Prior to the opening of the LA Auto Show this week, AutoblogGreen sat down with Denise Gray of General Motors to talk about batteries. Denise is the director of Hybrid Vehicle Energy Storage Systems and oversees all the battery development going at GM for vehicles ranging from the new Two-Mode hybrid SUVs to the Chevy Volt.

AutoblogGreen: Why don't we get started with the current status of battery development for the E-flex program. Bob Lutz recently mentioned in an interview you have received the first pack from CPI. Where do things stand right now?

Denise Gray: Well, just to step back a little bit in the May-June timeframe, we got our contracts together, we worked with our two chosen suppliers CPI and Continental and we have been working those programs feverishly. We have come up with designs that are buildable, if you will, for our first mule build, or our first bench build that is probably the more proper name, what that design should be composed of and CPI delivered that on October 31. I was over in the lab, in fact, when they called and said, "Hey, they are here. They are at the grounds. Come on. But our security guys routed them to a different gate, so they will be here in ten more minutes."

So it was kind of like waiting for the birth of a baby. They brought it in, they had their big truck they brought it in. We had our forklift. The guys went and got it and I said make sure you handle it very well, so it was brought in.

Check out the rest our conversation after the jump to learn about how GM determines the state of charge of a battery and the current status of the PHEV Saturn Vue.