GM vice president Bob Lutz gave the keynote speech at the LA Auto Show in place of the suddenly ousted former CEO Fritz Henderson.
His speech focused significantly on the electrification transformation underway at GM.
“GM is moving from a company that, for 100 years, has been based on mechanically driven automobiles, to one that will eventually be focused on electrically driven vehicles,” he said. “This is a big deal.”
Lutz summarized the Volt’s three-year development voyage and highlighted the fact that GM has decided to make pack assembly a core competency.
Even though GM will be sourcing the generation one Volt’s electric motor from a supplier, this won’t be the case in the future.
“We also determined that the design, development, and production of electric motors and power electronics need to be core competencies for GM – and we’re moving in those directions, too,” said Lutz.
Lutz spelled out GM’s plan to roll out the Volt gradually in limited selected US markets beginning with some in California. He admitted demand is likely to far outstrip supply initially.
He also publicly verified for the first time ever the actual production numbers GM is planning.
“In the first few months we will be producing 4000 to 5000 Volts,” he said. ” In the first full year we will make eight to ten thousand.”
“We are going to ramp it up slowly becasue it is all uncharted terrain for all of us once we start turning out (battery) packs in very high rates,” he said.
He also said full production capacity will be 50,000 to 60,000 Volts per year.
Lutz predicts the total plug-in car market including BEVs, PHEVs, and EREVS will be about 250,000 to 300,000 per year in five years. “They will mostly be our products,” he joked.
Not confirming the Converj is production-tracked, he said there are “many products” in the pipeline.
General Motors provided an online media update as to current progress on the Chevrolet Volt and battery development program, moderated by vehicle chief engineer Andrew Farah and Voltec battery system manager Bill Wallace. I and several actual journalists attended. We were given the current state of development and the roadmap of the next 12 months leading up to the retail launch.
Overview
To date GM has built 80 pre-production IVers and 300 packs. Those vehicles are in testing 24 hours/7 days per week. Production and process validation builds will be made at Hamtramck from March through August 2010. From August 2010 through November 2010 manufacturing validation builds will be made.
The current prototypes have been tested cumulatively over 1/4 million miles. So far they’ve gone through hot weather trials, mountain trials and 65% long distance calibration buy-off rides. In December they will undergo a 300,000 mile three-lifetime simulator test. “We’re very happy where we are right now,” says Farah.
Battery Update In December 2008, GM built its first battery pack based on their own in-house design and so far over 250 of these 4th and final generation packs have been made. No further refinements will occur, others at GM are working on lighter next generation packs.
GM will bring it own battery pack assembly plant online in January and it is currently being built-out. The first pack to be made there will happen in February 2010, and the first saleable packs will be made in August 2010. The battery lab is working to develop and refine the processes by which mass production of large numbers of packs is flawless.
Over 50,000 cells have been tested on over 300,000 simulated miles in the lab and to date not a singe cell failure has occurred.
Stress Testing Cells are exposed to crush, penetration, thermal stress and overcharging. Modules and packs have been exposed to crush, pressure, shirt circuit,corrosion, thermal stress, and seal integrity. All is well.
Vehicle Stress Testing Cars have been exposed to the twist ditch, water exposure, potholes, and vibration. Crash test have shown battery remains safe at 30 MPH head on, as seen in the picture below.
Learnings Farah admits NVH (noise vibration and harshness) has been “particularly tricky” especially in charge sustaining mode as the car was tweaked to be extremely quiet in electric mode. Through changes such as increased insulation, specially designed instead of off-the-shelf bushings and new side airflow vents a pleasing experience has been obtained.
Battery chemistry had to be tweaked slightly to achieve longest lifetime, which will be effectively 10 years, though it was noted in temperate climates much longer lifetimes are possible. Extreme cold and even more so extreme heat degrade the battery life expectancy.
“10 years is the target life, but depending on where you live, you could see significantly more than that,” said Farah. “In more benign conditions — if you do more city driving — and if you are in a more temperate area, the battery would last significantly longer.”
“But even if you live in Phoenix, as long as you charge at night, and you run during the day, your battery will remain happy,” said Wallace.
It has been found that the battery packs are well protected by the car’s structure and cells handle all abuse situations remarkably well.
Though I asked Farah, he still would not release the size of the gas tank claiming we won’t know until just before launch because its still being tweaked. The gas engine will likely be programmed to circulate once per month even if the driver never uses it.
