EPA rates the Volt: 93 MPG-equivalent on electricity, 37 MPG gas, 60 MPG combined
09-26-08, 05:41 AM
#166
Lexus Champion
Well, with a Toyota Prius, you can drive all day on the highway and it's EPA rated at 45 mpg. So while you get an EPA estimated 48 in the city, the slightly lower highway mileage is still superior to any other car available (non-diesel) except for the Civic Hybrid which matches it.
You know what I wonder though... when the EPA does its tests on the highway, do they allow the Prius to test with a full battery and if so how long is the test? If they allow it with a full battery and only test it for say 10-20 highway miles that might not be so indicative of the mileage at say miles #100 through 1000?
Just a thought. They'll obviously have an interesting time rating the Volt!
09-26-08, 06:34 AM
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I've never heard of a hybrid charging from coasting. Do you have any sort of reference or link talking about this? If it IS charging while coasting then by the laws of physics it's creating more drag on the drivetrain, slowing you down more than if you were coasting without recharging.
19-21 is ridiculous for an RX300. I've had them as loaners and got them to run in the mid-high 20s range in suburban driving just by coasting to stops and accelerating easy. Even our 4runner (more drag, bigger, heavier, bigger motor) gets 22-23.
19-21 is ridiculous for an RX300. I've had them as loaners and got them to run in the mid-high 20s range in suburban driving just by coasting to stops and accelerating easy. Even our 4runner (more drag, bigger, heavier, bigger motor) gets 22-23.
Our RX300 was AWD and never got good gas mileage. I'm a car guy. I check things like tire pressure, dirty air filters, etc. I was always amazed that this vehicle got 18 MPG City and then only gave us 20 on the highway. Which this thing was only rated for 22 MPG.
Good point... 45 is still very good... just not great relative to its city mileage.
You know what I wonder though... when the EPA does its tests on the highway, do they allow the Prius to test with a full battery and if so how long is the test? If they allow it with a full battery and only test it for say 10-20 highway miles that might not be so indicative of the mileage at say miles #100 through 1000?
Just a thought. They'll obviously have an interesting time rating the Volt!
You know what I wonder though... when the EPA does its tests on the highway, do they allow the Prius to test with a full battery and if so how long is the test? If they allow it with a full battery and only test it for say 10-20 highway miles that might not be so indicative of the mileage at say miles #100 through 1000?
Just a thought. They'll obviously have an interesting time rating the Volt!
09-26-08, 06:43 AM
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EPA mileage estimates can be such fuzzy things when you're dealing with hybrid powertrains. We've seen plenty of contention already about real-world results versus EPA numbers for current hybrids, and Chevrolet's upcoming Volt has GM butting heads with the Feds over how the series hybrid eFlex powertrain should be rated. Because the Volt can cover about 40 miles before it needs to fire its range-extending internal combustion engine, it can breeze through the EPA's test cycle with the engine off for 85 percent of the time. With the engine running so little, the Volt could earn an EPA rating above 100 mpg, but the agency is not comfortable with that and wants to change the test for the Volt.
GM argues that altering the test in the way the EPA proposes -- requiring the Volt finish the test with batteries near full charge -- is unfair and won't reflect reality. Moreover, in everyday commuting, the Volt will be an electric car for its first 40 miles, not ever even firing its engine for drivers with commutes short enough or recharging ability at work. The EPA's motivation is to come up with a meaningful mileage rating for the Volt, which will ace the current test. If the Volt gets a rating that is artificially low because the EPA can't figure out a test that correlates to reality, it could also hurt the Volt's case with consumers looking at the $40,000 price tag next to numbers barely better than what a diesel or parallel hybrid can earn.
GM argues that altering the test in the way the EPA proposes -- requiring the Volt finish the test with batteries near full charge -- is unfair and won't reflect reality. Moreover, in everyday commuting, the Volt will be an electric car for its first 40 miles, not ever even firing its engine for drivers with commutes short enough or recharging ability at work. The EPA's motivation is to come up with a meaningful mileage rating for the Volt, which will ace the current test. If the Volt gets a rating that is artificially low because the EPA can't figure out a test that correlates to reality, it could also hurt the Volt's case with consumers looking at the $40,000 price tag next to numbers barely better than what a diesel or parallel hybrid can earn.
09-26-08, 07:20 AM
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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26887840/
I'm no engineer, but I find it hard to believe that its more efficient to keep the ICE running rather than charging the battery and turning off. Perhaps if the ICE were smaller, which I had thought (and I realize things change) that the Volt was supposed to only carry a 1.0L engine, with the idea of increased efficiency.
GM initially said the Volt would be able to run 40 miles on its lithium-ion batteries, with a small internal combustion engine recharging the batteries to extend the range hundreds of miles. A top executive said the same thing as recently as last week.
