Plugged in: Chevrolet Volt

General Motors' development of the Chevrolet Volt has been conducted with unprecedented publicity for the company. In fact, it has had so much publicity that it has led some skeptics to believe the program is a mere publicity stunt. Given that the American industry needs more good news for multiple reasons, this theory is alluring. Either way, we keep learning more about the GM program at almost every auto show and on many occasions in between.

At a "town hall" meeting with Volt enthusiasts in New York, the company spelled out many more details about its targets for the production car. Here's what we learned:

• It will definitely be a small, four-door hatchback based on GM's global small-car architecture, as the concept car is, and it will be built on an existing assembly line.
• The car will likely be low-slung and narrow, because aerodynamics will be important to achieving the targeted fuel economy. Seats will "fit like a tailored suit, not a bulky winter coat," says the Volt's Chief Engineer Andrew Farah.
• The car's lithium-ion battery pack will have 16 kilowatt/hours of capacity - the amount necessary to travel 40 miles on an electric charge.
• The car will have an "intelligent" on-board battery charger that can automatically charge from any type of typical household electric current - either 110-volt or 220-volt AC.
• The battery pack will consist of 250 individual cells, wired in series. If any one of them fails, the whole pack will be dead. The pack will be liquid-cooled.
• Those batteries will use one of two technologies: lithium-ion nano-phosphate batteries from A123 systems in Massachusetts, or lithium-ion magnesium batteries from LG Chem. Neither technology was used in the lithium batteries that exploded spontaneously in laptop computers. Although lithium battery technology is advancing, GM has frozen this technology for the first-generation Volt to meet its November 2010 production target.
• GM is targeting an acceleration time from 0 to 60 mph of between 7 and 9 seconds, similar to the range of most family sedans today.
• The Volt will initially be sold only in certain states or cities, but will roll out nationwide "within months" after that.

A few guests at the meeting last night asked what will take the company so long to develop batteries for the Volt.

In addition to developing software to tell the engine when to start in any of thousands of different situations and how fast to run it, figuring out how to deal with stale gas and oil if users don't drive far enough to start the engine, and testing full-size battery packs, GM expects it will take time to develop public knowledge of how to operate the Volt.

For example, teaching consumers how often they should expect to recharge the car and to fill it with gas, and working with power companies to ensure that Volt buyers get discounted off-peak electric rates for charging at night. Currently, there is no EPA protocol for measuring the fuel economy of a plug-in hybrid.

Bob Lutz, General Motors vice president of global product development, says he is 94 percent positive GM will meet its target deadline of November 2010 to introduce the Volt. Then again, Bob is known for bluster. One thing is more and more certain: If the Volt turns into a mere publicity stunt, it will likely be the most elaborate and expensive one in history.

—Eric Evarts

See the 2008 New York auto show coverage.

Comments

[dave]

chevys choice of power is similar to the diesel electric engines that have been powering trains across this country for over 70 years. A Diesel Engine runs a generator that produces electricity that is used to power the electric engines that power the train. It s a much more efficient power plant than Toyotas Hybrids. The separate power plants, one gas powered, one battery powered,in a hybrid is really an inefficient means to push a vehicle down the road. Using a small gas powered engine to charge the batteries that power the electric motor makes much more sense efficiency wise. Hats off to Chevy...now make it so I can buy one.

[DaveT]

I'm a big fan of Consumer Reports and have been for years.. but can you guys start spending ZERO time on questioning whether GM is lying about actually developing the Volt.. and spend your considerable energies and capabilities on understanding PHEV technology and then helping the American public understand how to leverage it to reduce CO2 emissions, reduced oil imports, reduce our oil driven trade deficit, and improve our energy security?
It's not hard to find real live (and credible) human beings from GM who are actually working on the Volt project to talk to at a wide variety of technical conferences. This isn't some elaborate ruse. It's a bold, new, game changing technology that GM is pioneering.
None of the car companies figured out a way to make electric vehicles work for the mass market previously and that's why the GM EV1, Toyota RAV-4EV, Honda EVPlus were never mass marketed and all were killed by their respective manufacturers. With the Volt PHEV/eREV concept, we finally have the innovative combination of technologies to create a mass market viable vehicle with radically reduced usage of oil.
Some good sources of information are www.calcars.org, www.pluginpartners.com, www.gm-volt.com and
http://www.gmnext.com/details/thoughts.aspx?id=dd4eeee0-2d23-475f-9299-5eed6bc75094
Note the commentary from Chris Paine, Director of "Who Killed the Electric Car".
From what I can tell, GM has created a bold vision, took the chance to invest a lot of people and money in the Volt/eFlex platform and is getting a huge amount of positive feedback and encouragement on it. People can understand the project being late given the technical challenges of this entirely new type of platform, but GM will gain many vociferous detractors if they were to try to kill this project given how it makes such good sense and all the technologies appear near term viable. If they kill it, so many folks will feel massively betrayed. There is too much positive in creating this type of product.. and way too many negative implications for them not doing it.. so I just don't think they will terminate the project.
If you want to question intentions, your questions should now be directed at Honda for why they are spending so much time and effort on efforts such as the Fuel Cell based FCV Clarity (a beautiful piece of advanced engineering) and zero effort on PHEV development given PHEVs can be a reality in a few years for the mass market (and hence make a substantial difference) and Hydrogen driven Fuel Cell vehicles are not viable for decades.

