On the same day the Today Show ran its piece on test driving the Chevy Volt integration prototype, Lindsay Brooke, a reporter from the New York Times published his.

Brooks was the only other journalist so far besides CNBC’s Phil Lebeau to test drive the Volt in generator or charge-sustaining mode and has written about it.

His brief article entitled Life After 40 tells us what we’ve been waiting to hear, but maybe not exactly what we wanted to.

Brooks writes:

Like other reporters, I had already driven Volt prototypes in the battery-powered mode, and they were predictably smooth and silent. But for eventual Volt owners, a crucial — and so far unanswered — question is how the car will perform when the battery’s charge is depleted and all electricity is provided by an onboard generator, driven by a gasoline engine, that has no mechanical connection to the wheels.

Then as he runs the car’s electric range meter dramatically down to the zero mark, the moment we’ve all been waiting for occurs:

With the dashboard icon signaling my final mile of range, I point the Volt toward a hill and wait for the sound and feel of the generator engine’s four pistons to chime in. But I completely miss it; the engine’s initial engagement is inaudible and seamless. I’m impressed.

Good so far.  He finds that as he pushed the accelerator, the sound of the engine didn’t change.

But later as he’s accelerating around the test track he gets a little shock that he calls disconcerting.

A few hundred yards later, as we snake through the track’s infield section, the engine r.p.m. rises sharply. The accompanying mechanical roar reminds me of a missed shift in a manual-transmission car. For a moment the sound is disconcerting; without a tachometer, I guess that it peaked around 3,000 r.p.m.

He asks GM’s Tony Posawatz driving with him what just happened.

“The system sensed that it’s dipped below its state of charge and is trying to recover quickly,” apologizes Posawatz. “The charge-sustaining mode is clearly not where we want it to be yet.”

Huh?

He goes on to write:

Immediately the engine sound disappeared, although it was still spinning the generator. A few times later in our test, the generator behaved in similar fashion — too loud and too unruly for production — but there is time for the programmers to find solutions.

So there we have it, the first reporter in history to write about the Volt’s operation in generator mode, and its a bit of a mixed picture.

It seem to go on flawlessly but throughout driving apparently has spikes of on/off engine roars that he finds disconcerting and unruly.

Though not exactly a happy report, he concludes:

Throughout my test, the prototype behaves admirably. At its current state of development, the Volt is an extremely refined vehicle.

Looks like GM has a little more work to do.  But then again the experience may be a bit subjecttive.  We’ll wait to see what others have to say.

Source (New York Times)

A long awaited milestone has just been achieved, sort of.

For many months we’ve discussed, debated, deduced, asked about and imagined what it would be like to drive the Chevy Volt while its generator is running.

This mode is so critical because it represent the first mass market application an electric car operating at the same time an on-board gas engine is running to generate electricity once the battery low point is reached.  We’ve heard for months the process has been under refinement but that GM executives and engineers were already quite pleased with the experience.

Phil LeBeau of NBC’s nationally broadcast Today Show became the first person outside of GM to have the experience and be able to report on it.  He was given an exclusive test drive of an advanced integration Chevy Volt prototype.

The report did give us some new observations and knowledge. You can view the two minute video at the bottom of this article.

We found out the driver side LCD screen tells how efficient one is driving by showing a traffic light symbol that changes from green to yellow when efficiency reduces.

Chief engineer Andrew Farah demonstrates it; when he floors the car he says “it felt really great wonder full and responsive, it was terrible for overall energy efficiency ”

LeBeau also says on the screen the MPG is demonstrated and for example while driving around the Milford proving grounds on his exclusive test drive it showed he was getting over 200 mpg.

The report also claims JD Power thinks only 50,000 electric cars will be sold in 2015, a far cry less than Obama’s pledge of 1 million or the several million hoped for by the Electrification Coalition

Also, for the first time ever the pedestrian alert was demonstrated.  The Volt is nearly silent and wont make artificial sounds.  Instead a driver activated alert will be available to let people know the car is nearby  The alert is activated by pushing a lever and emits a pleasant light horn-like chirping sound.

In his written report, Lebeau comments on the driving experience:

When you go from driving all-electric to running the gas-assist engine, the transition is disconcerting.

It needs to be smoothed out, and GM engineers know it.

When you’re driving on the gas assist engine, there’s no fall off in power, handling, etc. and perhaps I found it jarring because I went from the silent electric drive to hearing the engine. Whatever the reason, it needs to be improved.

