AutoblogGreen

Big corporations are like politicians: Watch what they have done and NEVER pay attention to what they SAY they will do.

GM produces concepts, science projects and prototypes as PR to keep us buying their REAL products which are larger vehicles with more powerful engines which run on E-85 in which they have heavily invested.

Don’t be naive! GM knew years ago that they could use capacitors to buffer the existing batteries. They could have mass produced E-REVs like the new AFS Trinity’s XH-150 15 years ago! They did not use capacitors in the EV-1 because they WANTED it to fail so they could convince CA to change policy.

GM decided NOT to seriously pursue E-REVs because reducing vehicle maintenance and extending their lifespan was not a good business model because the real money is in the consumables and replacement due to planned obsolescence. This is why GM sold their NiMH battery tech to their Big Oil partners!

GM’s pattern of stall, bait & switch has existed within the company since 1931 and they are continuing this tradition while they try to change our addiction first to cellosic ethanol and then to hydrogen.

GM’s current strategy stalling by saying the packs are not ready yet, or they are too expensive is going to backfire on them BIG TIME!

Trinity has proven that we don’t NEED new battery technology as long as they couple EXISTING batteries with ultracapacitors.

Tell GM exactly what you really want...

NO PLUG? NO SALE!!!!

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It's only been one year to the day that they introduced the Volt. Look at the progress. They have a battery pack, which they are testing. They have the basic design. They are working on the software. They will have mules by the summer. This is not so much of a delay.

Tim, I agree on one point: NO PLUG, NO SALE.

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Tim, how does saying your going to build an elctric vehicle in 3 years, translate into sales of a Tahoe today? I want a Saturn Flexstream, but I am not going to buy a SUV today because I may buy a flexstream in 2012.

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GM has flat out done more for EV's than any other company. They made a sound business decision regarding the EV-1.

There's no magic bullet in the battery world, NiMH certainly wasn't and cap's have never been the answer, even now. I hope they are someday, but they aren't yet.

The GM Volt is going to change the way we drive.

I think it's very hypocritical for environmentalists to criticize GM for making a sound business decision when they're making an unsound environmental choice based on some sort of power trip.

It's one thing to be skeptical, it's another to trash a product that could very well reduce gas usage by 80%, and act like you're helping the planet.

Who's helping the world more, the person who invents solutions, or the critic?

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Tim do you own stock in AFS? Every time a GM post appears you post your infomercial for AFS.

Yet, in none of your posts have you ever addressed the safety or reliability of their Battery Solution. Nor have you addressed AFS's admission that- even if a major manufacturer licensed their technology today- it would be 3 years before a vehicle could reach production.

You can be enthusiastic about a product without drinking kool-aid. You can like one product without bashing another company for their work on a similar product.

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Taser, I very badly want the E-Flex E-REV-40 "concept" to become a commonplace reality, however history often repeats itself. What worries me is that if we forgive and FORGET what GM has done to us in the past, they will repeat it in the future.

I’m getting a very bad feeling of Déjà vu.

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Greg Wolf:

Please don't lump "environmentalist" into the conversation here. You may or may not agree with Tim, but the issue here is about GM's PR problems, and has nothing to do with "environmentalists". Just as there is no one definitive American stereotype, please don't dump all your frustrations onto one group.

I'm glad you have a lot of faith in GM and it's PR campaign. However, I have to agree with Tim that GM has a poor record when it comes to EV cars. Again, GM have had years of experience in EV/hybrid development; from EV-1 to Freedom Car, from Two-Mode hybrid buses to fuel-cell vehicles. The stall right now is because there is little incentives for profits in PHEV.

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Lutz and GM deserve critical comments because Lutz and GM have been doing a lot of big talking (i.e. egg on face, etc.) and very little actual delivery. When they build a Volt, and it proves to be everything they say it is, and Toyota/Honda/Etc have nothing on the market that compares, then they can rise up and throw eggs. (And I'll sell my Civic hybrid and drive a Volt.) Until then, they should get back into the lab and work on putting something in a showroom (that isn't a Tahoe or a joke of a hybrid like the Malibu/Aura/etc.)

