GM-Volt: Chevy Volt Concept Site Enthusiasts forum and informational site for the General Motors(GM) Chevrolet Volt Concept Electric Car Statistics Unique Visitors: Total Unique Visitors: Outgoing: Total Outgoing: 0 0 8 5288

Articles from GM-Volt: Chevy Volt Concept Site

Happy Holidays - Bob Lutz Spotted in Production Chevy Volt! 2007-12-25 07:38:25 Just kidding folks. Graphic is courtesy of Matt of mJay Studios, who also by the way, has produced the two finalist bumper stickers we are presenting in our contest. We have received some of your bumper sticker submissions..keep them coming. We’ll have a run off between your submission and the winner of Matt’s two. Below is another speculative rendition made from the teaser photo about what the production Volt might look like, this one’s from GM-Volt.com community member mmc. Enjoy the holiday season! ...

Bob Lutz Says Tesla Motors Spurred GM to Build the Volt 2007-12-24 06:43:04 The next issue of Newsweek features a short article about GM vice-chairman Bob Lutz and the Chevy Volt, describing Lutz as “The Man Who Revived the Electric Car”. We learn that Lutz was initially shunned by GM brass when he first proposed the electric car in 2003. At the time they were too focused on a future of hydrogen fuel cell cars. In 2006 Tesla Motors announced it’s intentions to build a fast electric car.  With respect to this, Bob Lutz is quoted as saying: That tore it for me. If some Silicon Valley start-up can solve this equation, no one is going to tell me anymore that it’s unfeasible. After the announcement of the Chevy Volt concept in January 2007, well the rest is history..and it’s all archived right here, minute by minute! Of course, we are still in the early chapters, but Mr. Lutz tells us: This is like JFK’s call for the moon shot. I want to stick around to see the Volt come to market. Then I’ll pack it in around 80. Sour ...

GM-Volt Bumper Sticker Contest 2007-12-23 07:06:18 In an effort to raise the public awareness about the Chevy Volt and the efforts of this site and our community, we have started a bumper sticker campaign. Just imagine it, you are chugging along in your clunker, making it last until November 2010 when your Volt arrives. What better a way to announce your intentions to the world than by slapping on a sticker. Also, the more people out there that learn about the Volt and decide to buy it, the better it is for all of us. Below are two finalists for bumper sticker designs. Vote for your favorite. If you happen to be a graphic or commercial artist or expert slogan maker, feel more than free to submit your own design to us at CHEYVVOLT AT GMAIL DOT COM. If your own original sticker design gets chosen you will receive a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com. 1. 2. Which Bumper Sticker is Your Favorite? 2 (60%) 1 (40%) Total Votes: 683  Loading … ...

Tesla Motor’s Chairman Elon Musk on Production Plans 2007-12-22 09:10:40 Tesla Motors chairman is Elon Musk, who founded PayPal, making billions there. Besides trying to launch the first commercial space rocket, he also funded Tesla Motors in the interest of producing electric cars. In his post yesterday on the corporate blog, he tells us Tesla expects to begin Roadster production in earnest in the Spring of 2008. In case you don’t know, the Roadster is a two-seater sports car with about 250 miles range per charge. He also assures potential customers that their plan to build a $50,000 sedan is still a go and that the car will be unveiled in the first half of next year. He notes they plan to build 10,000 of these “model 2’s” per year, whereas the $100,000 Roadster will be built at a rate of 2000 units per year. Musk goes on further to note a 3rd even less expensive model will follow. He confirms that Tesla too plans to build an REEV (as opposed to GMs term E-REV) for “range-extended electric vehicle”, and mentions Tes ...

GM-Volt.com: Interview with Dr. Cui, Inventor of Silicon Nanowire Lithium-ion Battery Breakthrough 2007-12-21 10:38:25 Dr. Yi Cui Many of you have heard about the new breakthrough in lithium-ion battery storage. I had an interview with the scientist who discovered it, and hopes to bring it to market, Dr. Yi Cui, Assistant Professor of Material Science and Engineering at Stanford University. Can you tell us what you have discovered? The idea is to use silicon nanowires as the active lithium storage material for the battery electrode. Silicon can store a lot of lihtium but the volume expansion is too high, by using nanowires we are really solving the problem of this big volume expansion and we can achieve extremely high capacity, lithium storage capacity with multiple cycles. this is 10 times more than the current technology. So the implications of this discovery is very, very exciting, it means you can have a better battery. In current lithium ion batteries carbon or graphite is used as the anode material? Thats right. When the battery gets charged then do the lithium ions combine with the anode mat ...

