Let me introduce you to the most-called phone number in America right now: 866-405-4005. This is the number that GM is giving out to customers who have questions about this morning's official announcement that GM has filed for bankruptcy protection. In a letter to customers, GM describes in a few clear words how the bankruptcy affects the company and future products, including the much-anticipated Chevy Volt. It shouldn't surprise anyone who's familiar with this car that GM says the expensive plug-in car is not going away. The "new GM" will have a number of key vehicle launches in 2009 and 2010, the letter says, including the Chevrolet Camaro, Chevy Cruze, and "the revolutionary Chevy Volt, an extended-range electric vehicle that can travel up to 40 miles on battery power alone."

You can read the letter after the jump. For more thoughts on the future of the Volt, check out the comments on this post. Thanks to Dean for the tip!


[Source: GM]

With bankruptcy for GM pretty much certain for next week, the Wall Street Journal has taken a look at whether or not the Chevy Volt is a good thing for the government to be spending so much money on. Interestingly, the U.S. government will play a role in both sides of the keep-it-or-lose-it argument.

One the one hand, there is new government pressure to increase fuel economy and for automakers to design green cars with wide appeal. The Volt manages this in spades. So, it's a good idea to keep it. On the other, it's looking like the government will own about 70 percent of GM after bankruptcy reorganization and will want the company to get into the black as soon as possible. There's no way the expensive, non-"rent-paying" Volt helps GM make money - at least in the short term. So, it's a good idea to ditch it.

What this might mean, and this is something the Journal doesn't get into but just a bit of speculation, is that perhaps the Government will seriously consider an increase in the gas tax. After all, higher fuel prices will drive up demand for plug-in cars like the Volt, and GM has already said they'll tie the price of the car to the price of gas when the vehicle is launched in late 2010. Higher gas taxes could also raise money for the government, which at least some would approve of. This just calls for a poll.




[Source: WSJ]

When we drove the Chevy Volt test car about a month ago, we found everything progressing as planned and didn't see anything that looks like it will push back the planned November 2010 Job 1 date. Our friend Chelsea Sexton, one of the most prominent plug-in vehicle supporters around, recently got a chance to step into the driver's seat, curious to see if the Volt "would be nickel-and-dimed to a shadow of its potential." What did she find? That the car creates lots and lots of smiles. She wrote about the experience over on her new blog:

It is more refined than many production cars I've driven, a fact that ironically breeds impatience- it's hard not to drive it and think, "oh, this is fine, let's just get on with production already". It's also the quietest full-performance plug-in I've seen so far- they must've beaten every bit of motor whine out of that car, because it sounds more docile than it is.

Not everything is perfect. The Volt (while not yet the finished version) doesn't have the pep that the EV1 had, she says, and she wasn't able to drive long enough to drain the battery and get the range-extender to kick in. GM reps kept telling her, and everyone else who's driven the car, that this part of the drivetrain just isn't ready yet (apparently, the fact that you can hear it is a problem). The next milestone in the Volt's journey to production is the "real" Volts that will begin to be made very soon. She's already planning that drive.

[Source: Chelsea Sexton]

GM's announced yesterday that it lost $6 billion in the first quarter of 2009. That's par for the course for the General these days. What's also pretty standard was the immediate confirmation that work on the Chevy Volt is going A-OK and that, as GM's product development chief Tom Stephens said, "At this point in time, I know of no reason why we can't be in production by November of 2010." No reason? Really? Not even a little one?

Aside from the Volt work - which at this point includes figuring out which of GM's other surviving brands (Cadillac, Buick and GMC) will get the Voltec powertrain - GM is working on its revised Viability Plan, due to the U.S. Auto Task Force's by June 1st.


[Source: Automotive News (subs req'd)]

With all the confusion and fast-moving news coming from GM troubles (Saturn hybrids? Say what?), there is one thing you can count on: GM is keeping the Volt. Of course they're keeping the Chevy Volt - that was never in question - but things were just a tiny bit less clear regarding GM's possible sale of Opel. Whatever happens with the brand, the Opel Apmera, the European version of the Volt, remains in GM's hands. Earth2Tech got the goods from both GM and Opel spokespeople, who both confirmed that the Ampera is still on schedule to start prodction in late 2011. This shouldn't come as a surprise, the Ampera is pretty much the Volt with a different badge, but it does put the car's plug-in hybrid technology on that "GM needs it to survive" pedestal that the Volt seems to find itself on so often these days.


[Source: Earth2Tech]

To a lot of people, the only vehicle that's keeping GM - or at least the spirit of GM - alive as the company falters is the Chevy Volt. Washington Post columnist Charles Lane is not one of them. The Volt is designed to give 80 percent of Americans a car that, while it costs more than a similar, non-electric model, offers a chance to dramatically reduce their gasoline consumption. To Lane, the car is a money pit. He writes:

GM wouldn't be in quite so deep a hole if it had not sunk a billion dollars, and much of its corporate reputation, into a not-very-realistic plug-in electric hybrid vehicle known as the Chevrolet Volt.

