By now many of us around these parts know who Shai Agassi is and what he wants to do. He wants to build a distribution infrastructure of swappable batteries to be used in electric cars with the ultimate goal of making EVs mainstream. The problem is that electric cars remain an expensive proposition. Even with Agassi's approach that would sell the EV without a battery and add on a subscription model for the battery, the up-front cost will remain higher than conventional cars. Nonetheless, in Paris last week Agassi was telling the Wall Street Journal that he doesn't think the Chevy Volt would ever be more than a niche product. He bases that on price of the car, expected to be around $40,000 before any tax incentives.

Agassi thinks that is too high for what would otherwise be a $20,000 vehicle, like the Chevy Cruze on which it's based. As far as he goes, he's right, but he doesn't go far enough. GM and everyone else know that any car that will be mainstream has to have an affordable up-front cost. That's why GM originally wanted a $30,000 price point for the Volt. That's why they went with a smaller battery and range extender. The realities of the battery situation will continue to make longer range electric driving unaffordable for the foreseeable future from a purchase standpoint regardless of whether you take the GM or Better Place approach.

While Agassi's subscription-based software background may make sense for large deep pocketed corporations, for regular people the cost of entry is a much bigger hurdle than the total cost of ownership. If you can't pay the door charge, it doesn't matter if the drinks are free once you get inside. That's why so many people relied on cheap lease deals and nothing down mortgages over the last decade. The current reality of what is happening in the financial markets means that there is a high probability that none of these approaches will prove to be viable anytime soon. Unless a manufacturer can find a way to get that entry cost down and soon, all EVs will likely remain niche products for many more years.


[Source: Wall Street Journal]

Chevrolet has fully taken the wraps of the new Orlando compact people mover for its debut at the Paris Motor Show. We still don't know for sure if the Orlando will be offered here in North America, but the rest of the world will get this compact seven seater. For its debut in Paris, the Orlando is being shown with GM's new 2.0L diesel engine rated at 150 hp and 236 lb-ft of torque. The three-row Orlando is based on the new generation Delta compact platform that also underpins the new Cruze, the next Astra and, of course, the Volt. The Orlando was originally planned to be built in Detroit alongside the Volt, but the Wall Street Journal recently reported it would not be built here. However, more recent reports indicated otherwise. The Orlando has style elements from the Sequel fuel cell concept and could appeal to people moving out of SUVs that still need room to haul the kids around. An Orlando with either the Two-Mode or mild hybrid system could prove to be a very capable and efficient people mover here in the U.S.


[Source: Chevrolet]

There has been a fair bit of discussion and controversy in the last couple of weeks on the interwebs about the exact nature of the powerflow and battery charging in the Chevy Volt. Back in July GM's Larry Nitz discussed how the charge sustaining mode would work. As with parallel hybrids the battery is generally kept between about 35 and 85 percent charge. That means when the battery reaches its "depletion" point it still has a significant amount of charge left. The range extender has less power output than the the electric drive motor is capable of (100 hp vs 150 hp) but it has enough output to work in most day-to-day driving conditions. The range extender doesn't normally try to charge the battery fully as that is deemed to be less efficient and more costly than holding the battery at the minimum until the car can be plugged in. For the times when more power is needed such as acceleration or hill climbing some of the reserve battery power is available to be used. The battery can be drawn down below the "depletion" point to about 25-30 percent. When this happens, a combination of regenerative braking and some surplus power from the range extender will bring the battery back up to the minimum. A video after the jump shows the various modes and the power flow.



[Source: General Motors]

Ever since the Chevrolet Volt appeared as a concept last year, debate has been hot and heavy over exactly what it is. Although many call it a hybrid because it has a battery and an engine, GM prefers to call it an extended range-electric vehicle (ER-EV). That poses a problem for GM when it comes to emissions and fuel economy testing. With its 40 mile electric only range the Volt could complete the US06 test cycle that is part of the current EPA test regimen without ever running its engine. So far this doesn't sit well with the EPA which considers the Volt a hybrid and expects it to complete the test cycle with a charged battery. GM and the feds have been going back and forth on this for months. Reports out this morning on Bloomberg and the Detroit Free Press indicated that GM and the EPA had reached an agreement that would potentially see the Volt as the first car classified with a 100 mpg rating are erroneous. We called spokesman Rob Peterson to get the scoop, and it turns out that GM has reached an agreement with the California Air Resources Board, (CARB) on a unique classification for the Volt. Peterson told ABG that this classification would reflect the Volt's true capability, essentially treating it as an EV. According to Peterson, "the classification helps us to optimize the Volt for what it does do, instead of being put into the category with a normal hybrid." This will potentially allow GM to run the Volt with the planned charge sustaining mode rather than having to run the engine to fully recharge the battery at the end of the test.