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At this point GM has taken three different models of E-Flex vehicles (Volt, Opel/Saturn & Caddy) to a variety of different car shows. I can't help but think that they have felt the excitement of the car-buying public for a plug-in. They have certainly noticed that the Prius is one of the 10 best selling cars in America, and have heard Americans complaining about "high" gas prices (I don't consider $3/gal all that high).

While it is frustrating to sit on the sidelines and watch the careful and deliberate pace of vehicle engineering, I am no longer of the opinion that GM is stalling. I do think they were a bit over-cautious and late to (re)start development of electrical power systems, but now that they are doing it, they are being rewarded with lots of attention which I am sure is feeding back into more effort on their part.

The problem with large corporations with lots of lawyers (and stock-holders) is that they have to be slow to adopt new ideas. EVs have been around for 100 years, but putting supercaps in the power train is a much newer idea (though every EV engineer I've talked to is all for it). You would think these technologies would develop in the big corporations and trickle down to the smaller ones, but that's simply not so. Solectria had a diesel-supercap hybrid truck 4 years ago, and I suspect that AFS has been working on getting that drive train together for much more than the year and a big that GM has put into E-Flex.

In short, while I too am frustrated that I can't buy a plug-in car today, I am optimistic that GM (and Toyota, and Aptera ...) will have them on the streets as soon as they can. But getting from a running prototype to a full production line is not something that happens overnight, and running into delays is not the same as stalling.

(If I'm wrong and they sink the program, I'll be very sad.)

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greg woulf, you said GM made a sound business decision???? ahh.. do you do business? If you have a production line that SUPPOSEDLY wasn't profitable, GM made sure that the ads for EV1 was unattractive to buy, you wouldn't CRUSH them! All of the EV1 had a customer that wanted to buy it. But what did they do?? Instead of selling them off for the retail price to cut some losses they didn't sell it. That means they didn't want it on the streets because it'll DESTROY their business gas-car model. NO business that I know of throws away and makes sure that no one gets their limited product in demand when it is shutting its production down due to supposed "non profitability".

Take compUSA now, they are liquidating a majority of their stores and what are they doing? They're selling all their products for a 30% discount. GM's version of compUSA would be shutting the stores down and taking all the usable equipment and software to the landfill. Now where was the "good" business decision in crushing the EV1?

If you claim that GM has done more than all the companies, you're sounding like a GM-lover without perspective. You're theory doesn't make sense. If GM has done more for EVs then why don't I see ANY EV1 going down the freeways of the U.S.? And why don't they just produce them now? The NiMH batteries were sufficient since it had a 120 miles range and if you could upgrade them to li-ion it would be somewhere in the 250-300miles range. Still, after 12 years no EV is on the market comparable to the EV1. Oh I forgot to mention, there were a few RAV4 EV that was auctioned in the past few years and they sold way above their original selling point. When have you heard of a car that doesn't depreciate?

They reversed their positive contribution by destroying them. If someone donated 10,000 USD to a charity and then took it back would that still be considered a positive contribution??? That's what GM essentially did. Hence, GM = no credibility. Some trust can be gained from the Volt when it's actually at people's doorsteps.

and for TASER:
If you have questions about batteries like most people in this country, you can check out crash tests for the Tesla. It shows that batteries weren't leaking when it was hit by a truck.

And a battery solution, check out PROJECT BETTER PLACE. They have a video on some solutions. But let me tell you a solution now, that if you had recharge ports at gas stations then you won't have to think of the limitation on range. You can have a 80% recharge in 10 minutes.