But company spokesman Rob Peterson said Wednesday that engineers changed the design so the Volt engine will power a generator that would run the electric motor after the batteries are depleted. A small amount of power from the generator will recharge the batteries, but most will be used to directly run the car, he said.
He said bypassing the batteries is more efficient, and GM did not intend to deceive people by maintaining that he motor would only be used to recharge the batteries.
"At the end of the day, to the consumer, the vehicle will operate much the same way," he said.
But company spokesman Rob Peterson said Wednesday that engineers changed the design so the Volt engine will power a generator that would run the electric motor after the batteries are depleted. A small amount of power from the generator will recharge the batteries, but most will be used to directly run the car, he said.
He said bypassing the batteries is more efficient, and GM did not intend to deceive people by maintaining that he motor would only be used to recharge the batteries.
"At the end of the day, to the consumer, the vehicle will operate much the same way," he said.
09-26-08, 09:51 AM
#170
http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/do...ticleId=132246
So now the ICE does charge the batts...
According to Lauckner, the battery will receive power from the gas engine when load conditions are light (as in, not under acceleration). When the battery comes back up to a certain level of charge (that figure is still the subject of development at GM), the gas engine can cycle off and the Volt can run for an unspecified period on the stored battery power.
09-26-08, 01:53 PM
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That does make more sense. However, this car has changes so many times I wonder if it will be a plug in hybrid at all. Or even a hybrid for that matter. I wouldn't be surprised if GM ran the Volt on hopes and dreams.
09-26-08, 04:08 PM
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This is GM, this thing is going to go through more changes and different versions than the LF-A
10-03-08, 04:42 PM
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The bailout also included tax breaks for plugins and the tax break for the volt is 7,500 for the first 250,000 vehicles. Then 50% for the following two quaters then 25%following another two quarters. After that no more tax credit and its total cost should be 758 million.
http://gm-volt.com/2008/10/03/along-...now-7500-less/
http://gm-volt.com/2008/10/03/along-...now-7500-less/
11-17-08, 04:58 PM
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Cranking the Volt to 100 M.P.G.
By DON SHERMAN
WHEN Robert A. Lutz, vice chairman of General Motors, introduced a new wrinkle in hybrid electric cars to the automotive press at the 2007 Detroit auto show, he deftly offered a fuel-economy rating sure to grab headlines: 150 miles to the gallon, or at least its equivalent, based on a mix of driving conditions.
Nearly two years later that car, the Chevrolet Volt — designed to make most trips on battery power alone, but equipped with a gasoline engine to provide electricity when the lithium-ion cells are depleted — has advanced from a design study to a model headed for production. The time is fast approaching when Mr. Lutz’s teaser must be squared with the reality of government-approved ratings.
Around Detroit, the certainty of a Volt mileage rating above 100 m.p.g. is today’s worst-kept secret. The only unknown is how much more than 100 the window sticker will read, because the sticky process of deciding exactly how to rate a new generation of hybrid-powered cars is still being worked out.
Often criticized as the killer of kilowatt cars, G.M. is now the champion of their revival. The Volt, which the company plans to begin selling in November 2010, should easily double the fuel economy rating of today’s mileage hero, the Toyota Prius. The Prius, which carries a 46 m.p.g. rating in combined city and highway driving, is a conventional hybrid that uses modest amounts of electricity to minimize the fuel consumed by its gasoline engine.
The Volt takes the opposite approach, relying mainly on electric power, with its gasoline engine running only when needed to stretch the driving range. The 100 m.p.g. automobile, which once seemed an impossible dream, will become an official E.P.A.-rated reality with the Volt’s arrival.
G.M. calls the car an extended-range electric vehicle, or E-REV. For the first 40 miles after leaving home with a fully charged battery, the Volt will consume no gas at all, according to G.M.; when the gas engine does fire up, it will only drive a generator — the engine is not connected to the wheels. Owners will recharge the battery overnight from a wall socket, which brings the Volt into the category of plug-in hybrids.
Placing a meaningful mileage rating on a car capable of running through the government’s test cycles without using any gas at all is no simple matter. Still, the Volt will consume gas on trips longer than its 40-mile battery-powered range, so it must carry some guide to consumption on its window sticker.
Mileage ratings are one of the E.P.A.’s reasons for being. In 1975, the Energy Policy and Conservation Act heaped a thankless task on this agency’s plate: directing carmakers to attach labels to the vehicles they sell showing fuel economy, estimated annual fuel costs and the range of fuel economy achieved by comparable vehicles.