[Ciceroji]

I read this:
The car's lithium-ion battery pack will have 16 kilowatt/hours of capacity - the amount necessary to travel 40 miles on an electric charge.

This is about 250 Wh/km. Then I went to tesla motors site and found out there car has an efficiency of: 110 Wh/km.
http://www.teslamotors.com/efficiency/well_to_wheel.php

This is just sad. GM makes gas guzzlers and now there are going to make an electron guzzler. Just sad. If you gave Tesla those 16Kwh there car would go 160 km or 100 miles.

[DaveT]

To: Ciceroji
These are 2 completely different vehicles.. The Tesla is a $100k, custom made/low volume 2 seat small sized Lotus Elise derivative with an very high cost aluminum body and frame with a 200-240mile range max (and this may be reduced if driven with heavy accessory load (headlights, windshield wipers, heaters, A/C..) plus it is not a PHEV so it has a finite range before requiring a multihour charge.. it is an exciting pure Electric Vehicle (EV). I expect it to be successful for its market niche, but no $100,000 from any manufacturer will sell a large number of vehicles.
The Volt is an eREV/PHEV (extended range electric vehicle) which has a far greater range and capability and is targeted for the mass market (around $30k-$35k). To have this range, it must have a gas engine as a backup as well as all the similar electric drive gear that a Tesla has. Using more conventional materials to achieve a mass market price point adds weight, adding the range extending gas engine and 4 seats/doors adds weight.
Weight lowers that overall efficiency.
Plus, on an EV, the range is entirely dependent upon using the range of SOC (State of Charge) of the battery. So to extend the battery life, the Volt will use a range of about 30-80% state of charge so that the battery pack can last the required 10 years/150,000 miles that customers expect. Toyota is seeing good reliability of their Prius batter pack by only using about 40-80% SOC range. So, I think that Tesla is using a far greater SOC range of their battery pack which would improve their range & efficiency but at the sacrifice of life. According to the Tesla website you pointed to, the Telsa is 3.2x more efficient than a Prius.. if the Telsa is 2x more efficient than a Volt (which is still an apples to oranges comparison), then using this logic, isn't the Volt still 60% more efficient (3.2/2.0) than a Prius? No other vehicle that can drive continuously from LA to NY with conventional vehicle range capabilities can come even close to this level of efficiency. "Range Anxiety" has been the killer of electric cars for about a century.
To have a meaningful impact on CO2 emissions, the oil driven trade deficit, energy security..etc.. a vehicle has to be mass market and sell in large volumes. As much as I love the Tesla, the aggregate CO2/imported oil savings from Tesla sales will be inconsequential given it's low volume. It's overall emissions savings can be negated by a relatively modest number of poorly tuned lawnmowers being used. The Volt has a chance of achieving millions of sales and making a dent in the problem. Its leadership will also stimulate other manufacturers to make eREVs/PHEVs to further increase the mass market penetration of highly efficient vehicles... another good side effect.
So, while many of us have certainly been disappointed by GM in the past, the Volt is the real deal..it's awesome and folks should be cheering them on.

[Ralph Wallio]

I foresee a serious marking problem with the Chevrolet Volt and all other vehicles that eventually come to use very expensive Lithium-ion battery packs. Millions of potential buyers are painfully familiar with very short ~1.5yr life times of Lithium-ion laptop batteries. It is inevitable that these potential buyers will translate their laptop battery experience to what to expect from much larger and expensive vehicle battery packs.

I have done "post-mortems" on several laptop Lithium-ion battery packs to find similar failure modes in each. Roughly half of the 6-9 cells continue to meet manufacturer specifications while the other half charge to ~50% or less of specifications. Packs that have failed completely, as opposed to just exhibiting much lower discharge time, invariably have a cell that will not take a charge to any level.

I note that vehicle manufacturers are learning to operate Lithium-ion cell packs within the range of ~40-80% rather than charge approaching 100% and discharge approaching 0%. This is a well tested practice used for decades by spacecraft power system engineers for several generations of battery technologies but it significantly reduces battery pack power density. The bottom line here is that there is an unavoidable three-way compromise between battery weight, vehicle range and battery life.

It is going to be very important for Consumer's Union to test this compromise in every Lithium-ion powered vehicle, to share results with readers and to educate readers about this latest wrinkle in consumer vehicle technology.

