The Chevy Volt Will Save GM (And Get The Girl)

[DainBramaged]

These are dark days for General Motors, which is wallowing in the mire of the global economic implosion. Shares recently hit their lowest price since 1951, reserves are running on empty and there's no guarantee a merger with Chrysler or a government bailout will save the day. GM's only ray of light is the Chevrolet Volt, its all-in bet on the golden retriever going in for the injured point guard with five minutes left to play, the home team down by 15 and all of Motor City's cheerleaders out waxing their bikini lines.

The odds are good the gamble will pay off.

The world's largest automaker is expected on Friday to announce billions of dollars in third-quarter losses, and all but stands on the brink of bankruptcy. The revolutuonary Volt is without question its best chance for survival. It isn't just a 100-mpg electric car, it is GM's declaration that it will no longer play it safe cranking out uninspired and irrelevant cars. GM wants to seize the green mantle from Toyota and prove Japan doesn't have a stranglehold on innovation.

"We've had a gradual cultural revolution here at GM," Bob Lutz, vice chairman of product development and the guy cracking the whip to get the Volt in showrooms by the end of 2010, recently told us. "The Volt is a very good sign for the company. It shows a willingness to take great risks."

It would be easy to dismiss Maximum Bob's comments as more hyperbole from a guy who knows how to give good quote. But the Volt is a great risk. It's also the vehicle most likely to generate the momentum GM needs to carry it through these bleak economic times.

The Volt is no johnny-come-lately following the path blazed by the first-gen Honda Insight and the Toyota Prius. It’s a technological step forward.

The Prius, like the Honda Civic and forthcoming Honda Insight, is a parallel hybrid that uses both an electric motor and a gasoline engine to drive the wheels. The Volt, on the other hand, is a series hybrid. Like the Prius, it's got an electric motor and a four-cylinder gasoline engine, but the engine merely charges the 16 kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery as it approaches depletion. Electricity alone turns the wheels. The Volt is designed to travel 40 miles on a single charge, meaning most drivers will never burn a drop of gasoline. GM is still butting heads with the Environmental Protection Agency over the Volt's official fuel economy rating, but GM execs tell us the Volt is good for 100 mpg or more. That's enough to put the fear of God into the oil companies.




http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/11/the-chevy-volt.html

[TomInTib]

1. Tesla (I have driven one, and they kick butt)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOl_1S10jTk

[Barrett808]

5. But Tesla's in serious financial trouble

I wouldn't bet on them surviving the next year. :(

[TheWraith]

6. Perhaps they can get a piece of the next US budget: greencollar jobs, or clean-energy related tech.

If we're being outright asked for $15 billion just for GM, because they made bad decisions, I can't imagine we couldn't spare 5-10% of that in loan guarantees for a company which is building the cars of the future.

[NNadir]

7. That would represent yet another subsidy for the rich. I'm against it.

The idea that the Tesla represents an environmental triumph is ridiculous.

[TheWraith]

8. How so? It's a startup company building clean cars.

It's a lot less noxious even than underwriting GM's bad decision making that led to their losses: Tesla's just trying to work out the kinks and build a product.

[NNadir]

9. There is no such thing as a clean car.

Cars are distributed energy systems and all distributed energy systems represent point source pollution machines.

I have calculated elsewhere that the amount of energy consumed by a Tesla accelerating from zero to sixty in a few seconds represents as much energy as most people on this planet consume for everything, food, water, shelter, heat, medical care, and communication for entire days.

Many people seem to think that electricity is produced by wall sockets.

It is not.

The Tesla is a rich boy's toy. I rather despise the piece of garbage on the grounds that it encourages yuppie wishful thinking, self-delusion, consumerism, and denial.

[CRF450]

10. Me being a performance car nut, I'd take the Tesla Roadster....

Over any other pure electric car made.

[NNadir]

13. Being a human, I'd take humanity over mindless consumerism in any moral issue raised.

[excess_3]

11. math check

a 1000 kg mass at 60 mph,

has about 100 watt-hours of kinetic energy



which isn't all that much

[NNadir]

12. Oh please... Not much? For whom? Leaving aside the 2nd law of thermodynamics

which is always the subject of so much car CULTure handwaving and IGNORance - the thermodynamic inefficiency of power generation, transmission; the cost of transporting fuels for electrical plants, the damage caused by dangerous coal generators, dangerous natural gas generators, and dangerous diesel powered generators, the destruction of entire river systems like the Colorado, ignoring things like wind resistence - um no, the super cool Tesla does not run in a vaccuum -
a car running at that speed will consume in one hour will consume 24% of the energy that a citizen of CHAD uses in an entire YEAR for all purposes.

If you're going to try to do math - and I wouldn't recommend it - try hard not to be Marie Antoinette.