E-Flex Team’s Opinion on Release Date 2007-12-20 23:00:48 In our last post we heard about an interview with GM vice-chairman Bob Lutz in which he suggested a possible tempering of production date for the Volt. He didn’t exactly say that, for we have never really heard him quote confidence at hitting the 2010 delivery date, only his confidence on actually producing the car. These statements nonetheless make us wonder whether something is going askew at team E-Flex. If felt it was necessary to reach out for their response. Kindly, GM E-Flex spokesman Rob Peterson responded as follows: Program timing has not changed, nor has the confidence level of the team. The team is driving toward late 2010 (assuming batteries are available) which is nearly three years from now. Our confidence grows each day, but there are still risks and unknowns that could alter the timing. ...

Lutz Now 95% Confident Volt will be Built, 55% Confident it will Arrive in 2010 2007-12-20 11:24:54 In his latest interview, with Forbes reporter Jerry Flint, the Volt’s main proponent GM vice-chairman Bob Lutz was asked about his confidence in being able to produce the Volt. Lutz told the reporter on a scale of 1 to 10 he rated his confidence that the Volt will get produced as a 9.5. This number dropped to 5.5 when he was asked about his confidence in achieving a 2010/2011 release. Lutz said: We’re holding people’s feet to the fire for the very end of 2010 into 2011. But that can slip, depending on how the development goes. He also cautioned, regarding the Volt’s rollout: It probably won’t be a flawless launch On a more positive note, Lutz did mentioned he was pleased with the initial tests of the CPI/LG battery packs. It’s Lutz expressing a slight shift in enthusiasm? Are significant hurdles arising? Only time will tell. Source (Forbes) ...

Interview with Frank Weber, E-Flex/Chevy Volt Vehicle Line Executive, Part II 2007-12-20 05:00:42 A few final questions from my interview with Frank Weber, Chevy Volt/E-Flex vehicle line executive: Do you have or are you working on E-Flex simulation models for other sizes of vehicles besides the Volt? Before we get the team up off the track in thinking too much about the expansion of E-Flex, the focus is clearly to get as fast as possible the Volt on the road. While we do this we think about what is the smartest was of expanding the architecture and the propulsion system. The natural thing that you would consider is looking into the mid-size segment or the small segment, where you have a lot of architectural similarity where it would be easy to take an E-Flex system into those architectures, before you start thinking about putting it into SUV’s. To go into those larger and heavier vehicles you would have to reconfigure how the architectural components are laid out. Considering the new potential CAFE standards of 35 mpg and the fact that the Volt can drive without gas, how do ...

It’s Official - Bush Signs Energy Bill Into Law 2007-12-19 12:46:09 Today President Bush signed the energy bill passed by the House and the Senate, mandating automakers to achieve a corporate average of 35 mpg for their vehicles by 2020, 40% higher than they are right now. Rick Wagoner of GM said the standard “set a tough, national target that GM will strive to meet.” The bill also includes a provision for 90 million per year in plug-in vehicle battery research. Source (Detroit Free Press) ...

Does Honda Lack “Clarity” on Their Thoughts About Plug-in Vehicles? 2007-12-19 09:53:52 We have previously reported how Honda CEO Takeo Fukui did not believe the idea of a rage-extended electric car made sense. Now, according to the AFP, he has gone so far as to say that he “saw no value in developing plug-in hybrid vehicles”. It seems Honda is interested in petroleum displacement as they have begun leasing a new hydrogen fuel cell vehicle dubbed the FCX Clarity. But why such blurred vision about plugging in? Source (AFP) Thanks to Kent Beuchert for the tip! ...