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When they build a Volt, and it proves to be everything they say it is, and Toyota/Honda/Etc have nothing on the market that compares, then they can rise up and throw eggs.
Uh .. a minor problem. Other companies, including major automakers have announced 2009 and 2010 production dates for their EV versions.
Theres even a chinese-made, under $20K highway capable electric SUV knockoff being advertised right now in US ( i wont name the company, as i dont know whether they are for real, suffice to say its a Daihatsu knockoff )

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Bob Lutz does his best at talking. talk talk talk period. He's done it before. A typical naive flamboyant showboat. I never hear Toyota saying such bold and heated statements and you wonder why they have a better reputation, and not only do their products speaks volumes but they don't showboat.

It's unfortunate that GM is in a turnaround stage when it was number one in the world. People like Lutz should be fired from the top sphere of GM, in fact, most of the GM exec ought to be.

And his statements of making the Volt will bring them back ahead of Toyota is a nonesense statement too because all people have to say is that YOU SHOULD HAVE BEEN THE LEADER in new tech SINCE 1996.
I'm always disappointed at GM never reaching their potential due to people like Lutz's mentality running the company.

So I'll make the eggs, who wants to help me throw it?

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This incident goes to show the dangers of braggadocio and hubris. If Lutz had simply said "GM hopes to have a fully working prototype on the road before easter", we would be more understanding that delays happen, and less schadenfreud when they fail.

I still expect Toyota to have a plug-in Prius on the market before the Volt, and it might even arrive before the GM plug-in Vue hybrid.

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I also fear that GM is not being honest. Tim is on the money. Can they not afford additional battery packs from LG to do parallel tests? Is GM too poor to not afford a lab with a dynamometer with an open e-flex chassis with battery, inverters,controllers, ICE and such doing testing for hours on end. It would be a perfect platform for software testing. Why the wait for test mules? Where are the labs testing super-capacitors? Are they secretly working on it? Hope so, but truly doubt it. What's this about funding ethanol production? Oh, it's so they can continue to sell internal combustion engines. It's all becoming clearer now... They want us to forget about the electrics and go with ethanol powered cars or delude us in to believing in the hydrogen myth.

Guess if GM won't sell the Volt I'll have to buy from BYD in a few years unless all the big money keeps the Chinese cars from entering the US as competition to ICE cars.

I don't trust GM or the other large car manufacturers. Past history has not been negated until electrics like the Volt are being sold in the US without lease agreements.

They are not trying hard enough.

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I am so sick of this rampant idiocy (and it shows because I'm typing angry! DUCK!) So all of my usual restraint and my level-headed nature is going out the window for this...

All I'm hearing from people like Tim is 'Bob Lutz is the anti-Christ/anti-Buddha/anti-Ganesha/Anubis/etc and GM is the evil uber corp and it's all just a conspiracy to keep us on the gasoline juice maaaaaaaan!!! They're just blowin' smoke up our ass to get us to like 'em and buy their cars now, maaaaaaaaan!!!'

Get a frickin' clue.

Here's a DIRECT quote from the previous speech/PC Lutz gave. I spent some time getting this as correct as I could so enjoy it.

"We hope that by... the first quarter, by the time the easter bunny delivers his or her first... does anybody ever worried[sic] about the gender of the easter bunny? [Laughter] Um... uh... By the time the easter bunny delivers his or her first egg shipments, we hope to have demonstrated, um, initial prototype drives that demonstrate the feasibility of the forty or fifty miles on pure electric drive. Um.. that-that sets up an interesting, um, confrontation between ourselves and the other large automotive manufacturer. Because at the Tokyo show, um, Mister Okamoto who is the head of R&D in Technology at Toyota, conducted a press breifing, during which time, uh, he showed-um-lovely PowerPoint charts much like this one, demonstrating that General Motors was completely wacky, that, uh, this wasn't gonna work and was a public relations exercise, 'Only we at Toyota truly know what battery technology is all about, and as the world's most credible car company, we hereby declare this whole thing to be nonsense, and General Motors is going to fail miserably.' Well, let's wait for the Easter Bunny and see who's right. Somebody's gonna have egg on their face and I personally don't like that. So, somehow I don't think it's going to be us. But, watch that with interest, because around easter time, somebody is gonna lose credibility and I hope that if it ain't us, the press-the American media will not ignore it."

