One year before starting production of the Chevy Volt, General Motors engineers say they are confident in the performance and safety of the electric car's batteries.
GM executives gave an update on the car's plans on Tuesday, saying engineers are making some tweaks to the design but that they are on schedule.
The Volt's chief engineer, Andrew Farah, also implied that GM is close to moving ahead with a project to make a Cadillac that uses the same gas-electric power train that the Volt uses. Last week, there were reports that the Converj concept had been given the green light internally, with expected car delivery in 2013.
For the Volt, GM is preparing the battery and auto manufacturing, which will happen in its home state of Michigan, with the process and product validation scheduled to begin early next year, executives said.
In the meantime, GM engineers are testing the Volt's battery pack, called the Voltec, and putting 80 prototype vehicles through the paces. In addition to crash tests for safety, they are testing the car's performance on a range of conditions, including very hot and cold temperatures, and steep hills.
This crash test shows that the orange T-shape battery pack of the Volt is not impacted during frontal collision, says GM.
(Credit: General Motors)The Volt is a gas-electric hybrid, but unlike the Toyota Prius and other hybrids on the road now, the Volt moves only from electric motors. The gasoline engine is used to supply energy to the batteries through a generator.
Because it's a new car, GM still is trying to project what sort of performance to expect. Overall, engineers are happy, but they also know that climate conditions and driving style will affect the battery's performance, they said.
"Ten years is the target life (for the battery). Depending on how you use it and where you live, you could see significantly longer time," said David Wallace, engineering group manager for Voltec Battery Systems.
The biggest challenge is battery durability in very hot weather, he said. People who live in more temperate areas and do a lot of city driving will have more forgiving conditions, Wallace added.
"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," he said.
During its testing, GM has to tune the chemistry of individual batteries, which will be supplied by LG Chem. Various tests, including crash tests, have indicated that battery safety is good, executives said.
For the car itself, auto engineers are now making adjustments to reduce the overall noise during times when the gas engine kicks on for longer rides.
Farah declined to say how big the gas tank will be, which will indicate what the overall driving range is, saying that decision will be made as late as possible.
Separately, Farah said GM's plan to produce an Opel in Europe that uses the Voltec powertrain is still on target, with a schedule roughly one year behind the Volt.
For a car that won't be available for more than a year, the Chevy Volt has got a huge following. Over 50,000 people have signed up for a waiting list run by a non-GM Web site. It's a compelling design idea: a car that moves from a peppy electric motor but has a gas tank to run a generator for longer trips.
But scratch the surface a bit and you'll find doubters. As competitor Toyota moves into plug-ins, it advocates sticking with the blended mode of today's hybrids, where the gas engine and battery move the car, because it believes that technology is more affordable.
Tony Posawatz, vehicle line director for the Chevy Volt, at GM's OnStar EV Lab last Monday.
(Credit: General Motors)A Carnegie Mellon study last year (click for PDF) concluded that hybrids with large batteries, such as the Volt, are not the most cost-effective choice among plug-in options. That's a view shared by the federal government's auto industry task force, which last year said that big reductions in battery costs would be required to make the Volt cost-competitive. (Click for PDF.)
GM executives have said all along that the Volt will be expensive because it's the first generation of the technology and there isn't yet a high-volume supply chain to keep costs down. In an interview earlier this week, General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson said the price of the Volt will be about $40,000.
To get an idea of what GM's expectations were for the financial impact from the Volt, I spoke with Tony Posawatz, the vehicle line director for the Chevy Volt, during the Business of Plugging In conference in Detroit last week.
In terms of volume, GM expects to sell thousands of Chevy Volts in the first year, he said, which means the company's fortunes in the near future hinge on other models.
Down the road, the question is whether GM can ramp up sales by lowering costs and by adapting the powertrain technology to other vehicles.
Q: I've been writing about the Volt for a couple of years now. It's cool technology but do you think it will be a commercial success?
Posawatz: All bets are off if gas prices are under two bucks a gallon. This could be a challenging environment, no question about it. Now we don't anticipate that in the long term. And because the launch volume in the first few months is relatively modest, I think we can do OK. I think the real question will be in the 2012 time frame. Where will the economy be then and can we reach beyond the early adopters?
Well, do you think you can reach a broader audience?
