehicles go out on the public roads?
After they’ve met certain requirements, yes we can test them out on public roads.

Would those vehicles stay in the possession of GM employees or might others get a chance to have them?
No, maybe on a select basis but not on on an unassisted basis, that’s true for any program.

When will dealers be able to order Volts?, will it be before November 2010?
When we start into marketing and dealer allocation its really outside my swimlane. Typically there will be a dealer certification process, not every Chevy dealer will be able to sell a Volt. They’ll have to go through certification and make sure they’ve invested in their repair and service areas, trained their organization and so on.

*NOTE: The Detroit city council on Monday approved $136 million in tax abatements that GM had requested in order for them to commit to building the Volt at DHAM.

We are two just days from the presumed global unveiling of the Chevy Volt production car.  I will shortly be heading out to GM headquarters in Detroit to experience and bring you all the details live at the source of the GM Centennial Celebration.

This is also an opportunity for anyone here that has questions to ask the GM Volt team.   Place them in the comments of this post in short, simple, clear terms.  I will do my best to get responses to unanswered questions from appropriate members of the Volt team.

We will be streaming the GM global webcast right here on GM-Volt.com at 8:30 AM EST on Tuesday 9/16.

Also on Tuesday, you will also have an opportunity for live webchat with key members of the Volt team including vice chairman Lutz on Tuesday from 10:30 – 1:30 EDT and can join a Future of Transportation Round table webcast at 1:30.

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_QTQ4f1bgk]

In this segment, the GM execs answer questions about performance, saying it will be stable whether the generator is on or off.  Also discussed is how fun an experience electric driving can be. Weber says “it’s fun to eco-drive”.

The team was asked about roll-out plans, Volt chief engineer Posawatz says first the integrity of the vehicle will have to be “spot-on”, and that the achievement of that goal will drive the roll-out pace .

Posawatz and Chevrolet president Ed Peper acknowledged interest in the GM-Volt.com community’s feedback to them and advises that we may be first to hear about taking early deposits for early production cars.

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ghj8DBLZM-o]

Below are more questions and answers with Darryn Nowicki Electric Vehicle Director, Continental Automotive, one of the Chevy Volt pack-making team members.
What is the process of building up to be able to make packs on a mass scale?

As far as being able to mass produce the batteries, we are gearing up to be able to do lithium-ion battery pack production later this years (for Mercedes) and basically the concept for the Volt is taking the similar technology that we’ve developed for Mercedes and we intend on fine-tuning that, because it is a different cell. We would anticipate being able to have that sort of mass production setup from the end of this year for the Mercedes application and that same technology and process would be very transferable to what we are doing on the Volt.

So basically we don’t have to go off and re-invent a complete new manufacturing process just for the Volt battery.

So some of the same elements you will be using for the Mercedes pack will be interchangeable for the Volt?

The basic manufacturing and production concept would be very similar. We try to do everything for our products a very modular and scalable fashion so that with the market being very immature and very erratic we want to be able to reuse as much of the different pieces from application to application so that we can try to give our customers the best benefit of economies of scale.

Would you say you are very confident in being able to make the Volts battery packs workable, safe, and in large quantities by 2010?

Large quantities in terms of the quantities GM is asking for. Yes. We are all very much behind that goal. We don’t see anything that is a show-stopper, absolutely.

Do you feel very confident in the safety of these packs?

Yes. The A123 cells, their chemistry, their claims in what they are able to achieve and their claims about how much safer they are inherently just due to the chemistry. So there is three tiers of safety for the batteries. The first one is just how inherently safe the cell itself is, and the A123 chemistry looks to be very very stable. So they’ve got something very special there. What can you do at the cell level to make the cell safe, and then the pack itself. So when you look at all these things together and the level of safety that we’re able to put in place there’s a lot of flexibility that allows us to feel very confident about these battery packs.

In your early production work and testing do you find that the heating of the packs is not a big deal?