[B. Good]

"The battery pack will consist of 250 individual cells, wired in series. If any one of them fails, the whole pack will be dead."

Does this substantially increase the risk of failure?

[Bill Burt]

My hat is off to "serious" information sites like this one. I especially admire the forward thinking men like Dave T. who points out, that the Volt is a new frontier....never been there before with a mass produced car. Volt has never been needed more than NOW. GM is the logical company to bring about this new technology and I applaud men like Bob Lutz and all the many men and women who will bring this car to the masses. Certainly, this car should have arrived years ago, as I pointed out in a paper written just after the Arab Oil Embargo in the early 70's, but it wasn't and I was personally ripped for even suggesting such a thing. Well, the laughter has stopped. The "crack pot" remarks have stopped... but that was a long time ago. NOW is the time for Volt and the others that will follow in its wake. As mentioned, this is not a new concept. Fright Trains have been running on exactly this idea now since I was a child...and that's been awhile. Volt CAN happen. Volt WILL happen. Volt MUST happen. Its time. Its way past time. With it all, I am still proud to be an American. We've pulled it out of the fire before. We can do it again, but the naysayers are not helping one damed bit, but then, did they ever? I can only think that the Good Lord must (for reasons beyond me) have loved naysayers, because he made so many.

Go GM. Go Volt. Go America. Never Look Back. The correct course is Onward and Upward. Its the only one that takes us to a tolerable future. The alternative is unacceptable.

[Ellen]

I live in a city and park on the street. I really don't see "plug-ins" being practical for urban dwellers, such as myself.
The other aspect I have a question on is the 40 mile standard before the gas engine has to start. How does stopped in traffic factor into the 40 mile standard?

[Ken Fry]

I am the developer of an ultra-high efficiency plug-in hybrid, the MC2 from Gaia Transport Corporation. I live and breathe plug-in hybrid technology. I rarely find good things to say about GM, but I think they are on the right track with the Volt (albeit on the wrong track with most of their production).

GM has produced some of the most egregiously unsafe and environmentally unsound vehicles: the Blazer, for example, was the most deadly to its driver of any vehicle sold in America for several years, despite being a heavy vehicle that, given good engineering, could have substantial crash advantages over smaller vehicles. So, unlike Dave T, I am not a great fan of GM. However, I think they are doing a good thing with the Volt, and expect that they will be able to bring it to market – and would be supremely foolish not to do so, particularly after all the hype.

A couple comments on previous posts: The Tesla is not particularly efficient, and the 110 wh/km figure (about 180 wh/mile) given on their website is incorrect. (They claim that a contractor did some of their misleading calculations.) The Tesla is substantially less efficient than the original GM EV1. The Tesla, like a Plug-in Prius conversion, gets no better than 4 miles per-kilowatt hour. (Their battery pack is 56kWh, and they get 200 miles per charge, or about 180 if the car is driven in the sporting manner for which it is designed and marketed: thus 280 wh/mile – 310 wh/mile.) Prius plug-in conversions are slightly more efficient, at about 250 wh/mile. The old GM EV1, was remarkably efficient at about 200 wh/mile (5 miles per kilowatt hour). (My own MC2 will get about 11 miles per kilowatt- hour – it is a substantially smaller, lighter, more streamlined vehicle. Because it is a plug-in hybrid, it doesn’t carry the battery weight of a straight EV.)

The figure quoted for the Volt (400 wh/mile or 2.5 miles per kilowatt-hour) would, at first glance, seem horribly inefficient. Although Lithium batteries can be cycled from full charge to full discharge (unlike lead acid batteries) I suspect that GM won’t be doing this with the Volt: with a one liter engine doing the charging, one would not want the batteries to be completely dead (and the vehicle immobile) before starting up the engine. The Volt is an aerodynamically inefficient shape (as compared to the Prius) but that will probably change before production. I’d be surprised if the Volt cold not get about 4 miles per kilowatt hour – or about the same as a plug-in Prius conversion. Unlike Tesla, GM is not a newcomer to the EV world.

If you visit my site, you can read my rant about how fuel efficiency is measured for plug-in hybrids. In my view, it is completely misleading to claim (as promoters do) that a plug-in Prius gets 100, 200 or 500 mpg. Obviously, most of the energy propelling the car comes from the grid (coal for most of the US), yet these figures don’t account for electrical energy consumption at all. It is shortsighted to think that an inefficient electric car is squeaky clean simple because it burns coal rather than gasoline. We can no more squander electricity than we can gasoline, natural gas, or diesel fuel. Electricity had the potential for being very clean. But today, in the US, generating electricity creates loads of CO2 and other pollutants. Renewables are only 9% of the total, and are projected to remain 9% through 2030, according to the DOE. If we have the mindset that electric cars are “clean”, we fail to address the issues surrounding generating electricity – we remain fat, dumb, and happy, as we have been for many decades in our automotive behavior.