It is also the E.P.A.’s responsibility to help automakers determine the figures that go on those labels, a job only slightly less daunting than weather forecasting. The specific test procedures used to generate mileage figures can be revised only by an act of Congress, but the E.P.A. has made regular adjustments in the mileage reported to consumers in response to changes in driving habits, traffic conditions and vehicle design. Trimming the 2008 model-year mileage figures by about 20 percent from previous years’ results yielded the best correlation yet between what automakers post on window stickers and what consumers experience on the road, especially for hybrid vehicles.
The latest hybrids and electrics are not the first deviations from ordinary gasoline-fueled automobiles the E.P.A. has faced. Vehicles that run on pure electricity, mixtures of gasoline and E85 ethanol, compressed natural gas and hydrogen (fuel-cell vehicles now in the demonstration stage) all required adjustments — in layman’s terms, fudge factors — to the way energy consumption is reported. It is no longer a strictly scientific measurement, but takes into account compensating factors.
The Tesla Roadster, an all-electric sports car that is now being delivered to early customers, is an interesting example of this process. Because the Tesla never consumes petroleum while driving, the E.P.A.-required window sticker lists the energy consumed in kilowatt-hours of electricity. Translating the Roadster’s numbers — 32 kilowatt hours per 100 miles in town and 33 on the highway — to more familiar units using a textbook conversion factor yields impressive ratings of 105 m.p.g. in the city and 102 on the highway. But applying the adjustment factor devised by the Energy Department, which takes into account not only energy content but also such considerations as scarcity of the fuel and production and distribution efficiency, yields far more impressive mileage figures: 256 m.p.g. in the city and 249 on the highway.
In the electric-car realm, the prevailing attitude seems to be the more the merrier, in part because of provisions in the government’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules, which let automakers earn credits for exceeding the minimum requirements. While mileage credits cannot yet be swapped company to company, Tesla Motors hopes that will change, eventually permitting it to sell mileage credits to brands burdened with gas-guzzling models.
But the vehicle technologies already addressed by the E.P.A. do not provide a procedure suitable for measuring the mileage of a plug-in vehicle like the Chevy Volt. According to Jon Lauckner, vice president for global program management at G.M., the Volt can complete six of the 11-mile-long city cycles or the same number of 10.3-mile highway cycles on one battery charge.
The E.P.A. turned to the Argonne National Laboratory, one of 21 Energy Department research centers and a regular ally in mileage matters, to formulate a way to assess the new hyper-efficient vehicles using existing test procedures.
Michael Duoba, an engineer with the Center for Transportation Research at Argonne, about 25 miles from Chicago, explained the thinking behind the new methods his group is developing. “Our priority is instituting m.p.g. figures that are rational and reasonable,” he said. “The new results must be comparable to the mileage achieved by conventional vehicles of the past and present. Also, all of the new advanced technologies must be fairly represented.”
What makes this difficult is the way plug-in vehicles operate. Unlike gasoline, diesel, hybrid, flex-fuel and even fuel-cell vehicles, plug-in vehicles have two distinct operating routines.
“During the first 40 or so miles of driving, the Chevy Volt runs on energy from its battery in what we call a charge-depleting mode,” Mr. Duoba said. “Then, after the battery reaches the minimum acceptable state of charge, the Volt’s gasoline engine starts and this car continues in what we call its charge-sustaining mode.”
Mr. Duoba’s game plan is to repeatedly use the E.P.A.’s driving cycles to measure the Volt’s consumption in both of its operating modes. (In addition to the familiar city and highway tests, cycles for high speed, air-conditioning and cold temperature conditions were added to help bring the final label closer to real-world driving experience.)
First, the Volt is driven repeatedly on each E.P.A. test cycle until its battery is depleted to determine the number of kilowatt-hours of electricity consumed and the number of miles accumulated. Using an Energy Department Petroleum Equivalency Factor established for electrics and hybrids in 2000, the electric consumption is then converted to gallons of gasoline.
Next, the Volt is driven repeatedly on the same test cycle in its charge-sustaining mode, with the gasoline-powered generator, rather than the batteries, providing electricity. That yields a second set of gallons-consumed and miles-accumulated figures.
Now for the tough part: blending the total gallons consumed and miles driven together in some credible way to obtain final city and highway mileage figures suitable for posting on the Volt’s window sticker. Argonne’s intention is to use what it calls a utility factor, in essence a driving trip that consists of some charge-depleting miles and some charge-sustaining miles.
Plug-in hybrids with a long charge-depleting range like the Volt should not have any difficulty clearing the 100-m.p.g. hurdle, Mr. Duoba said. Preliminary tests of the plug-in Prius that Toyota plans to introduce in 2010 indicates that it will achieve 70 to 90 m.p.g.