Posawatz: We think we can. The intent is that in year two we will be making tens of thousands of vehicles. The exact number will depend on the economic climate, the demand from new customers, etc. We have a pretty good feeling given the uniqueness of this product. I just finished up a pretty lengthy drive and we had (tested) some competitive vehicles which shall remain nameless, and there was a significant difference in the driving experience of this car. That's the hidden pleasure that people can't see and feel until they drive the car.
You have a low center of gravity and you have instantaneous torque--you can burn rubber on the car--and no transmission shifts... It will have a high "fun to drive" quotient.
So is this going to be a high-end car aimed at affluent customers?
Posawatz: A lot of the first folks will be the early adopters. To a certain degree, we'll seek them out because those are the guys that will effectively help tell the story. You know, the person who is always the first to use technology and he tells you it's OK, he's proved it out. We're going to look for those guys.
I think you hit on the key question: what happens after that? We're hoping that the aficionados, the folks who really understand technology, they say, "Wow, this is the car." I think it will always be more (expensive) than a conventional car because of the nature of the battery, the nature of the high technology. And there will be some very cool features in there. Very akin to consumer electronics. You'll see less hardware updates and more software updates and maybe even apps that come along with the car (through OnStar).
The 2011 Chevy Volt.
(Credit: General Motors)
How can you bring down the cost?
Posawatz: The other interesting piece of the puzzle is the benefits that people will get which will soften the blow of the price tag on the car. There's a $7,500 tax credit that will be available for a long time so take that off the price. There's a charging fueling rebate (for fueling with electricity)--up to $1,000.
We anticipate that some localities (could) give you preferred parking, HOV access, free electricity at place of work--all which will end up being positive. So there will be a different kind of calculation for customers. And there are some interesting business models as it relates to spreading the cost of the battery over time (such as leasing). We're investigating a lot of this stuff.
The projections for all-electric vehicles (also called battery-electrics) and extended-ranged electric vehicles (like the Volt) are that they will only be about 1 percent of sales in five years. Given the investment and attention you're getting for the Volt, is that OK?
Posawatz: Like a lot of stuff, the gen one version is probably not the most important play. It's ultimately what we do after that. By building it on an existing platform, different body styles can go on it. We have a pretty good understanding on how we can reduce the cost in the next generation of technology, with a little bit more competition in the supply base, etc. So this is a much more of a longer-term game (with an eye toward markets outside the U.S. as well)...We'll see. The good place to be is on the first mover side. The first movers also learn the fast.
I'm bullish on battery electrics, the question is when. Because the Volt is an electrically driven vehicle, we have the different components set up for that. Ultimately, at some point somebody will say they've come up with a battery with twice the energy and power density and half the cost.
So you think that Toyota's more conservative approach is not the way to go?
Posawatz: Every company has to find what they think is their formula for winning. And we think the regular hybrid architecture is still an internal combustion engine. We now have the possibility of different variants for engine generators. It could be a whole different gas tank size and fuels. The Volt will come with a gas version and an E85 (ethanol) version. Oh, and you can take the engine generator set out and it could be a battery-only vehicle. You could use fuel cell stack. You can't do that with a conventional hybrid.... (though) we have hybrids, too.
DETROIT--General Motors needs to wring thousands of dollars in cost from its high-profile Chevy Volt electric car before it can compete long term on price, a company executive said on Tuesday.
The biggest challenge relating to the cost of electric vehicles and the Volt specifically is the battery and related components, such as the power electronics and the motors. Compared to other plug-ins, the Volt has a very large battery--sized at 16 kilowatt hours--to ensure that drivers can meet most daily driving needs in electric mode.
For the car to get "traction" in the market, the cost of the battery components needs to drop more than $5,000, said Jonathan Lauckner, GM's vice president of global program management at the Business of Plugging In conference here.
"Clearly if we really want to have these vehicles get traction and want to bring the price of vehicles to a level that's competitive with say, a hybrid today, we got to get battery costs way down from where they are today," Lauckner said.
The Chevy Volt technology includes a T-shaped battery pack in the middle of the car and both an internal combustion engine and electric motor in the front.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)GM plans to manufacture the battery pack for the Volt, which is scheduled for release at the end of next year, using cells from a division of LG Chem. Lauckner said that the cost per stored energy for that entire pack is several hundred dollars less than $1,000 per kilowatt-hour, a number that's been projected by people outside GM.
The cost for the battery pack needs to shrink substantially to compete with existing auto technology to the range of $250 per kilowatt-hour, Lauckner said.
GM has not yet priced the Volt, which runs on batteries for 40 miles and uses an internal combustion engine to sustain the battery after that. People outside the company have estimated the cost at about $40,000.
