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Archive for the 'Prototypes' Category

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MINI E Pothole Fail, GM Working Hard on Chevy Volt Quality

October 28th, 2009 | Posted in: Engineering, Prototypes, Safety with 123 Comments

As some readers may know, I am one of 100 people in New York who are leasing the MINI E electric car for one year.  I recently passed 5000 miles of driving the car, and for the most part am very happy with it, especially in that all those miles have been covered without using [...]

Posted by: Lyle with 123 Comments

Chevy Volt Prototype Spotted in a Home Driveway

October 18th, 2009 | Posted in: Images, Prototypes with 82 Comments

An astute observer noticed none other than a pre-production Chevy Volt integration vehicle nonchalantly parked in a neighbor’s driveway.
A fleet of eight of these vehicles just returned from a 3-day 1200-mile extended test drive last week, and perhaps one of the lucky participants got to take one home for the weekend. It is known [...]

Posted by: Lyle with 82 Comments

Chevy Volt Fleet Goes on Extended Road Test

October 14th, 2009 | Posted in: Prototypes, Test drive with 201 Comments

On Tuesday morning, eight Chevy Volt integration vehicles left the Milford Proving grounds compound in Michigan on a historic extended test drive into Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The cars were driven for more than 9  hours and 300 miles continuously in a special effort to analyze their behavior, performance, and comfort on such a long drive in real [...]

Posted by: Lyle with 201 Comments

Chevy Volt Climbs Pikes Peak

October 7th, 2009 | Posted in: Performance, Prototypes with 238 Comments

GM has just about finished production of 80 integration-vehicle version Chevy Volts. These are full production intent cars that are being used for extensive road testing to generate learning engineers can use to further refine the vehicle for production.
Part of that learning involves putting the car through rigorous real-world driving conditions. We have already [...]

Posted by: Lyle with 238 Comments

Chevy Volt Prototype Fleet Spotted in the Wild

September 25th, 2009 | Posted in: Prototypes, Sightings with 177 Comments

The Chevy Volt is now in the pre-production phase. GM has been building about 80 of these fully functional production intent prototypes, and are likely to be finished with this phase within days. Those cars are undergoing extensive testing and the learning and tweaking will be applied to the final production cars.
Part of [...]

Posted by: Lyle with 177 Comments

GM Engineer Test Drives Volt in Mountains of Tennesee: its a Success

September 2nd, 2009 | Posted in: Environment, Prototypes, Test drive with 243 Comments

Alex Cattelan is a GM engineer working on development of the Voltec powertrain, and has been involved in the Volt program ever since the beginning.
She recently had the chance to drive a pre-production Volt out among a fleet of seven cars to Knoxville, Tennessee.  Cattelan also noted she has previously driven pre-production and mule Volts [...]

Posted by: Lyle with 243 Comments

Guest Post: IVer Production Brings Design Changes, But Why?

August 26th, 2009 | Posted in: Design, Prototypes with 233 Comments

When Bob Boniface, the Volt’s Chief Designer, officially presented the first ‘IVer in motion’ on July 28th (also known to him as Christmas morning), that Volt was painted in the finest color known to man, which of course is not a color at all, it is black. While this made the Volt look impressive, [...]

Posted by: Statik with 233 Comments

Chevy Volt Underwater Testing

August 25th, 2009 | Posted in: Battery, Prototypes, Safety with 220 Comments

I previously had a discussion with Lance Turner, lead engineer in the Volt battery lab who also worked on the EV-1 program.
I asked him if there are any special considerations about the Volt and its high power battery getting exposed to water, such as in a flood, or accident where the car gets submerged.
Lance advised [...]

Posted by: Lyle with 220 Comments

Test Ride: Chevy Volt Pre-production Prototype w/ Video!

August 14th, 2009 | Posted in: Prototypes, Test drive with 307 Comments

Recently I traveled to GM’s Milford Proving Grounds for the opportunity with many other journalists to test drive the company’s entire fleet of production cars which were all laid out across a large swath of pavement called back lake.
To our surprise, in the middle of the event, suddenly Frank Weber pulled up in a pre-production [...]

Posted by: Lyle with 307 Comments

Chevy Volt Has the Feel of a Sports Car, and Engine RPMs Follow Accelerator

July 6th, 2009 | Posted in: Prototypes, Test drive with 377 Comments

In late June, GM completed the production of its first true to form Chevy Volt prototypes called integration vehicles.  We were given a brief video description of what it was like to drive one by the car’s chief engineer Andrew Farah.
GM granted an interview with Farah to Automotive News who got some new nitty gritty [...]

Posted by: Lyle with 377 Comments

Chevy Volt Integration Vehicle Update

June 26th, 2009 | Posted in: Feedback to GM, Original GM-Volt Interviews, Prototypes with 263 Comments

I must admit I am still amazed that we are actually beginning to talk about a near finished product, the Chevy Volt integration vehicles (IV). Over 2 and a half years ago when I first started this site, (SEE FIRST POST HERE) this point was a time that was unimaginable and yet now has [...]

Posted by: Lyle with 263 Comments

Video: Pre-Production Chevy Volts Hit the Road!

June 24th, 2009 | Posted in: Production, Prototypes, Video with 357 Comments

GM has just released a video of and blog post by Andrew Farah, the Volts chief engineer. Andrew demonstrates one of the new pre-production genuine Chevy Volts that has rolled of the assembly line. He reports he drove the first one on Tuesday, Integration Vehicle #1, more than a week ahead of schedule, [...]

Posted by: Lyle with 357 Comments

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