Of course, the final results will depend on the utility factor. Mr. Duoba said that the Transportation Department’s National Highway Transportation Survey, current research studying consumer driving habits and input from carmakers would all factor into Argonne’s utility factor. Once there is consensus, the Society of Automotive Engineers will publish the Argonne-designed test procedure as its Standard J1711: Recommended Practice for Measuring Exhaust Emissions and Fuel Economy of Hybrid Electric Vehicles.
That leaves one last issue open for discussion. To separate the Volt from ordinary hybrids like the Prius, and to earn zero-emissions-vehicle credits in California, G.M. hopes to define its mileage hero as something truly different.
Because the Volt is always powered by electricity, G.M. says it should not be lumped into the same category as hybrids that use both gasoline and electric propulsion, preferring to call the Volt — and other products that will share its technology — extended-range electric vehicles.
Adding another category to the vehicular mix poses a knotty question: if the Volt is not a hybrid, as G.M. contends, how can the S.A.E.’s hybrid electric vehicle test procedure be used to tell the world that the Chevy is a genuine 100 m.p.g. automobile?
By DON SHERMAN
WHEN Robert A. Lutz, vice chairman of General Motors, introduced a new wrinkle in hybrid electric cars to the automotive press at the 2007 Detroit auto show, he deftly offered a fuel-economy rating sure to grab headlines: 150 miles to the gallon, or at least its equivalent, based on a mix of driving conditions.
Nearly two years later that car, the Chevrolet Volt — designed to make most trips on battery power alone, but equipped with a gasoline engine to provide electricity when the lithium-ion cells are depleted — has advanced from a design study to a model headed for production. The time is fast approaching when Mr. Lutz’s teaser must be squared with the reality of government-approved ratings.
Around Detroit, the certainty of a Volt mileage rating above 100 m.p.g. is today’s worst-kept secret. The only unknown is how much more than 100 the window sticker will read, because the sticky process of deciding exactly how to rate a new generation of hybrid-powered cars is still being worked out.
Often criticized as the killer of kilowatt cars, G.M. is now the champion of their revival. The Volt, which the company plans to begin selling in November 2010, should easily double the fuel economy rating of today’s mileage hero, the Toyota Prius. The Prius, which carries a 46 m.p.g. rating in combined city and highway driving, is a conventional hybrid that uses modest amounts of electricity to minimize the fuel consumed by its gasoline engine.
The Volt takes the opposite approach, relying mainly on electric power, with its gasoline engine running only when needed to stretch the driving range. The 100 m.p.g. automobile, which once seemed an impossible dream, will become an official E.P.A.-rated reality with the Volt’s arrival.
G.M. calls the car an extended-range electric vehicle, or E-REV. For the first 40 miles after leaving home with a fully charged battery, the Volt will consume no gas at all, according to G.M.; when the gas engine does fire up, it will only drive a generator — the engine is not connected to the wheels. Owners will recharge the battery overnight from a wall socket, which brings the Volt into the category of plug-in hybrids.
Placing a meaningful mileage rating on a car capable of running through the government’s test cycles without using any gas at all is no simple matter. Still, the Volt will consume gas on trips longer than its 40-mile battery-powered range, so it must carry some guide to consumption on its window sticker.
Mileage ratings are one of the E.P.A.’s reasons for being. In 1975, the Energy Policy and Conservation Act heaped a thankless task on this agency’s plate: directing carmakers to attach labels to the vehicles they sell showing fuel economy, estimated annual fuel costs and the range of fuel economy achieved by comparable vehicles.
It is also the E.P.A.’s responsibility to help automakers determine the figures that go on those labels, a job only slightly less daunting than weather forecasting. The specific test procedures used to generate mileage figures can be revised only by an act of Congress, but the E.P.A. has made regular adjustments in the mileage reported to consumers in response to changes in driving habits, traffic conditions and vehicle design. Trimming the 2008 model-year mileage figures by about 20 percent from previous years’ results yielded the best correlation yet between what automakers post on window stickers and what consumers experience on the road, especially for hybrid vehicles.
The latest hybrids and electrics are not the first deviations from ordinary gasoline-fueled automobiles the E.P.A. has faced. Vehicles that run on pure electricity, mixtures of gasoline and E85 ethanol, compressed natural gas and hydrogen (fuel-cell vehicles now in the demonstration stage) all required adjustments — in layman’s terms, fudge factors — to the way energy consumption is reported. It is no longer a strictly scientific measurement, but takes into account compensating factors.
The Tesla Roadster, an all-electric sports car that is now being delivered to early customers, is an interesting example of this process. Because the Tesla never consumes petroleum while driving, the E.P.A.-required window sticker lists the energy consumed in kilowatt-hours of electricity. Translating the Roadster’s numbers — 32 kilowatt hours per 100 miles in town and 33 on the highway — to more familiar units using a textbook conversion factor yields impressive ratings of 105 m.p.g. in the city and 102 on the highway. But applying the adjustment factor devised by the Energy Department, which takes into account not only energy content but also such considerations as scarcity of the fuel and production and distribution efficiency, yields far more impressive mileage figures: 256 m.p.g. in the city and 249 on the highway.