Now, please, someone PLEASE point out the *promise* there? He said, multiple times, '***HOPE***' NOT 'We will have this done by...'

Where is the Toyota PHEV, let alone RE-EV? Oh right, there isn't going to be one because Toyota thinks the idea isn't going to work... oh wait, maybe they'll try to make one... oh no wait, it won't work... oh but maybe we'll do a plug-in... naw, it'll be pointless...but maybe...

Yeah.

ALL that quote says is that Lutz is ***confident*** in the product they are building, as well he should be, and that he fully plans on GM silencing the (Toyota) naysayers. According to the *ORIGINAL* article which paraphrased a conversation between the journalist and Lutz, just receiving the battery packs caused delays and I do remember reading an interview right here on ABG that spoke at length about battery deliveries delayed for more than two months! For the software controller, I can tell you from (programming) experience, it is not something that can be perfected like magic in a few months and you're the epitome of naïve if you think it is.

This is a BUSINESS, not a frickin' R&D charity and they are also NOT going to risk producing a sub-standard product, especially after this kind of hype, or one that has a serious point of failure such as EXPLODING BATTERIES. It's either going to work 100% of the time or it isn't going to work at all. So whoopdy do, Lutz was given am optimistic ball-park estimate of Easter when he or his assistant or someone else asked for information about the time frame of having a drivable mule. Two months difference from that optimistic estimate to the latest estimate. Cry me a river.

Conspiracy theorists need to do the human race a favor and quit watching movie 'documentaries' like WKTEC.

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Lascelles Linton you are on the money!

Dooflodger, just to let you know Okamoto denied ever saying such a statement. It's hard to believe that Toyota would let such a heated-type of statement be issued from a cool demeanered company.

If you know or expect that there can be delays you don't say eggs on the face.When I listen to Lutz I hear only entertainment.I wish the engineers would run GM because they're the ones dealing with the pressures and know what's exactly going on.

Toyota has PHEV test vehicles. I'm liking Toyota less but GM tops the list. Toyota and GM and automakers want to sell without changing or just enough to keep an edge.If you make an EV that can outdo all the other respective car categories then you can't claim that you can't do it. That is what tiny start-up Tesla Motors is proving. That is why GM and Toyota initially started their advancements in electronics and electricity.

Tesla Motors has forced them to because now they have true EV competition and many others are following Tesla. GM and Toyota couldn't ignore it.

The difference with GM and Toyota is that Toyota doesn't make hype or entertain ideas. If the positions were reversed GM would be boasting that they'll be kicking Toyota's butt since they'll be number one but Toyota won't say that and don't care. Essentially they won't have to worry if they make number one or not because that's not what keeps them profitable. So Toyota doesn't issue statements that blatently take away their credibility.

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So the project has slipped a couple months. Big, fat, hairy deal. Problems happen in every project and sometimes deadlines slip. Welcome to the real world moon-bats.

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who is going to tow all these all electric cars in when the average american owners just drives it till it stops because the battery is dead. check and see how many cars on the road now are running around with the "check engine" light on.owners of american cars do not maintain their cars like owners of foreign cars. that is why the foreign cars last longer because the owners take the cars back to the dealers all the time for preventive maintenance. the average american car owner is not ready for a car that requires you perform things like plug it in every night.

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motorman,
The Volt will have a gas-powered generator on board to charge the battery. You won't have to plug it in unless you want to charge the battery without running that generator. You could treat it like a Prius if you want to, never plugging it in at all. The people on the side of the road will be the ones who run out of gas (the same ones who run out of gas now).

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