There's a potential additional cost if electric car buyers choose to install a 220-volt charger at home, which will essentially cut charge time in half compared to charging from a regular 110-volt outlet. Having a 220-volt charger installed can cost between $300 and $3,000 depending on the complexity of the job, say industry executives.
To offset that upfront cost, Volt buyers qualify for the maximum $7,500 federal tax credit. The tax credit is one way that the federal government has sought to revitalize the U.S. auto industry around electric vehicle technologies. But Lauckner said that long term Volt costs have to go down further because government incentives will go away at some point.
The ongoing operating costs of owning a Volt will be about one-sixth of that of compact sedan, Lauckner said, adding that the savings go higher as the price of gasoline goes up. GM expects that most Volt drivers will be able to do almost all their driving in electric mode.
DETROIT--General Motors on Monday opened the doors to the OnStar EV Lab here, a testing center for in-car communications the company hopes will give its electric Chevy Volt more high-tech appeal.
The OnStar EV Lab, housed in GM's downtown Detroit corporate headquarters, is now using the OnStar communications system to gather data on 19 Chevy Volt vehicles for engineering purposes. The same technology will give consumers the ability to tap online services and perform tasks specific to a plug-in electric vehicle, company executives said.
When GM releases the Volt at the end of next year, consumers will be able to
"The car will have to talk to the grid and be able to pull very sensitive (utility) data," Posawatz said. "Electric vehicle customers want to manage their energy--they're very into data. OnStar is an enabling tool for us."
The OnStar system could broker communications with the utility so that consumers can charge at off-peak times, such as the middle of the night, and potentially take advantage of lower rates. "Smart charging," or charging at off-peak times, is important to manage so that plug-in electric vehicles don't add to peak-time electricity demand. In the near term, utility executives say the biggest concern is that many cars in one local area will tax one particular electricity distribution point.
Because rolling the Volt out will require coordination with utilities, General Motors plans to offer the Volt only in certain regions of the U.S. when the car is first made available. "It certainly won't be a nation-wide roll-out," Posawatz said.
The Chevy Volt at GM's newly opened OnStar EV Lab.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)Having an integrated communications system, which uses the digital cellular network, with OnStar is a boon to Volt engineers because there isn't a lot of available data on battery performance from cars of similar design, company executives said. The Volt is an extended-range electric vehicle that can drive 40 miles on battery charge and then uses an internal combustion engine to sustain the battery charge for longer rides.
There are 20 modules on the Volt that can feed information back to GM engineers at the OnStar EV Lab, allowing them to get performance and diagnostic information on individual cars. The system also allows GM to get data on the battery subsystem, which the company is testing rigorously as it finalizes the car. For example, OnStar can monitor battery charge, temperature, and the performance of the liquid-cooling system.
OnStar, which is a subsidiary of GM, now has 5.6 million subscribers who pay either $199 or $299 per year for services, such as road-side assistance or remote car unlocking, which are handled by people in GM call centers. Although the system was designed to poll performance data on gasoline cars, GM executives said that the technology platform is flexible enough to work with different powertrains.
GM plans to offer the OnStar service in China next year. Also, GM intends to sell the Chevy Volt in China, western Europe, and Canada, executives said.
WARREN, Mich.--Got an opinion about how General Motors designs its cars and trucks? Let them know.
GM on Tuesday unveiled a blog Web site called The Lab that it hopes will give the struggling auto giant a bead on customer preferences. It's part social-marketing campaign and part product research, company executives said here on Tuesday.
"We want to use this to show where the company is headed, but there are limitations--we're not going to show concepts of cars that will come out next year," said Dave Rand, the director of design at GM's Tech Center, one of its main research centers. "The ideas we'll show will tend to be further out and not be as rigid."
Instead of giving away secrets of planned products, the idea is to get feedback on concepts, such as whether a new type of car will fly with customers, using images and videos to illustrate the company's ideas.
Work for you? A digital model of a bare-bones car shown on GM's new site for communicating design ideas with customers.
(Credit: GM)The first three projects hosted on The Lab are for a bare necessities compact car, a bare necessity truck, and an Eco Initiative to better understand the interests of "green" buyers.
The Lab is set up to be like a social-networking site where people have a profile and log in. People can rate designs and provide comments. There will also be a way to opt in and provide demographic information in exchange for access to new designs, company executives said.