In the electric-car realm, the prevailing attitude seems to be the more the merrier, in part because of provisions in the government’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules, which let automakers earn credits for exceeding the minimum requirements. While mileage credits cannot yet be swapped company to company, Tesla Motors hopes that will change, eventually permitting it to sell mileage credits to brands burdened with gas-guzzling models.
But the vehicle technologies already addressed by the E.P.A. do not provide a procedure suitable for measuring the mileage of a plug-in vehicle like the Chevy Volt. According to Jon Lauckner, vice president for global program management at G.M., the Volt can complete six of the 11-mile-long city cycles or the same number of 10.3-mile highway cycles on one battery charge.
The E.P.A. turned to the Argonne National Laboratory, one of 21 Energy Department research centers and a regular ally in mileage matters, to formulate a way to assess the new hyper-efficient vehicles using existing test procedures.
Michael Duoba, an engineer with the Center for Transportation Research at Argonne, about 25 miles from Chicago, explained the thinking behind the new methods his group is developing. “Our priority is instituting m.p.g. figures that are rational and reasonable,” he said. “The new results must be comparable to the mileage achieved by conventional vehicles of the past and present. Also, all of the new advanced technologies must be fairly represented.”
What makes this difficult is the way plug-in vehicles operate. Unlike gasoline, diesel, hybrid, flex-fuel and even fuel-cell vehicles, plug-in vehicles have two distinct operating routines.
“During the first 40 or so miles of driving, the Chevy Volt runs on energy from its battery in what we call a charge-depleting mode,” Mr. Duoba said. “Then, after the battery reaches the minimum acceptable state of charge, the Volt’s gasoline engine starts and this car continues in what we call its charge-sustaining mode.”
Mr. Duoba’s game plan is to repeatedly use the E.P.A.’s driving cycles to measure the Volt’s consumption in both of its operating modes. (In addition to the familiar city and highway tests, cycles for high speed, air-conditioning and cold temperature conditions were added to help bring the final label closer to real-world driving experience.)
First, the Volt is driven repeatedly on each E.P.A. test cycle until its battery is depleted to determine the number of kilowatt-hours of electricity consumed and the number of miles accumulated. Using an Energy Department Petroleum Equivalency Factor established for electrics and hybrids in 2000, the electric consumption is then converted to gallons of gasoline.
Next, the Volt is driven repeatedly on the same test cycle in its charge-sustaining mode, with the gasoline-powered generator, rather than the batteries, providing electricity. That yields a second set of gallons-consumed and miles-accumulated figures.
Now for the tough part: blending the total gallons consumed and miles driven together in some credible way to obtain final city and highway mileage figures suitable for posting on the Volt’s window sticker. Argonne’s intention is to use what it calls a utility factor, in essence a driving trip that consists of some charge-depleting miles and some charge-sustaining miles.
Plug-in hybrids with a long charge-depleting range like the Volt should not have any difficulty clearing the 100-m.p.g. hurdle, Mr. Duoba said. Preliminary tests of the plug-in Prius that Toyota plans to introduce in 2010 indicates that it will achieve 70 to 90 m.p.g.
Of course, the final results will depend on the utility factor. Mr. Duoba said that the Transportation Department’s National Highway Transportation Survey, current research studying consumer driving habits and input from carmakers would all factor into Argonne’s utility factor. Once there is consensus, the Society of Automotive Engineers will publish the Argonne-designed test procedure as its Standard J1711: Recommended Practice for Measuring Exhaust Emissions and Fuel Economy of Hybrid Electric Vehicles.
That leaves one last issue open for discussion. To separate the Volt from ordinary hybrids like the Prius, and to earn zero-emissions-vehicle credits in California, G.M. hopes to define its mileage hero as something truly different.
Because the Volt is always powered by electricity, G.M. says it should not be lumped into the same category as hybrids that use both gasoline and electric propulsion, preferring to call the Volt — and other products that will share its technology — extended-range electric vehicles.
Adding another category to the vehicular mix poses a knotty question: if the Volt is not a hybrid, as G.M. contends, how can the S.A.E.’s hybrid electric vehicle test procedure be used to tell the world that the Chevy is a genuine 100 m.p.g. automobile?
08-03-09, 10:37 AM
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How Volt's cost rose and rose and rose . . .
Lutz's guess wasn't even close; some fixes are in the works, but hefty price tag will remain a problem
Dave Guilford
Automotive News | August 3, 2009 - 12:01 am EST
DETROIT — In 2006, Bob Lutz was steaming over Toyota's success with the Prius hybrid.