The Chevy Volt is no slouch.

A Volt ride and handling engineer named Mark Popilek said “I got it up to 107 on the test track, but we’re planning on limiting the speed around 104.”

At this point in development the integration vehicles have become highly refined.  In fact, GM has just started to allow journalists test drives in charge sustaining mode.

According to powertrain engineer Alex Cattelan, “we’ve been through three levels of hardware in two years.”

She also notes “the groups working on the second generation and third generation versions are still providing more information to us.”  Cattelan is confident GM will meet the November 2010 deadline.

GM vice chairman Bob Lutz spearheaded and conceived the Volt project back in 2006.  He admits though he displayed a lot of early bravado it was a bit of a long-shot, and that people even within GM were skeptical.

“I did place a lot of faith in the battery companies, who said they could have them ready,” said Lutz.

Lutz wanted the Volt to leapfrog the successful Toyota Prius.

“Three years ago, it was Toyota this and Toyota that, everyone thought only good things about them, and it was because of the Prius,” Lutz told reporters. “I wanted to overcome the incredible reputation Toyota had with the Prius, and we knew we couldn’t do it with just another hybrid.”

“The bar was certainly set high,” admitted Cattelan. “But there’s no way you can reach that goal if you don’t have it.”

Source (Detroit News)

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:

2011 Chevrolet Volt (pre-production model), 2011 Chevrolet Cruze

As many people are aware, GM plans to roll out a limited number of Chevy Volts for sale in late 2010.

Source have stated the exact number is likely to be around 2500.

Even though Nissan has already announced the five markets they plan to introduce the LEAF electric car, GM has remained silent on this issue.

They have previously said they would give special preference to places exhibiting plug-in readiness and have given Washington DC  and San Franciso as examples, but made no commitments.

That is all about to change.

GM has stated in a press release that it will “announce plans for initial retail markets where the Volt will be sold” at a press conference at the LA Auto Show on December 2nd.  Also the US version of the Chevy Cruze, expected to getup to 40 mpg on the highway will be debuted.

The fact that this announcement is coming in LA obviously indicates California will be among those initial places (no surprise there).

But will where you live? Or me?

We’ll have to wait to find out.

Source (GM)

A group of industry leaders have formed a new coalition and released an ambitious roadmap to deploy electric vehicles and infrastructure in the United States. The Electrification Coalition states “Our primary mission is to promote government action to facilitate deployment of electric vehicles on a mass scale.”

Their goal is to have electric and plugin hybrid vehicles account for 75% of all light duty miles by 2040.

To achieve that objective, two shorter term milestones are proposed:

1. by 2020 plug in cars should account for 25% of all car and light duty truck sales.  Meeting this objective would mean having 14 million plugin cars on US roads by that year

2. by 2030 plugin vehicles should;d account for 90% of all car and light duty truck sales.  This would require 120 million plugin cars on US roads by that year.

To reach those benchmarks the group recommends rolling out electric cars and infrastructure in selected markets and expanding those markets incrementally through learning about consumer behavior.  This approach is preferred to a blanket national rollout.

The group also recommends government funding to help achieve the goals which would come at a cost of $124 billion. They would like more than $7500 in tax credits to go to each buyer of electric cars, and for the government to provide 50% tax credits for utility company upgrades and 50 to 75% credits for the cost of installing public infrastructure.

“The first electric vehicles will be delivered in 12 months,” said member Carols Ghosn, Nissan CEO. “The widespread acceptance of zero emission cars will require more than the efforts automakers can provide on their own. Public and private collaboration will be the key to mainstream acceptance.”

If the 2040 target were achieved it would mean US petroleum consumption would be reduced from its current rate of 8.6 million barrels per day to 2 million barrels per day.

Members of the group are as follows (absent anyone from GM):

Timothy E. Conver, Chairman, President & CEO, AeroVironment, Inc.
Peter L. Corsell, CEO, GridPoint, Inc.
David W. Crane, President & CEO, NRG Energy, Inc.
Kevin Czinger, President & CEO, Coda Automotive
Peter A. Darbee, Chairman, CEO & President, PG&E Corporation
Seifi Ghasemi, Chairman & CEO, Rockwood Holdings, Inc.
Carlos Ghosn, President & CEO, Nissan Motor Company, Ltd.
Ray Lane, Managing Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Richard Lowenthal, Founder & CEO, Coulomb Technologies, Inc.
Alex A. Molinaroli, Chairman, Johnson Controls-Saft and President, Johnson Controls Power Solutions
Reuben Munger, Chairman, Bright Automotive, Inc.
Frederick W. Smith, Chairman, President & CEO, FedEx Corporation
David P. Vieau, President & CEO, A123 Systems, Inc.