Farah also wouldn’t disclose the Chevy Volt’s curb weight though states its was “heavier than I would like.” Efforts are being made to reduce weight of both the car and 400 pound battery pack.
GM has signed off on the final design freeze of the charging equipment, both 120V, 220V and the in-vehicle on-board charger.
Though not confirming dates, Farah implied he is looking forward to beginning work on the higher performance Cadillac Converj, which has unofficially been greenlighted for production.
Below is a video of the Chevy Volt battery pack undergoing serious crush testing:
GM has announced that the Chevrolet Cruze’s introduction in North America has been delayed, moving from April of 2010 into the third quarter, namely August. In the meantime, the Cobalt will soldier on until the Cruze’s arrival.
This news is especially of interest to the Volt community, because both it and the Cruze ride on the Delta II platform, share parts and have many commonalities.
When GM first revealed the Cruze to the public, it looked to have a huge jump on the competition, boasting a bold new look and mileage per gallon numbers starting with a four…unseen anywhere else in the GM lineup.
Unfortunately, the Cruze program has been slow to reach fruition domestically, and the lead over next generation offerings such as the new Ford Focus and Honda Civic, is eroding quickly. The Cruze has been on sale in Europe for much of 2009.
The official reason for the delay was because GM wanted to “ensure a flawless launch and to go to market with full availability of high volume content,” however there was quickly speculation in the media that there was supplier issues at work behind the scenes, and maybe even difficulty sourcing the engine lineup in time for the original launch date.
If the Cruze has indeed run into complications with sourcing, it would not be unreasonable to expect the Volt could face the same challenges when attempting to get to market as expected in November of next year.
I spoke to Lesley Hettinger at Chevy Communications, who is unofficially ‘the point for all things Cruze’ at GM, and she happily put those rumors to rest and offered some good information on the program:
“There are no supplier issues. Initially we planned a pull-ahead on Cruze timing with a start of production in the second quarter of 2010 in our plant in Lordstown, OH, we have since revised our production schedule and decided not to compress the program timing to ensure a flawless launch and to go to market with full availability of high volume content. Assembly of pre-production builds will begin in the second quarter of 2010, followed by start of regular production with the full model year in third quarter of 2010.”
Closer to home, on the topic of the Volt, Rob Peterson offered the following reassurances to us here at GM-Volt, “The Volt remains on schedule for November 2010 production launch. The Cruze timing has no impact on the Volt.”
Still, given that this is the second of GM’s new cornerstone products to be delayed (Chevrolet Camaro), and with the added complexities of electric drive added into the mix, one has to wonder if a similar fate to ‘ensure a flawless launch’ might still be in store for the Volt…and that might not be a bad thing in the long run.
It was long thought that shortly after the Chevrolet Volt went into production in Michigan that a plant would open in Europe to produce the Ampera.
The front runner for this plant had been the Ellesmere Port plant in the United Kingdom, given the strong backing of the state government, and their willingness to subsidize the project to protect jobs.
On Tuesday, however, the Magna consortium reportedly decided it will not produce the Volt’s cousin at this time, and that the reason for this decision is that they feel demand will not exceed the amount of investment needed at this time.
In a report first brought forth by British media, it was said that Magna did not shut the door on ever producing the Ampera in UK, but felt it would not likely again consider that as a option until 2015 or 2016 in the project’s 2nd generation; although a mystery Vauxhall ’source’ later said that demand, “rather than the launch of the second-gen model, will drive the decision on timing.”
As of now the plan is to export the Ampera/Chevrolet Volt from the DHAM facility in Michigan indefinitely. Naturally, this may cause a strain on capacity and availability of the Volt going forward both domestically and internationally if demand has been underestimated.
Vauxhall’s unofficial-official stance from “sources” on this leak (according to autocar) was:
“There has categorically been no decision on where European production of the Ampera will take place, but in order to justify production at any European plant there will need to be sufficient demand…Obviously we would like to see it built at Ellesmere Port as the Ampera is underpinned by the new Astra. It would make sense”
According to our own GM “sources” here at GM-Volt, Ampera production volumes will be “minimal” anyway. One has to wonder if this development could cast doubt on whether the Ampera reskin of the Volt will indeed happen at all.