General Motors had scoffed while Toyota had pushed ahead with the Prius. To Lutz's chagrin, the Prius gave Toyota a glowing image as a technological and environmental leader.
"I was getting so pissed off about reading about how the wonderful, far-sighted Toyota is the only one who understands technology," the storied 77-year-old executive recalled in an interview last month.
In 2006, Lutz was GM's vice chairman for global product development; this month he became vice chairman in charge of marketing and other creative disciplines. His exasperation with the Prius gave birth to the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid, scheduled to be produced in November 2010.
The Volt has given GM its own green-tech glow. But just as the Prius created publicity for Toyota, so did Lutz's back-of-the-envelope calculation for the possible price of the Volt: maybe the high $20,000s. That estimate has come back to haunt the project.
With costs running far beyond projections, GM engineers already are "beavering away," in Lutz's words, to make under-the-skin cost cuts soon after launch. The good news: Battery development and other changes to the unique engineering of the Volt give GM an opportunity to bring the cost down much faster than for a conventional car.
The Volt uses a lithium ion battery pack to power an electric motor for about 40 miles. After that, a small gasoline engine recharges the battery but never runs the car. When the car is not running, the Volt battery pack can be plugged into the electrical grid.
The Volt team expected the car's battery-electric drivetrain to be costly. But the costs rose even higher than projected. As they developed the car, project managers found they couldn't use off-the-shelf systems from GM's compact-car architecture, such as power steering, which draws power from the internal combustion engine. So they substituted higher-priced electrical systems.
The Volt is turning into a Cobalt-sized Chevy compact with a $40,000 sticker. The story of how that happened shows the challenges in bringing new technology into a mainstream vehicle.
Pricey project
GM wanted to sell the Chevrolet Volt for less than $30,000, but the number has ballooned to about $43,000. These are the main factors driving up the Volt's price.
• Lithium ion battery pack
• Compact 110-kw electric motor; specialized microprocessor controls
• Changing systems such as power steering that usually draw power from internal combustion engine
• Fast development pace with no time to eliminate mechanical redundancies
• One-off parts
A quick sketch
Lutz's ally in pushing the Volt through a resistant GM bureaucracy was Jon Lauckner, 51, GM's vice president for global program management. Lauckner is an engineer who started working at Buick in 1979, eventually taking product development posts in Brazil and Europe. Before returning to Detroit in 2004, Lauckner headed GM's global mid-sized car program in Germany. He will become vice president of global product planning this fall.
Lauckner was closely involved as Lutz cast about for GM's Prius fighter. One source with direct knowledge of the Volt program, who asked not to be named, recalls that Lutz wanted an "i-car" — a leapfrog product to seduce consumers in the same way that Apple Inc.'s iPod music player did.
Lutz says he initially saw an electric vehicle using lithium ion batteries as the best bet. But Lauckner convinced him that a plug-in hybrid with a range-extending gasoline engine on board was a better option.
Lauckner quickly sketched out the powertrain layout and estimated battery requirements, Lutz recalls.
"Within 15 minutes, he had the vehicle basically laid out," he says. "He did all the calculations, what the vehicle weight would be. I was smart enough to realize this made a hell of a lot of sense."
'Lose another billion?'
But winning corporate approval for the Volt was a struggle. When Lutz proposed a plug-in, other GM executives flashed back to their painful — and costly — experience in the 1990s when they dashed far ahead of the industry by creating and marketing the EV1 electric vehicle.
"One senior executive, senior to me, said: 'Bob, we lost a billion dollars the last time we tried that. What do you want us to do, lose another billion?'" Lutz recalls.
Lutz persevered, getting permission to build the Volt concept for the 2007 Detroit auto show. The Volt was a hit, and GM decided to build it.
The big splash caused a problem, though. Lutz had told reporters that he expected the Volt to sell in the upper $20,000s — which he now concedes was a rough estimate.
"When I said I hope to sell it in the 20s, I just thought, 'Well, if a conventional car of that size with a conventional four-cylinder engine, we can sell it for 15 or 16 thousand dollars, then let's notionally add $8,000 for the battery and we're at $25,000," Lutz recalls. "That's the way my brain worked on that one."
The higher cost surprised Volt developers, says the source familiar with the program, causing sharp questions from GM financial executives, especially CFO Ray Young. But the program went forward.
'You pay a premium'
Jon Lauckner: A key player in the Volt’s development
The Volt team knew that the drivetrain would be expensive, Lauckner said in an interview. At about $8,000, the lithium ion battery pack, with batteries supplied by Korean firm LG Chem, is the big-ticket item.
But GM also needed a compact 110-kilowatt electric motor and specialized microprocessors to control energy flow to the motor, he says. GM has not revealed the motor supplier.