The car CULTure sucks. It should be abandoned forthwith.

[jpak]

22. Abandoned forthwith your car culture car an post pics of it in the crusher

:rofl:

[kristopher]

14. The tesla probably consumes less than 1/10 th the energy getting to 60 as your SUV.

Figuring your SUV at around 12% efficiency at turning fuel into propulsion, and the much higher weight of your SUV. And I'm probably low at that.

So how do you placate your conscience about all those poor people when you gobble up all that gasoline while wasting 88% of its energy, Leadfoot?

[jpak]

20. I saw a Tesla with an Obama sticker on it

what an asshole...

:rofl:

[jpak]

21. Distributed energy systems rule

Amory Lovins published some cool papers on this.

:hi:

[madrchsod]

2. if it works at 20 below to100 above

they will sell millions during the car`s production cycle. contrary to popular opinion general motors over the years has been a leader in auto technology. it`s time to show the world that they can do it again.

the problem is we need to put people back to work so they can buy new cars again.

[rwenos]

3. If it's good, it will be the first

That is, if the Volt is as good as GM says, it will (1) prove that GM can actually build a good small car, despite what they've been bleating about all these years; and (2) that, despite decades of evidence to the contrary, GM "really and truly" is not in the bag for Exxon et al.

Hard to believe. I want it to be true. But then I've owned small GM cars (read, 1999 Pontiac Grand Prix.) Ugh.

[Fenris]

4. My ONE complaint about the Volt...

It's pricey, but I understand why - that's not my problem. I know the L-I setup complicates the interior organization, but the fact that it's 2+2 still irks me. It probably shouldn't...still...

There were rumors earlier tonight that the Volt will be facing cuts tomorrow. Given the development dollars they've poured into the Volt and their need for an on-time launch, I don't see that happening.

[kristopher]

15. I understand it is the one project that isn't being cut at all. nt

[st8grad93]

19. The Volt got a huge break in the bailout bill ...

One of the items slipped into the $850 billion bailout bill is:

The now passed by the House and signed by Bush $700 Billion Wall Street bailout bill had a few congressional “sweeteners” in it to help get it passed after failing for the first time in the House earlier in the week.

Sweetest for future Volt buyers is what’s called the Transportation and Domestic Fuel Security Provision.

This provision provides a tax credit for buyers of plug-in electric vehicles. It provides a base of $2500 plus an additional $417 per kwh for batteries greater than 4 kwh. For the Chevy Volt, that works out to $7500 per car, a number GM had lobbied for.

The credit will be applied to the first 250,000 plug-in cars sold in the US and will be phased out to 50% for the following two quarters, and 25% for the two quarters after that before ending. The total cost of the credits will be $758 million.

[NoFederales]

16. Toyota apparently discarded a tow-behind trailer generator system

with it's Rav4EV vehicle. As long as gas lasted in the generator's tank, the EV could keep traveling, hence its name of the Long Ranger. I never saw any technology descriptions/details about the generator trailer system, but if someone knows about them, please post some links. If what is being called a "series hybrid" is based on the early Toyota research--a purely EV traction vehicle with fluid generator--then I hope GM is successful. I don't care much for the so-called "parallel hybrid" concept, and the terminology--now that I've discovered it--is useful.

Here is a bare-bones link about some of the Toyota program: http://www.evdl.org/archive/index.html#nabble-td19696647

Until the energy density of an EV battery pack equals gasoline (if we take it as a standard), these hybrids are good alternatives and I'm not sure how they will resolve the mpg issue. How was the issue tackled when gasoline-propane-natural gas hybrid systems were introduced?

NoFederales

[kristopher]

17. Just to nitpick a bit

The energy density of a battery pack doesn't need to equal that of liquid fuels (although it would be a wonderful achievement if it did). The critical thing your statement overlooks is the relative overall efficiency of the two different drive systems - internal combustion engines with drive trains and transmissions, versus battery to motor at each wheel. The ICE averages about 12% of energy used for propulsion, the newest EVs with lithium deliver above 90% to propulsion. This increased efficiency is what makes EVs so attractive. I HATE wasting $.88 of every dollar I pump in gasoline.

[NoFederales]

18. True.

I've been fortunate to be able to do some experimenting with so-called wheel motors and the efficiency IS amazing--not to mention just plain fun.

NoFederales

[lfairban]

23. Go on.

How have you been having fun with wheel motors?

Experimenting with hybrid vehicle designs?

[NoFederales]

24. By eliminating chain and belt drives, efficiency goes up; by experimenting with

photovoltaics to charge the battery system, alternatives to liquid fuels arise; by experimenting with lightweight chassis designs, materials and construction techniques may improve. Certainly, knowing how to do something is as satisfying as reading about it.

NoFederales