Lithium-ion Battery Storage Capacity Research Breakthrough 2007-12-19 05:00:15 Normally we discuss news and facts related to production of the Chevy Volt. But this technological breakthrough seems so important I thought it deserves mention here. As we know, the Volt will be powered by lithium-ion batteries either from A123 systems or LG Chem. In these and most li-ion batteries, energy is stored in an anode made of carbon. Carbon has a limited storage capacity. Silicon has a much higher storage capacity, but when silicon is used as an anode, its fibers swell as they fill with electrons, that makes them unstable, and they actually break apart. The new breakthrough has come from the lab of Yi Cui at Stanford University. He found if he made silicon nanowires and used these as anodes, the batteries have 10 times the charging capacity and the fibers remain stable without breaking. OK so now imagine a 400 pound battery pack that hold 160 kWH or 400 miles of range, perhaps for no great added cost. Is GM looking at this? I will try to find out. What do you think? So ...

Opel Flextreme is not for Production: Chevy Volt will be a Global Vehicle 2007-12-18 05:00:17 At the Frankfurt Auto show in September, GM unveiled the Opel Flextreme; an E-Flex concept car illustrating the possibility of using a diesel generator as a range-extender. Lost in the initial enthusiasm were comments we had here from Tony Posawatz in which he acknowledged the Flextreme was not production intent. Here is vehicle line director of Chevy Volt/E-Flex Frank Weber’s most recent response to the following question: Is the Opel Flextreme production intent, and if not what are your international plans for the Volt? First of all, the Volt is a global product. So we are currently designing Volts for worldwide application. What we did with the Flextreme actually, is we wanted to show the bandwidth of what the propulsion architecture and the vehicle architecture is able to deliver. And what we said because the Volt was a rather sporty concept with not too much versatility, we wanted to show conceptually how a versatile concept could look like. So this was more for us to demo ...

Interview with Frank Weber, E-Flex/Chevy Volt Vehicle Line Executive, Part I 2007-12-17 05:00:29 Frank Weber I just had the chance to speak with Frank Weber who is GM’s vehicle line executive for the Chevy Volt and E-Flex systems. This is the first of two parts. Do you have some new information for us today? We are explaining that vehicle efficiency is something that is very important to make the volt a very credible statement and sustainable statement that goes far beyond the energy diversity story that is inherent to the Volt. This will have some impact to the production vehicle. You have been redesigning the concept car into a production version that is going to be more aerodynamic? Exactly. Because what we’ve learned is that in a traditional vehicle you have mass, aerodynamics, rolling resistance and your mass is really important to your overall vehicle efficiency. In an EV what is very interesting, to deal with the increase mass of the very large battery, what you learn quickly is the increased mass of the battery pack is not so important for the EV because ...

A123 VP Ric Fulop on Chevy Volt Battery Pack Delivery 2007-12-16 08:32:40 Speculate no more about A123/Conti’s pack delivery. Rather than conjecture, and hopefully to clarify, I decided it would be best to go straight to the source, and ask Ric Fulop, who is A123 co-founder and VP of marketing, whether they missed the Volt pack delivery date, or not. Here is my question: (GM-Volt) Is the Volt pack delayed or was it never intended to be delivered in December? (Ric Fulop) This was always the plan. A123 has delivered cells to Conti for packaging and they are working diligently on the initial packs. These have been scheduled for delivery to GM in early 2008. Continental is a very talented and competent integrator and their plan is to provide packs that are as close as possible to the production intent design. ...

Production Volt to Have Left and Right Charging Ports 2007-12-14 23:00:01 The Chevy Volt concept car is shown with plug-in ports on both sides of the cars front end. Many enthusiasts here have cited an interest in continuing to have two ports, although to some folks it doesn’t really matter. I asked in interviews with Bob Boniface, chief Volt designer, and later Tony Posawatz, Volt vehicle line director, whether the plan was to have one or two ports in the production version of the car. In both cases, the last of which was one month ago, I was told no final decision had been made. I did deliver the message from this site that having two was important to some. Today, in WIRED magazine’s blog Autopia, there is a report that GM has decided on two plugs for the production car; left and right. Also there is a quote from Bob Lutz that he expects the car to lose money in it’s first two years (remember GM’s CFO wouldn’t confirm that). So, a day to rejoice for those two-porters out there. Source (WIRED) [UPDATE: per AutoBlogGreen, the ...