The agreement with CARB gives GM a bargaining chip in its talks with the EPA, but Peterson cautions that the automaker and the federal agency "still have a long way to go" to finalize any agreement. The Volt may yet get that magic 100 mpg rating, but it's not there yet.


[Source: General Motors]

At an event in Flint MI today, GM CEO Rick Wagoner and Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm were on hand to officially announce that GM will be building its new 1.4L direct injected four cylinder engine in the city in new facilities on the campus of the Flint South Powertrain plant. GM will be spending $370 million dollars erect a 552,000 sq ft plant and tool it up. The company will start building the new factory immediately and full scale production is set to start in early 2010 in preparation for the North American launch of the Chevy Cruze. The Flint factory will also be the exclusive source of the range extending engines for the Volt. The plant will use 300 flexible machining and assembly stations so that a variety of four cylinder engines can be built without retooling. GM is planning to double global production of small four cylinder engines (1.0L to 1.4L) between now and 2011 and expects one-third of its North American volume to be fours by that time. The 1.4L is an all new engine that will produce 140 hp and 148 lb-ft of torque. We'll have more information on the 1.4L later today after a technical briefing.


[Source: General Motors]

General Motors made its case to a Detroit City Council committee on Wednesday in a bid to get some property tax brakes for its Hamtramck assembly plant. The Poletown plant is where General Motor is planning to build the Chevrolet Volt beginning in late 2010 and GM told the council that the new production vehicles there would add 550 jobs to the facility. In return for creating those jobs in the city, GM is seeking $136 million in property tax relief on the improvements over the next 25 years. The plant already employs 1,944 people who build the Buick Lucerne and Cadillac DTS. GM is planning on spending $336 million on the plant over the next two years in order to swtich over to the new, smaller ER-EV Volt. The full council is expected to vote to approve the abatements by sometime next week.



[Source: Detroit Free Press]

The game of musical chairs in the GM product lineup seems to be continuing unabated with the latest casualty being the Chevrolet Orlando. The Orlando won't even be introduced until next month's Paris Motor Show and is still scheduled to go on sale in Europe and elsewhere in 2009. The Orlando was originally scheduled to be built in the Detroit/Hamtramck assembly plant along with the Chevrolet Volt. Those plans have apparently been canceled and it's not clear where the Orlando will be built or why it won't be offered in the U.S. Chevrolet spokesman Terry Rhadigan would only say that neither sales nor production plans for the Orlando had ever been announced for the U.S. In fact, the Orlando to be shown at Paris is technically only a concept for now. Anything beyond that is just speculation anyway. GM is continuing to check out its worldwide product portfolio for cars to add to the U.S. lineup and the Pontiac G3 has already been confirmed. The G3 is simply a re-badged and re-grilled Chevy Aveo and GM needs something much more than that to compete with current and future small cars like the upcoming Ford Fiesta. Perhaps GM will finally bite the bullet and bring the Chevy Beat that proved so popular among auto show attendees in 2007.


[Source: Wall Street Journal]

Now that you've had time to digest the look of the production Chevrolet Volt in a somewhat more flattering environment, it's time to have your say. Obviously it changed a lot, but that was a necessity to get this first one out the door and meet the performance targets. The wheels shrunk, the greenhouse grew, and the transparent shoulders are now opaque. But this is now a real and buildable car. You've all been having your say in the comments, now let's get some numbers from a thoroughly unscientific, self-selecting poll. Did Bob Boniface and his team break it or fix it?

A week after some admittedly bad photos of the production Chevrolet Volt were accidently released on the GM media website, the car itself was officially unveiled this morning as part of GM's centennial celebration in Detroit. Fortunately, the vehicle we saw this morning looked vastly better than the car in the photos we saw last week. Unlike the unapproved shots that made the car look tall, wide and bloated, what we saw today was a far sleeker machine. Aside from some details such as the mirrors, the car actually looks much like the car we saw in the spy photos from the Transformers 2 film shoot.

That means it looks less like a Prius than we thought based on the leaked shots. As we've known for months, the production car had to change in order to optimize the aerodynamics. This had to be done to limit parasitic losses and maximize the car's ability to recapture kinetic energy. The back end is the most obvious carryover from the concept while the front gets the smoother, more rounded look we've been seeing in teaser shots for months. There's more after the jump.

UPDATE: Gallery of live shots added below with more images being uploaded as we speak.

UPDATE 2: Video of the live reveal added after the jump.