Rand said that providing an inside look of GM designers' work is not meant to replace auto shows or building models of concept cars. But getting feedback from fans and foes will allow designers to cycle through concepts more quickly.
"The way we used to do research through (customer) clinics is cumbersome and expensive," he said.
Currying favor with customers
GM discussed The Lab with a handful of journalists at a media and analyst day hosted by the company's top management where the company gave a glimpse of its lineup over the next two years.
The emphasis of the discussions was intentionally on product and designs that company executives hope will drive revenue now that GM has slashed costs and restructured through bankruptcy.
GM is also seeking to spiff up its corporate image with consumers, using social media of all sorts to get out its message. The media event, for example, was Webcast and open to questions from the public, while communications specialists used Twitter to answer questions online during the day.
In another sign of GM trying to better understand American consumers, GM's top executives, including CEO Fritz Henderson and his staff, met for a full day with consumers on Monday, many of whom do not own GM vehicles.
GM's Rand said that The Lab site will allow GM to share designs that it doesn't now. But, it clearly needs to temper some of that openness so as not to give away trade secrets. During media tours of GM's design studios on Tuesday, journalists were barred from carrying cameras.
"We're going to be walking the line, quite frankly. We're trying to be more transparent, but at the same time we're somewhat protective because it's intellectual property," Rand said.
General Motors and eBay will start a trial program Tuesday to let Californians buy cars online.
Dealers at 225 locations in California will participate in the program, which will run from Tuesday until September 8. It will be available at the co-branded Web site, gm.ebay.com.
The site will allow people to compare prices, arrange financing, and check a used car's eligibility for the Cash for Clunkers trade-in program. There is the "Buy It Now" option where people agree to pay the advertised price or can make an offer using eBay's auctioning system.
The trial will be started with 20,000 GM models from 2008, 2009, and 2010. After purchase, cars will be picked up at the dealership.
Gathering information online when buying a car has become commonplace in the United States. GM and eBay cited a J.D. Power & Associates study that found that more than 75 percent of people did research online while buying a new vehicle.
"As the dealer showroom expands from the parking lot to the laptop, this makes it easier for a customer to browse available new-car inventory, make an offer, buy it now, or send a message asking for more information from a dealer," Mark LaNeve, GM vice president of U.S. sales, said in a statement.
eBay said that its eBay Motors site for selling used cars has been getting 12 million individual visits per month.
One car dealer in California, Inder Dosanjh, told the Associated Press that he already sells used cars on eBay and plans to put his new vehicle inventory on the new site this week. "I think they should have done this a long time ago," he told the AP.
Updated at 12:00 p.m. PT with comments from GM representative.
Even as GM develops the electric power train for its Chevy Volt, the company has plans to design a hybrid platform for sedans, according to a report.
The hybrid technology will be used in a midsize sedan as well as other vehicles and offer better mileage than its current technology.
"What we are trying to work towards is 'Yes,' we will have other hybrid vehicles (besides the Volt) but we are trying to work towards a dedicated hybrid," Ed Peper, GM's general manager of Chevrolet, told GM-Volt.com, a site not affiliated with GM. "We think that's probably a better way for us to go longer term."
The hybrid Chevy Malibu: time for an upgrade?
(Credit: General Motors)GM currently offers a hybrid edition of the Chevy Malibu that promises up to 26 miles per gallon in city driving and 34 on highway. That's only slightly better than the 22- and 33 miles-per-gallon rating for the gasoline-only version--a situation that GM is seeking to improve on, Peper said.
"I think when we bring out a hybrid, and I think its very important, we've got to make sure it has significantly better fuel economy than a non-hybrid," he said.
GM stopped production of the 2009 Malibu but it will offer the improved hybrid system with the 2011 Malibu, a GM representative said on Monday.
The fuel economy with the new hybrid system will be on the order of 20 percent compared to the gasoline-only versions, he added. Rather than nickel metal hydride batteries, the newer hybrid system will use lithium-ion batteries supplied by Hitachi.
"This future system will have the capability to work over a wider range of vehicles," he said.
Offering more hybrid editions would complement GM's range-extended electric vehicle technology used in the Volt and potentially other cars. In announcing its departure from bankruptcy on Friday, GM repeated that advanced battery development is a "core competency" for the revived automaker.
A hybrid power train uses both the gasoline engine and a dedicated battery to power the car. When the car decelerates or brakes, the system charges the battery.