This is why we have the controls in there as one element of insuring the safety the is the cells cant be allowed to go at too hot a temperature so it is something to be concerned about but again the inherent safety of the A123 chemistry helps that it doesn’t go into some of these more catastrophic events that you might see with some of these older lithium ion technologies. And then by having the experience that we have by being able to control the overall system and maintain a solid temperature and maintain a solid state of charge so the control algorithms that we have in place as well all contribute to creating a safer system.

We’ve been working on lithium in technology since 2003, so we’ve had quite a few years of experience with these.

GM has specifications, and the initial LG/CPI packs are basically T-shaped and modular roughly contain 300 cell in 8 modules, are you guys designing your packs along similar proportions?

Similar physical proportions I would say yes thats a correct statement, basically the car is being designed around the body. We do have a modular approach with these batteries and there are a certain number of cells per module and a number of modules, I think our numbers are actually different on the “guts” if you will than Compact Power has and I think thats mostly related to the overall energy content of that A123 has in each cell.

We might add that Continental is working with several different battery cell providers. The one were doing later this year with Mercedes is what we consider our first generation lithium-ion pack that uses certain cell chemistry and manufacturer. We also have a another one that will be ready potentially a year later, and the third one is A123. So we have three right now that we’ve been dealing with and I think thats one of the things that makes us a strong player in this market is that we are not tied to any specific cell chemistry or manufacturer, it gives us a lot more flexibility and gives our customers a lot more flexibility to be able to come to Continental, who has that vast knowledge of various different chemistries of lithium ion and being able to put together a complete battery system for them. So I think the OEMs truly value that.

So Continental is positioning themselves to become a leading provider of lithium-ion battery packs in the future?

Correct. And also I would add, that while we are best known as a tire-maker, tires are approximately 25-20% of our business. the other two-thirds are electronics.

Is there any interaction between your team and LG Chem/CPI, or are you all in the dark about each others efforts?

I cant say that I know much about what they’re doing so I wont say whether were kept in the dark and I can’t speak for my colleagues in Germany in as far as how much they’re hearing or being involved, but in general I think the two teams are fairly separated.

Recently we heard a statement from Dee Allen of GM about the Volt costing around $35,000. Since it’s of tremendous interest and importance, I decided to look into this in more detail. I managed to catch up with Mr. Allen who it turns out is GMs spokesperson on global product and brands, and pretty much Bob Lutz’ communication guy. We had the following discussion:

How is the $35,000 number generated, since the car isn’t built yet how do you know what it will cost?

We put together estimates, the vehicle itself and then estimates for the different kind of equipment it will carry and the engine. You go through and do a cost analysis. We’ve been working on that and one of the things, and I’m just repeating what Bob said, I’m not the expert on this, is, we were down in Dallas speaking to some of the reporters, and that’s where he said instead of around $30,000, its around $35,000 and the reason is that when we got started on this we didn’t anticipate so many of the vehicle systems that are currently in existence that we’re using on vehicles were building today are fairly high energy users. The examples are things like windshield wipers and 8-speaker sound systems and so on. We don’t usually think of them as big energy users particularly because we’ve got so much energy being generated by the gasoline engine. You don’t end up studying how much electrical draw there is normally on each of those things as your driving down the road. Now all of a sudden were tackling a vehicle that as you know were targeting for 40 or more miles on a charge. Thats when you realize that is your driving that vehicle when its raining or cold outside and your using a heater and your using the windshield wipers you using up motive energy.

So one of the things that the team has been doing is working on low energy usage systems that we would use on the Volt so that you don’t draw energy and reduce your driving radius.

When you did the initial computer modelling before announcing the concept wasn’t that idea of using lower power components considered?

As far as I know from what Bob was saying, some of those things were not considered. To some extent you take these things for granted. As people are used to high power stereo systems and A/C and it takes energy. What Bob was saying is he was absolutely amazed how much power the stereo uses. Most of us think of A/C as being a major energy user, but people don’t think that using the radio may impact their mileage. When you’re counting on the battery, then you all of a sudden realize that any load you put on it will reduce it.