"The motor technology we're talking about is very sophisticated to get so much power and torque out of such a small package," Lauckner says. "And you pay a premium for it."
In a normal vehicle program, GM would have saved money by using standard nondrivetrain parts from its global compact-car architecture. But with the Volt, GM had to change many standard systems.
For instance, Lauckner says, power steering is often a hydraulic system — a pump driven by a belt running off the engine. Because the internal combustion engine in the Volt runs only intermittently to charge the battery, GM switched to more costly electric power steering run by an electric motor on the steering rack.
An air conditioning compressor normally is driven by a belt and pulleys running off the engine; the Volt's compressor is driven by an electric motor. Likewise, the Volt's electrohydraulic brakes use an electric motor to provide the boost assist.
Ka-ching.
Suppliers in short supply
GM found that traditional suppliers lacked expertise in electrical drive systems while companies touting EV technology were small by automotive standards.
"You have to go to suppliers that you think have the experience, the capability and the manufacturing scale to do this," Lauckner says. "In many cases, it's less than the number of fingers on your hand, with some fingers to spare."
Lutz adds that GM's fast-paced development left no time to merge redundant systems, such as cooling and heating pipes.
"There are no systems synergies in that car; everything is stand-alone," Lutz says. "But that was just because the electric guys had to do their job, the cooling guys had to do their job, the hydraulic guys had to do their job, and there wasn't time to go back through it and say, 'Wait a minute, how come we have two of these?'"
As they looked at the cost of the project, GM also built in worst-case assumptions for warranty costs, Lutz says. GM will put a 10-year, 150,000- mile warranty on the Volt battery pack and powertrain. Lauckner says that is necessary to meet California Advanced Technology Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle standards.
High warranty-cost projections have an upside. If warranty costs don't hit projected levels, "the car is OK almost from Day One," Lutz says.
Average transaction: $43K
GM needs to do more than cross its fingers on warranty costs, though. At $40,000-plus, the Volt will be a tough sell in a Chevrolet showroom. By comparison, the Prius starts at $21,750, including shipping — putting it in a similar price range to other Toyota cars that shoppers may be considering.
The Volt's retail base price will be about $40,000, the program source says, because "dealers need a couple thousand reasons to pick up the phone and order one." That means that GM will sell the Volt — at a loss — to dealers for somewhere in the mid- to upper $30,000s. Transaction prices, the source says, are projected to average about $43,000.
Volt buyers will qualify for a federal tax credit of up to $7,500. But, the source notes, the consumer will not recoup that until months after buying the car — and still will have to finance and insure a $40,000-plus vehicle.
The Volt has been costly in another way. The source says that the $1 billion cost of developing the Volt is roughly equivalent to creating three new vehicles on an existing architecture.
GM might have killed another project with the Volt's ballooning costs. But the Volt's high public profile — stoked by a massive public relations effort — made that virtually impossible. Also, several other automakers are developing plug-in hybrids. GM doesn't want to lose its head start on what could be a successful technology.
Range vs. cost
That leaves GM with an urgent need to cut costs on the Volt. GM is focusing on two major areas:
1. Elimination of the redundant systems caused by rapid development, which GM plans for about nine months after launch, Lutz says.
2. Technological gains, especially improved efficiency of lithium ion battery packs
Dave Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., estimates that in five to 10 years, technological advances could cut the cost of the pack in half, to about $4,000 to $5,000. With those and other savings, GM might get the base price down to $30,000, Cole says.
Lutz and Lauckner expect future lithium ion battery packs to offer better energy density. If so, GM will have a choice: Either keep the Volt's 40-mile electric range with a smaller — and cheaper — battery pack or keep the same size of pack and extend the range before the internal combustion engine has to kick in.
Lutz says cost is likely to be the prime consideration: "I think it's all going to head in the direction of a smaller, lighter battery at much lower cost delivering the same range."
GM could spread Volt costs by using the drivetrain in other vehicles, such as the Volt's sibling, the Opel Ampera, in Europe. A Cadillac plug-in concept, the Converj, is in limbo.
Lutz says GM could also use the Volt system in other front-wheel- drive vehicles. But he predicts that GM will move slowly because "vehicle price is going to be a big issue for a long time to come."
In the meantime, GM will strain to push new technology into the mainstream. Range-extended hybrids like the Volt may one day play a major role in a greener automotive industry. But, as GM is learning, getting to the future is neither easy nor cheap.
Lutz's guess wasn't even close; some fixes are in the works, but hefty price tag will remain a problem
Dave Guilford
Automotive News | August 3, 2009 - 12:01 am EST
DETROIT — In 2006, Bob Lutz was steaming over Toyota's success with the Prius hybrid.