Source (Electrification Coalition)

General Motors reported today that it lost $1.2 billion in the period since exiting bankruptcy on July 10th, and also said it will begin to repay government loans early, starting next month.

Overall, there was not a lot to hang your hat on in this update if you consider yourself a defacto shareholder of ‘new’ GM, but if you were concerned that GM may not have deep enough pockets to someday see the Chevy Volt roll onto your driveway, today is a good day.

GM had a consolidated $42.6 billion in cash (including $17.4 billion in government escrow accounts) at the end of the quarter, leaving even the most unoptimistic of forecasters to come to the conclusion that GM is not going away anytime soon. So put your Volt deposits down with confidence, your Volt is coming. (Unless of course your local dealer is Maxton Chevrolet in Ohio, who is taking deposits and is not yet a approved retailer)

GM CEO Fritz Henderson had this to say about his company’s first 83 days of operation:

“We have significantly more work to do, but today’s results provide evidence of the solid foundation we’re building for the new GM. With a healthier balance sheet and a competitive cost structure, our focus is on driving top line performance. We’ll achieve that by winning customers over, one at a time, with vehicles that deliver performance and value.”

If you only want to hear good news, I would encourage you to stop reading at this point…or at least skip down to the last paragraph.

It is worth noting that this update is not a official filing, and with an understanding from the SEC to complete its Fresh Start reporting by March 31, 2010, this report leads out with the disclaimer that “the managerial financial statements do not comply with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP)…” /yuck

Basically this means, ‘everything we say, you have to take with a grain of salt.’ Which also means, we are forced to dig a little deeper to understand the situation at GM. Namely the same two questions everyone always wants answered; how much cash do they have now, and how fast are they burning it?

So how much Cash Do they Really Have?
Looking closer, we find that the $42.6 billion was only a snapshot on Sept 30th, and that escrow account has nowhere near $17.4 billion of accessible cash at this moment. $2.8 billion has gone to Delphi, almost a billion to Canadian pensions, and another 8.1 billion is earmarked to repay UST (US Treasury) and EDC (Export Development Loans), which leaves only $5.6 billion unspoken for.

And yes, the money that GM is ‘repaying’ is coming out of that same government escrow account that was just set up. /beauty

Additional pressure already being felt on GM’s cash situation since this update is the forced repayment of the German government’s interim loan from the Opel ‘non-sale,’ of which about $700 million has been repaid since September, and another $600 million is due by month’s end. Operational shortfalls at Daewoo has also cost the mothership north of $400 million, and threatens to drain more.

Realistically, accessible cash on hand at this moment is more than likely around $28 billion…which is still a very high/adequate level. The biggest ongoing threat to this reserve is the cost associated with retaining Opel if GM can not receive more international aid. GM estimates the restructuring costs for Opel at around 3 billion euros ($4.4b)…some independent analysis puts that figure as high as €10B.

On the very last line of the press release, I think GM does a good job of assessing the situation, without giving any specific estimates, “…global cash balances at the end of 2009 are expected to be materially lower than third quarter levels of $42.6 billion.”

What is the Cash Burn Rate?
Short and sweet answer is we have no clue. Without a GAAP report and a couple historical statements under GM’s belt to make time comparisons, it is impossible to say.

According to GM, they report that “for the period July 10-Sept. 30, GM had positive managerial operating cash flow before special items of $3.3 billion, reflecting the favorable working capital impact from production start up, timing of supplier payments and lower capital spending.”

Which basically means, a perfect storm of things happened to overinflate this number. In the ‘looking ahead’ section of its report, GM admits it “expects to have negative net cash flows in the fourth quarter of 2009 due to a number of factors…” /they don’t know either

Overall Thoughts
All things considered it was a pretty good first report, about as decent as it could be anyway. The plan to overproduce vehicles under the threat of bankruptcy (peaking at 872K units at end of 2008), then sell the bulk of them to increase liquidity post C11 (down to a low of 379K in August) was by far their best forward looking move in a long time.

While the sales since the bankruptcy have continued to be poor (as it has been throughout the industry…forgetting Hyundai for the moment), the ongoing operating losses may be a by-product of huge incentives on the hoods of GM cars, put there to reduce/monetize the massive stockpile of 2009 inventory they had produced. The remaining question is, will customers that have grown accustom to such deep discounts, still purchase GM cars in their absence?

