At the Beijing Auto Show, GM CEO Rick Wagoner announced plans to bring the Volt to market in China, as automakers are in increasing competition to grab market share of the rapidly growing Chinese auto market.
On the sideline of the show Wagoner told reporters:
"At this point the focus for us 100 percent is getting the Volt produced in the U.S.,"
and
"So far, so good, but it’s going to be right down to the wire to meet the production deadline we’ve set."
He also said GM was moving closer to picking one of the two lithium-ion battery pack-making teams (CPI/LG vs Conti/A123), but indicated the production contract could be given to one side, while a development contract is maintained with the other.
GM representatives also apparently said China would be next to get the Volt after the North American market of U.S. and Canada.
Wagoner encouraged China to move away from oil and towards hydrogen derived from nuclear power. Last years’ Beijing auto show was indeed the location where the fuel-cell E-Flex variant, now considered on a production track, was unveiled.
Wagoner also acknowledged how financially important the China market was for GM, saying " it could be huge," and "the company that gets China right is going to be the dominant player for the next 25 years."
He also notes the economy of scale benefit for the Volt via China, "the sales volume for E-Flex in China could be a huge factor over time for reducing cost’"
The automotive lithium-ion battery industry is in it’s infancy. Aside for some relatively small companies making limited production prototypes, there will likely be no substantial lithium-ion powered EVs on the road until the Volt arrives in 2010.
Forbes has published a decent review of the current state of the technology. They compare GM and Toyota as the tortoise and the hare, with Toyota cautiously moving ahead, at best putting li-ion into a limited fleet of PHEVs in 2010, and with GM racing to mass produce the powerful battery-driven Volt.
Prabhakar Patil who is the CEO of Compact Power Inc., one of the two companies building prototype Volt battery packs, is quoted as saying, "What I worry about is a black eye–if somebody puts a battery on the road prematurely, it would hurt the entire industry."
The other battery pack team includes li-ion supplier A123 Systems, whose founder Ric Fulop said "Somebody lit a fire under [GM's] butt in 2006," and "I’ve never seen a large company move so fast and put so many resources behind something."
In a previous post about production roll-out, we heard from Bob Lutz that GM was considering an initial limited roll-out, first to California, next to Washington D.C., and finally Florida.
I for one, being a New Yorker, was little disappointed about that.
Mr Lutz, according to this excerpt from the Detroit Press seems to now have rolled the Big Apple into the mix:
"…the early plan for distribution of the Chevrolet Volt is to begin with California, followed by Washington, D.C.; Florida; New York and elsewhere on the East Coast."
Mr. Lutz went on to qualify this statement: "Of course, that’s only current thinking, and the plans could change".
While at GM’s tech center I was able to confirm that GM was indeed giving the roll-out plan some thought, but I was told that it was "way too early" to draw conclusions.
I know for a fact that some of the key Volt decision makers read this site regularly, so now may be the time to make your opinions known.
One of the top questions people ask is, "When will the final production Volt design be shown?"
I just toured GM’s Chevy Volt E-Flex Design studio. First let me be clear, GM is not showing anyone what the final production vehicle fully looks like yet.
I also spent considerable time talking to Bob Boniface, the director of Chevy Volt/ E-Flex design. I questioned him about the timing of appearance releases.
He explained to me that final car designs generally make their public appearance roughly two years before the car reaches production. He noted as an example that the Camaro design was actually revealed in December 2005, and will hit showrooms this fall. That’s a nearly 3 year interval which he felt was a too long. Bob says, "You want to time it so that the public and the media maintain their interest in the car, but you don’t want to show it too early because you don’t want to tip your hand to the competition."
Noting that the Volt is slated for production in 2 years and 7 months, he said "if you do the math, expect to see the car sooner rather than later"
He also said GM normally ties design releases to large public events. Some upcoming events to might be the media mule drives slated for July, or GM’s centennial celebration in the fall.
For those who have raised the concern here, Bob said "it can’t be a Cobalt with a battery..over my dead body."