Lane also says he hopes that the Obama administration does not allow "a restructured GM to continue pouring (federal) money into the Volt. [...] The Volt and other electric vehicles could gobble up more subsidies than ethanol." Perhaps Lane and David Letterman should form a club.


[Source: WaPo]

The common wisdom shaping up around Dave Letterman's smackdown of the Chevy Volt Wednesday night: not funny. The latest to chime in on Dave's dismissal of the work that GM has done with the Voltec technology is one of the Volt's biggest supporters: Bob Lutz. Lutz, GM's Vice Chairman, wrote a piece for the GM Fastlane Blog calling Dave's interview of Tesla Motor's Elon Musk a "Stupid Human Trick."

Lutz says that Letterman got GM workers, especially the Volt team, "up in arms." Lutz is right when he says that Dave didn't explain correctly how the Volt works (Dave implied that the Volt can only go 40 miles - watch the video here). To rectify the situation, Lutz invited Dave to come and drive the Volt himself and said he'd be happy to come on "Late Night" and set the record straight. Lutz wasn't all gracious and kind, though. He wrote, "Perhaps if we'd hired Drew Barrymore to be the spokesperson for the vehicle we'd have commanded more of his attention."


[Source: GM]

We've heard it a million times: What's good for GM is good for America. Well, if low gas prices are good for America (and that is a debatable point), then Charles Wilson's saying does not work the other way around. The U.S. Energy Information Administration is predicting that gasoline prices will hover around $2.23-$2.42 between now and the end of 2010, with a summer high of just $2.30 this year. Why does GM care about this? Because they need higher prices to make the Chevy Volt appealing. GM has already said that the Volt's price tag will be connected to the price of gas when the plug-in car goes on sale at the end of 2010. Before he was booted, Rick Wagoner said that $4 gallons were not the worst idea.

Why does the EIA think that $3 gasoline isn't on the horizon any time soon? Because of low demand and low global crude prices. The weak economy and surplus oil production capacity don't help one bit, either. Diesel fans could feel like winners, though: the EIA thinks that diesel prices might soon drop below gasoline for the first time in two years.


[Source: USA Today]
Photo by Dhomonique Ricks. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.

General Motors has begun doling out test drives of its Chevrolet Volt prototypes to the salivating media. AutoblogGreen is scheduled for some time behind the wheel in short order, but some bigger names have already written up their first impressions of the car. CNN's short version: Promising, but not perfect.

Unlike the Mali-Volts of the recent past, CNN was able to test out the Volt technology as it fits inside the bodywork of a Chevy Cruze. The vehicle looks nearly identical to the Cruze that will go on sale in the U.S. soon, but the powertrain is reportedly 80 percent Voltec. Reporters haven't yet gotten the true Volt driving experience, though, since, as CNN's Peter Valdes-Dapena reports, the Cruze vehicles operate in EV-only mode because "GM engineers are still tweaking the car's performance under gasoline power." Considering that EV-only mode is how most Volt drivers will experience the car most days, this is a fair initial test, with Valdes-Dapena calling the acceleration "particularly muscular." One big question that needs to be answered is how GM will deal with the weight of the Voltec system. Valdes-Dapena writes:


That's going to take some getting used to, or perhaps some additional tuning.

Valdes-Dapena wasn't the only reporter to test out the Cruze Volt mule. Detroit radio staple Jeff Gilbert was there for WWJ and he put up a video on Facebook. GM made their own video of the media drives, and you can see that and the CNN show after the jump.


[Source: CNN, WWJ, General Motors]

The president of GM's North American operations, Tony Clarke, recently kicked up a bit of a dust story when he expanded on New GM CEO Fritz Henderson's statement that the Chevy Volt can stay even if it's "can't pay the rent." Henderson went back to Automotive News (subs req'd) to try and explain why the Volt as a loss leader is a good thing and how he thinks a vehicle scrappage program (i.e., cash for clunkers) should work.

On the rent payers, Henderson said that the North American profit model "was so focused on basically pickup trucks, full-size SUVs, and, when they were strong, mid-SUVs." The tide is turning and he wants to maximize as much profit as possible out of cars like the Chevy Aveo. The new GM mindset: "I'm not going to let anybody off the hook on the Aveo profitability. I want to make sure that we get the maximum profitability on the Aveo, too. And so, if the Aveo is less, that's fine, but I'm not going spend all my time on the Silverado."

The Volt is the "case study," Henderson said, for big investments that will, hopefully, pay off when Gen-3 comes around. "[The Volt] doesn't necessarily pay the rent. It actually consumes rent when it's launched," he said, adding that GM "need(s) money to pay for it. Not from the taxpayer."

Henderson also praised Congress and Obama's Auto Task Force and said that a U.S. scrappage program could find good ideas in the German model.

[Source: Automotive News (subs req'd)]