Are you saying the new components will have to replace the ones that are typically used, since you cant use off the shelf components, and will that increase the cost?

Well yes you have engineering costs going into doing that and tooling costs and so on. Your essentially doing some new componentry that obviously has some design engineering and manufacturing cost associated with it. And one of the things that Bob explained was that there are things we could do, for example if we come up with a low wattage windshield wiper system, lets say, if we spend a lot of time on it there probably things we could do to take cost out of that system, as we’re designing it there are always improvements you can find. But when you are working against a tight deadline like we are, for us this is like a “moon-shot”and we set a goal for the team and were going to try like the devil to make that goal and so when you’ve got that kind of a time constraint on it we are going to go for a solution rather than perhaps the most cost effective solution.

Are you saying you will have to engineer design and manufacturing these components (i.e. windshield wipers) in house?

Or outsourcing them.

Is there a problem with finding suppliers or their ability to ramp up production?

Even if were not talking about the Volt and were talking about any product, there are two ways to go about that. GM can do the designing or we can go to a supplier and say this is what we need and these are the parameters and ask them to do the design work. Either way there is design work involved and of course the engineering of the design, what we call design engineering, and of course testing, etc. Using the windshield wiper as an example, you have to go through rigorous testing as this is essentially a safety device. So now you have to do testing and simulate usage over a long period of time and it has to be able to hold up to snow and ice.

Has GM actually started the process of designing these new systems?

Absolutely. This program is unique in the annals (of automotive history), but the way were going about this is were designing a unique powerplant, a unique vehicle, and unique components to go into the vehicle, and were doing it all simultaneously. It didn’t take long to realize that wed needed to use low power systems.

When we showed the concept to people, the design work was done without a whole lot of testing. When we made the call and put it in the wind tunnel, Bob likes to describe it as “a brick”. Aero work isn’t usually done on a concept that you’d show at an auto show.

With this type of vehicle that is going to use electric power, every part of the vehicle that draws off the power or anything aerodynamic can lead to a loss of range.

Don’t you have components from the EV-1 like the windshield wipers and stereo that you can use for the Volt?

In some cases yes, and I’ll tell you the things that we learned from the EV-1 as I’m sure Frank (Weber) has said, it gives us tremendous advantage because we do have experience. I don’t know about the (actual EV-1) parts, we didn’t exactly mass-produce EV-1s either. That was also a little while ago, and in many cases for example the windshield wipers have to be fitted to the type, size, and shape of the vehicle.

When Bob Lutz discussed the pricing update, did he say closer to $40,000 or exactly $35,000, what were his exact words?

What Bob said was that our original goal was targeted around the $30,000 mark and now as we’ve gotten into it more deeply and with the development work we’ve been doing, I wish it wasn’t so, but its probably going to be more like $35,000. The explanation was what you and I have already talked about.

Does the $35,000 price refer to actually owning the battery pack or not include leasing the battery?

I could say if I knew, but I don’t know. Maybe thats a question for Bob when we’re together in New York (Volt Nation).

Do you know if the issue of leasing the battery is still on the table?

I honestly don’t know. One of the things we’ve said consistently is that we are going to be a transparent as possible about this, I mean were no going to give daily reports of course, but were going to be transparent about it and were going to let people know how the development is going, and if we run into a hiccup were going to let them know, and if we get successes were going to let them know. Were working with the battery manufacturers right now and were testing battery packs. The batteries have not been an issue at all.

I still see things in the media that the battery will still be an issue because of computers that caught on fire and all that kind of stuff. As Bob says, saying lithium-ion is like saying beer. There are a lot of kind of lihtium-ions like there are a lot of kinds of beer. The lithium ion were using has been great.

Do you know how many packs are GMs possession right now?

I don’t know. I know we’ve had deliveries from both teams. I haven’t talked to Bob about this in the last two weeks, so I really don’t know where we stand.

Do you know if there is an actual pack in a mule yet?

I don’t know. I do know that Bob has said hes going to be driving a mule this Spring. But I don’t know where we stand with that right now.