Tuesday is the 100th anniversary of the incorporation of General Motors by Billy Durant. In spite of the financial crisis swirling around all three of the Detroit-based automakers, GM intends to take that day to celebrate. Part of that celebration includes the official unveiling of the production design of the Chevy Volt and supposedly some other surprises. Sebastian and I will be on hand live in Detroit on Tuesday, but you can follow the events in a live webcast at GMNext.com. Several more on-line chats with GM executives will be taking place throughout the day including Jon Lauckner and Bob Lutz. Get a preview of what's coming in the video after the jump and stay tuned here on Tuesday morning as we bring you live photos of the Volt and more.

[Source: General Motors]

Few companies manage to stay in business for 100 years, but for the second time this decade (Ford reached the milestone in 2003) an American-based automaker has hit that threshold. Tuesday marks the 100th anniversary of the incorporation of General Motors with a celebration at its world headquarters in Detroit. Automobile Magazine's Don Sherman takes a look at GM and it's chances for future success with electrified vehicles in the New York Times. With a price tag that has crept upward by 30 percent from the original target, and styling that departs significantly from the highly-regarded 2007 concept, the chances for success of the Volt are being increasingly questioned. The need for aerodynamic efficiency has left many feeling that the sporty vision we saw last year has morphed into another Prius clone. Sherman quotes several industry observers who doubt that lithium batteries will be able to meet the vehicle lifespan requirements that are needed and they may well turn out to be right. At this point it's simply too early to tell. GM is conducting accelerated durability testing, but until they have years of use in the real world, we simply won't know if the models are accurate enough. Meanwhile, stick with us on Tuesday morning when we bring you live coverage of the official reveal of the Volt production design from Detroit.

Related:

• BREAKING: Is this the production Chevy Volt in Transformers 2?
• EPA vs the Chevy Volt: Hybrid or electric car? 48mpg or 100mpg?
• Production Chevy Volt photos leak out!

[Source: New York Times]

GM Europe president Carl-Peter Forster said again this week that the company would launch E-Flex-based extended range EVs on the European market in 2011, about a year behind the Volt launch in North America. In his remarks, Forster referred to both petrol- and diesel-powered ER-EVs, although the last time we checked with GM they said they had no plans yet to produce diesel-powered E-Flex vehicles. The Opel/Saturn Flextreme concept that the company displayed at the 2007 Frankfurt motor show used a diesel engine in place of the gas/E85 engine from the Volt. GM Europe plans to offer both Chevrolet and Opel branded E-Flex cars. Forster also told reporters that GM wil start building actual prototype Volts with production intent hardware this month and hopes to have 50 cars completed by the end of the year.


[Source: Reuters]

Just days after we got a hint of what the production 2011 Chevrolet Volt would look like from some folks who spotted one during filming of Transformers 2, we now have official photos of the actual car. Someone apparently leaked out a series of studio shots of Volt with some of the executives leading development of the car. Vehicle Line Executive Tony Posawatz, Chief Engineers Frank Weber and Andrew Farah, Design lead Bob Boniface and of course Maximum Bob Lutz are caught posing with GM's new star. The car is expected to officially debut next Tuesday during GM's centennial celebrations at the Renaissance Center. The basic shape we saw on the movie car appears to be the same but it varies in some details. The shoulder area at the bottom of the side windows is blacked out to replicate some of the look of the original concept. Given that the Volt shares its basic platform with the new Chevy Cruze, it's no surprise that it appears to be about the same size. So far we haven't been able to reach GM for a comment but hopefully we'll have higher res images soon.


[Source: The Car Connection]

The Chevrolet Volt raises a lot of questions. From its public unveiling in January 2007 people wondered, is it a hybrid or an electric car? Right from day 1 in December 2006 before the auto show, GM officials have called it a range extended electric car. They use the electric car terminology because, unlike what we think of as hybrids today, only an electric motor drives the Volt. The engine, a normally aspirated 1.4L (not turbocharged as Motor Trend indicates) just drives a generator (not a two mode hybrid unit as MT says) instead of the wheels. However, the presence of the range extender causes the EPA to consider it a hybrid and they expect it to have almost a full charge at the end of the test cycle. The design intent is that the battery would be run down after having run more than its 40 mile electric range during the test. As designed, the engine would only run 15 percent of the time during the current EPA cycle and would yield over 100 mpg. But, using the EPA's methodology and having the engine keep the battery near full charge - which completely defeats the purpose of a plug-in vehicle with a 40 mile electric range - the Volt would only get about 48 mpg. While not a bad number, it's no where near reflective of what the Volt could achieve in the real world for most drivers. Clearly the EPA needs to work with manufacturers to change the testing methodology and come up with something that more closely approximates real world conditions for plug-in vehicles. Insisting on something else would force automakers to calibrate plug-ins to meet those requirements at the expense of real world efficiency, helping no one.


[Source: Motor Trend]