About the design freeze, he said at this moment, "We’re tweaking some areas trying to get some last counts of drag out of it"…"we don’t have to start shipping data for feasibility just yet, so we’re going to keep working on it until the last minute, but if I showed you the car tomorrow, that’s what its going to look like."
In the design center Bob demonstrated the new front quarter panel, which we’ve seen before, but he also revealed a rear quarter panel. The rear has a harder edge than the show car.
What can be summarized about the production design compared to the show car is the following:
-it will look unmistakably like the Volt
-overall proportions have changed
-front end is much more rounded
-roof height has gone up
-low rear overhang stays
-dropped belt line is still there
-length is identical
-very sporty and athletic
-has a nice stance and rake
Bob said this about body color, "the car will be available in a lot of colors. Our color and trim studio has done lots of research on color and trim style. We have a board that shows a bunch of side views of the production car in different colors. In black it is wonderful. "
Regarding the show car’s transparent roof, "I wont comment on the appearance of the roof right now, there are still content decisions that have not yet been made."
I studied in person the 1/3 camouflage model seen in the picture above and I can say the theme is clearly futuristic and the car will make an electric statement and look like nothing else on the road.
Enjoy the high-def video below to see that same scene. And if you get a chance, check out my live interview Monday April 7th at 12:30 PM on the Fox Business News Network.
Soon after the Volt concept was first announced in January 2007 GM vice chairman Bob Lutz told the world he was 90% confident it would be built by 2010. This has become my favorite question to ask him each time I get the chance because it is a good gauge of the programs development and momentum.
Having the spectacularly cool opportunity to share the stage with him at Volt Nation, and getting to be the last one to ask a question, guess what I asked?
This time he upped it to 94.5%. He also said there is a zero percent of it never getting built. Vehicle line executive Frank Weber chimed in the background “100%”, for his confidence level.
You will soon be able to see all of this, including the Q and A and other interviews beginning tonight on video. Our videographer’s having some “technical difficulties” but assures me progress is being made.
To learn more about expected timing, location, and cadence of ramp-up for initial Chevy Volt production I turned to Jon Lauckner who is GM’s VP of global program management, considered a first deputy to Bob Lutz. Below are his answers to my questions.
When it comes to rolling out the car in the U.S., do you anticipate starting out with a small fleet and gaining information about how the car is functioning, like you are doing with the fuel cell Equinox, or are you just going to release it like you did the new non-hybrid Malibu?
First of all as part of the development program we typically have small amounts of a vehicle that we put out in the hands of people that drive them on a daily basis. Thats a part of our development program that occurs prior to production. We call that a “captured test fleet”. Captured, meaning we know where the cars are and we know who the drivers are, and test fleets because the cars aren’t in production yet but use the versions that we build at the tail end of the development cycle to really put them out there on a daily basis to get better understanding of whats going on with the vehicles.
We will be doing that with the Volt as well. We will have the typical development program that will result in a captured test fleet prior to starting production. And then once we reach production, then we will start ramping up. Again we haven’t decide exactly how we are going to do it, but I would anticipate that we will do it in a fairly measured way. And this is not unusual for us, we do this in Europe as well. In Europe its not unusual for Opel Vauxhall to start production in one market and then as they build volume in that market, they add additional ones down the line.
The point is it makes no sense if you’re ramping up production to have people frustrated because the car is in theory able to be sold in every area but they cant get their hands on one because the amount of volume is relatively small. So I’m sure that we’ll use a cadenced approach but typically we ramp up our plants reasonably quickly and beyond that its really way too early to talk about volumes and specific geographic areas.
Is the captured test fleet something that people would buy or will it be a leasing type of situation?
Typically we put these in the hands of GM folks, when we do it prior to the start of production , employees, people in the technical community, people who work in the plants, manufacturing. The idea is to put those with a small group of peole where you can get rapid feedback on what’s going on. Now thats the way we’ve done it for our regular production programs. What we do for the Volt could be a variation of that. There’s nothign to say that we couldn’t do a program much like project driveway.
