After Bob Lutz made the announcement about the deal to work with A123 Systems on the cells for the Chevy Volt battery packs to be supplied by Continental, AutoblogGreen sat down to chat with GM's battery chief Denise Grey. Denise is responsible for the battery development work on all of GM's hybrid and electric programs.

AutoblogGreen: I'm here with Denise Grey who is the director of Energy Storage Systems at General Motors and you're in charge of all the battery development for hybrids and electric vehicles?

Denise Grey: That's right.

ABG: Why don't we start off by talking a little bit about the announcement that Bob Lutz made this morning about A123 Systems and GM.

DG: Okay. To put it in perspective, we've got two contracts that we announced back in the May timeframe for the Chevy Volt E-Flex System; one was LG Chem with Compact Power. Compact Power's a subsidiary of LG Chem, and that in essence covers the cells as well as the pack. The other thing in May we announced Continental which is our pack supplier. Today's announcement kind of completes the four quadrants for the cells – A123 will be providing cells to Conti for their particular system, so in essence we complete the four-piece partnership. A123 brings that nano-phosphate technology, their lithium ion chemistry to the forefront and by working with them we can understand specifically how that chemistry works, how do we create the battery state estimation protocol so that we can in essence control that system effectively. We're already doing that with Compact Power and now this gives us that additional insight from a nano-phosphate lithium ion perspective.

Continue reading Denise Grey's answers after the jump.

General Motors is moving forward on their plans for a plug-in hybrid version of the Saturn Vue that chairman Rick Wagoner announced at the Los Angeles Auto Show. Today they are awarding development contracts to Cobasys and Johnson Controls-Saft to create and test lithium-ion batteries. The companies will supply battery packs that will be installed in prototype vehicles with testing to begin later in 2007. Both companies are working on different battery technologies that will be evaluated by GM for durability, reliability and cost. GM will also actively look at other battery makers, even while this testing continues. Once a battery has been found that can meet the requirements for production, the shift from NiMH batteries to lithium-ion will move forward. The full GM press release is after the jump.

[Source: General Motors]