All-electric or range-extended electric vehicles are different in that they use the batteries and electric motor only to move the car. The gasoline engine in the Chevy Volt will be used to charge the battery for trips longer than 40 miles.
In addition to the Volt's electric power train and a revamped hybrid platform, GM also plans to offer plug-in hybrid vehicles across its four core brands. The basis for the plug-in hybrid will be from GM's "two-mode hybrid" system and will be available in 2011, according a GM representative.
Meanwhile, Honda on Monday said that it plans to offer hybrid versions of its CR-Z sports car and Fit Hybrid in Japan by the end of 2010.
GM bought the Renaissance Center in 1996, occupying four of its towers.
(Credit: Yavno)In 1996 GM bought the Renaissance Center in downtown Detroit, and occupied four of its seven towers. But the GM employees in those towers didn't actually build cars, a task left to factory workers around the world. That is one problem addressed by the new General Motors Company that just emerged from bankruptcy. GM CEO Fritz Henderson announced that the company would eliminate 35 percent of its executive positions, flattening its management structure. Henderson said, GM will focus on "its customers, its cars, and its culture," in that order.
GM retains four brands, Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, and GMC. Before the fall, Cadillac was on the right track, producing the CTS, which easily competes with European and Asian sport luxury vehicles. Product plans are still going forward for the CTS wagon, shown at car shows earlier this year. Likewise, the Chevrolet Volt will remain on track, a car that, if GM had begun development years earlier, might have taken the hybrid mantle away from the Toyota Prius. Buicks sell well as luxury cars in China, which explains the retention of that brand, and GMC still has cachet in the truck market.
In another move that might have saved the company if enacted years earlier, Henderson announced that one factory would be dedicated to producing a new family of small cars. Other models the company will still produce are the Chevrolet Camaro, Cadillac SRX, Cadillac CTS Coupe, GMC Terrain, and the Chevrolet Cruze. Hummer and Saturn are being sold as part of the bankruptcy proceedings, while Pontiac has been discontinued.
If GM developed the Volt years earlier, would it have saved the company?
(Credit: GM)Henderson clearly wants to modernize the company. GM is initiating a new experiment, a partnership with eBay where it will sell new cars on the online auction site.
But has GM stripped away all of the things that originally brought about its downfall? Henderson's announcements at least suggest some common sense thinking, breaking away from the hide-bound company of the past, the product planning of which got sideswiped by external factors such as the high gas prices of 2008.
For GM's sake, and the U.S. public's 60 percent share, the company should be working on products that not only compete internationally, but also lead the way. With upstarts like Tesla Motors and Fisker Automotive taking advantage of this unique time in the automotive world, the decline of the internal combustion engine, GM needs to focus on its own alternative power train strategy. And that will require the flexibility within management to let the past go and embrace future technologies.
General Motors opened the doors to a battery research and development plant in Michigan on Monday, a facility the company says will accelerate its move to electric vehicles.
The Global Battery Systems Lab in Warren, Mich., will be used to test the lithium ion batteries planned for the Chevy Volt as well as other energy storage systems such as ultracapacitors, GM said.
Destined for a Volt: the lithium ion battery pack to be used in the Chevy Volt and potentially other GM electric vehicles.
(Credit: General Motors)The facility, at 33,000 square feet, is four times larger than GM's existing testing operation and will be used by 1,000 engineers, according to the company which hosted a ceremony with Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm and GM CEO Fritz Henderson.
"Our new lab improves GM's competitiveness by speeding the development of our hybrid, plug-in and extended-range electric vehicles, including the Chevrolet Volt," Henderson said in a statement.
Construction of the plant started last August and full operation began in May of this year.
Earlier this year, GM said that it would enter the battery business because the technology is considered strategic to its future cars. The auto giant, which filed for bankruptcy protection last week, said it still intends to have the Chevy Volt electric car available by the end of 2010.
The facility will be able to test the properties of individual cells as well as battery packs. General Motors intends to build its own battery packs for the Chevy Volt, using cells and control electronics from LG Chem.
A 2007 Saturn Aura and Opel Vectra equipped with HCCI engine prototypes.
(Credit: GM)GM announced its development of a new, more efficient internal combustion engine that will eventually be used to power its lineup of hybrid and extended-range plug-in vehicles.
In the homogenous charge compression ignition engine (HCCI), the air and fuel mixture is compressed to ignite rather than using a spark. When combined with other advanced technologies, the HCCI engine provides up to 15 percent better fuel economy, according to GM.
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