Given that GM has achieved a 75% reduction in structural costs, a clean balance sheet, and now has a ample money supply coming out of C11, they have a once in a lifetime opportunity to right the ship…and because the success of the Volt, and possibly the future of domestic EV production itself lies with GM, I hope they succeed.

Silver Emerald Volt

On October 22nd, GM announced a contest to allow members of the public to participate in choosing the name of the Chevy Volt’s signature silver with emerald hue paint color.

The decision process was in the form of a contest.

GM claims nearly 13,000 creative entries were received from which they were able to whittle down three finalists.

They are:
1) “EV-ergreen by Devin McQuarrie, 30, of San Jose, CA
2) “Viridian Joule” by by Dave Thomas, 40, of Sanford, FL
3) “environMINT” entered by Matthew Valbuena, 30, of Rancho Santa Margarita, CA

These finalists were decided “based equally on originality, creativity and the ability to capture the innovation and spirit of the Volt.”

Staring today you can vote for your favorite name below. The winner will be chosen by this public vote and will be flown all-expenses-paid to the LA Auto Show next month where it will be announced on December 1.

Not only will the winner go down in history as having named the Volts’ paint color but will also get an exclusive test drive of a pre-production integration Chevy Volt including in the now-ready-for-primetime charge-sustaining mode operation.

VOTE HERE

Editor’s Note:  There are reports on the Internet about an Ohio Chevy Dealer taking deposits on eBay.  The dealer claims to have Chevy Volt allocation.  This is denied by GM who report no dealer allocations have been given yet.

BMW started the MINI E electric car field test program from scratch in Spring of 2008 as a tool for their Project i plan to develop vehilces for sustainable mega cities of the future..

The trial has been ongoing since the first car was delivered in May of this year. Richard Steinberg of BMW group presented the company’s current progress and learnings from the program. You can view the whole sideshow here.

It was noted that 1800 applications were received and from that group 250 cars were placed in Southern California, and 200 in New York and New Jersey.

Steinberg noted that although public infrastructure is needed to limit range anxiety, this program focused only on consumer home charging infrastructure.  He said this program “placed us in
the infrastructure business.”

It was found that the wallbox installation process was more tedious and time consuming than expected leading to customer frustrations, and that post-installation servicing is a murky area as to who performs it and who pays for it. In the future he reported BMW will focus more on public infrastructure development and pay attention to vehicle to grid and load leveling solutions.

He reported that the purpose of the field trial was to evaluate BEVs in real world conditions and to determine the effect of temperature, weather, and driving behavior on range, reliability and charging status. Also what consumers perceptions of living with an EV was assessed.

It was noted that the MINI E driver community was “borderline evangelical” though there was an “extremely critical vocal minority.” Also noted was that many feedback opportunities evolved including a facebook group and over 30 driver blogs.

In conclusion, the following key leanings have been determined:
1) EV drivers are passionate and look forward to next generation vehicles
2) There is significant need to adopt a common charging port architecture (J1772) and to encourage and develop public charging infrastructure
3) Range anxiety remains a hurdle to be cleared. Options to do so, they say include either developing PHEVs (like the Volt) or expanding public charging infrastructure

Source (BMW) via (Wired)

It is fitting that on the day the Nissan LEAF began its US viewing tour I happened to forget to plug in my MINI E electric car the night before, and only had a few miles of range left on it. Luckily, I have a third backup gas car for just these reasons.

The Nissan LEAF offers up to 100 miles of electric range and will go on sale in selected US markets late next year.  According to Nissan executives the car will priced so that monthly cost of operation is equivalent to that of a fully-loaded Civic (including fuel). Nissan still hasn’t decided whether to lease the battery separately or sell it with the car.

The LEAF began a four day display in Los Angeles marking its first stop on a national viewing tour that ends in New York City next February.  It is a non-functioning car.  A Nissan Versa outfitted with the LEAF powertrain will be around for VIP and media test drives, public drives will not be permitted.

On the same day the LEAF tour began GM decided to put out a viral video.

This short and simple cartoon attempts to illustrate why EVs are cool, EREV’s are cooler and can be seen below.

If you forget to plug in your EV and it’s the only car you got, not cool.  If you have a Volt it won’t matter.

Of course, forgetting to plug one’s car in may not happen very often but needing to drive continuously beyond its electric range will.

May the best car win.