One unintended advantage to GM because of this development, is that the recent major devaluing of the US dollar against most major currencies has made exporting cars a much more profitable business. Provided that trend continues, any US made-European sold Voltec vehicle, should be profitable.
Some recently published numbers about Volt prototype production volume are inaccurate.
First, though the Detroit Press reported the 74th car was the final Volt prototype built at GM’s pre-production plant in Warren, according to Bob Warner, GMs Director Global Pre-Production Operations, it was actually the 80th.
“The 80 vehicles we built are now entering the next stage of development, which includes a series of crash tests, developmental drives, battery checks, climate tests and other measures we take to make sure the production vehicles meet our high standards,” he said.
Also, we reported that GM is preparing to begin building the next phase of Chevy Volts called pre-production or validation vehicles at the full scale production plant in Hamtramck Michigan next quarter.
Volt vehicle line engineer Tony Posawatz told us GM will build cars in “the two to three thousand range” of volume.
This led some of us to wonder what would become of all those cars if they weren’t saleable, as it seemed a rather high volume for prototypes.
When asked about that, it turned out Mr Posawatz wasn’t referring to PPVs with that number.
“The (PPV) number is much smaller,” he said. “It is easy to get caught up in terminology, certainly less than 100 non-saleable units beginning with PPV’s (will be built).”
Thus once those non-saleable PPVs have been built and the process for building them well understood and the tools for making them completed, GM will begin cranking out final Volts in significant volume.
It is therefore those Volts for sale that GM will build 2000 to 3000 of in the 2010 calendar year.
As was reported on Friday October 9, GM completed building the last of a total of 74 pre-production Chevy Volts, which were built in the modest-sized pre-production operations facility in GM’s Warren campus. I had the chance to discuss with Volt vehicle line engineer Tony Posawatz what happens now.
Now that these cars are finished what happens next?
Interestingly enough this is probably where the intense work begins. From a build perspective, we won’t build again until early next year in Hamtramck. What we do now is we take the production intent designs that were built up in the integration vehicles and we test the living daylights out of them and continue to do iterations and iterations. A lot of it is software. A lot of it is taking some of the crudeness in fit in the body fits and tighten them up. Although we do it on math, variations occur and flushness and fit come out a little differently then they do on paper.
So we’re now tuning it. And between that time from October of this year and March of next year, we test the vehicle to confirm the production design works, tweak and fix things, and as we tweak and fix things those changes have to be incorporated in the production tooling and those things typically have a longer lead time.
Then the production tooling is in place. Those are the big heavy expensive dyes to stamp the sheet metal. Those are more significant molds and cavities and processes to manufacture plastic parts in high volume. That’s kind of what happens right now. Right now is the testing, problem-solving, refining and putting all that learning into the production tools. Come the March timeframe and we’re running Volts with production tools. And that is still an iteration process or learning process to refine it for what’s going to happen later in the year.
Are you beginning to put hardware into the Hamtramck plant?
Oh yeah, the Hamtramck plant and the battery plant are on a project plan to upgrade themselves to be ready to build in the early 2010 timeframe. So right now there are tools in toolshops being produced and as we find out, we need this or that, we’ll change it on a production tool. That’s the process we’re in.
When you first start building in March what are those vehicles called?
We call them PPVs, pre-production vehicles or validations. We have a couple more “flavors” but those are all flavors of production vehicle that we work through. This is fairly state of the industry, our terminology is a little different, but every manufacturer does these iterations or flavors of vehicles that have the next phase of software.
At some point in time for example the interior parts have a certain graining to them that you do as one of the last things. You put in a little grain into the tool, but once the tool is grained and they have this nice little texture to the plastic parts it’s very hard to change the tool if you have any functional dimensional changes. Later in the Spring we’ll actually grain the parts so that they really look like production and piece the cars together.
Right now things are actually going pretty well. We have certainly a lot of issues but that’s standard for this type of project and where we are at in the program. Issues are actually a good thing. We know no one is that good to get it spot-on or if the issues don’t properly surface they somehow surface later. If you have a lot of variation in some of the parts, and you don’t see it early enough to try to control it, to get thefir finsihs and execution elements perfect.
PPVs are not saleable?
No, they’re not saleable yet.
So you will build a few hundred of those?
No we build in the two to three thousand range. We’re finalizing that number right now. A lot of that is practicing the processing of that. Ultimately their will be a line rate of many jobs per hour when we do this so you want to get the guys actually practicing in the production environment.