General Motors had scoffed while Toyota had pushed ahead with the Prius. To Lutz's chagrin, the Prius gave Toyota a glowing image as a technological and environmental leader.
"I was getting so pissed off about reading about how the wonderful, far-sighted Toyota is the only one who understands technology," the storied 77-year-old executive recalled in an interview last month.
In 2006, Lutz was GM's vice chairman for global product development; this month he became vice chairman in charge of marketing and other creative disciplines. His exasperation with the Prius gave birth to the Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid, scheduled to be produced in November 2010.
The Volt has given GM its own green-tech glow. But just as the Prius created publicity for Toyota, so did Lutz's back-of-the-envelope calculation for the possible price of the Volt: maybe the high $20,000s. That estimate has come back to haunt the project.
With costs running far beyond projections, GM engineers already are "beavering away," in Lutz's words, to make under-the-skin cost cuts soon after launch. The good news: Battery development and other changes to the unique engineering of the Volt give GM an opportunity to bring the cost down much faster than for a conventional car.
The Volt uses a lithium ion battery pack to power an electric motor for about 40 miles. After that, a small gasoline engine recharges the battery but never runs the car. When the car is not running, the Volt battery pack can be plugged into the electrical grid.
The Volt team expected the car's battery-electric drivetrain to be costly. But the costs rose even higher than projected. As they developed the car, project managers found they couldn't use off-the-shelf systems from GM's compact-car architecture, such as power steering, which draws power from the internal combustion engine. So they substituted higher-priced electrical systems.
The Volt is turning into a Cobalt-sized Chevy compact with a $40,000 sticker. The story of how that happened shows the challenges in bringing new technology into a mainstream vehicle.
Pricey project
GM wanted to sell the Chevrolet Volt for less than $30,000, but the number has ballooned to about $43,000. These are the main factors driving up the Volt's price.
• Lithium ion battery pack
• Compact 110-kw electric motor; specialized microprocessor controls
• Changing systems such as power steering that usually draw power from internal combustion engine
• Fast development pace with no time to eliminate mechanical redundancies
• One-off parts
A quick sketch
Lutz's ally in pushing the Volt through a resistant GM bureaucracy was Jon Lauckner, 51, GM's vice president for global program management. Lauckner is an engineer who started working at Buick in 1979, eventually taking product development posts in Brazil and Europe. Before returning to Detroit in 2004, Lauckner headed GM's global mid-sized car program in Germany. He will become vice president of global product planning this fall.
Lauckner was closely involved as Lutz cast about for GM's Prius fighter. One source with direct knowledge of the Volt program, who asked not to be named, recalls that Lutz wanted an "i-car" — a leapfrog product to seduce consumers in the same way that Apple Inc.'s iPod music player did.
Lutz says he initially saw an electric vehicle using lithium ion batteries as the best bet. But Lauckner convinced him that a plug-in hybrid with a range-extending gasoline engine on board was a better option.
Lauckner quickly sketched out the powertrain layout and estimated battery requirements, Lutz recalls.
"Within 15 minutes, he had the vehicle basically laid out," he says. "He did all the calculations, what the vehicle weight would be. I was smart enough to realize this made a hell of a lot of sense."
'Lose another billion?'
But winning corporate approval for the Volt was a struggle. When Lutz proposed a plug-in, other GM executives flashed back to their painful — and costly — experience in the 1990s when they dashed far ahead of the industry by creating and marketing the EV1 electric vehicle.
"One senior executive, senior to me, said: 'Bob, we lost a billion dollars the last time we tried that. What do you want us to do, lose another billion?'" Lutz recalls.
Lutz persevered, getting permission to build the Volt concept for the 2007 Detroit auto show. The Volt was a hit, and GM decided to build it.
The big splash caused a problem, though. Lutz had told reporters that he expected the Volt to sell in the upper $20,000s — which he now concedes was a rough estimate.
"When I said I hope to sell it in the 20s, I just thought, 'Well, if a conventional car of that size with a conventional four-cylinder engine, we can sell it for 15 or 16 thousand dollars, then let's notionally add $8,000 for the battery and we're at $25,000," Lutz recalls. "That's the way my brain worked on that one."
The higher cost surprised Volt developers, says the source familiar with the program, causing sharp questions from GM financial executives, especially CFO Ray Young. But the program went forward.
'You pay a premium'
Jon Lauckner: A key player in the Volt’s development
The Volt team knew that the drivetrain would be expensive, Lauckner said in an interview. At about $8,000, the lithium ion battery pack, with batteries supplied by Korean firm LG Chem, is the big-ticket item.
But GM also needed a compact 110-kilowatt electric motor and specialized microprocessors to control energy flow to the motor, he says. GM has not revealed the motor supplier.
"The motor technology we're talking about is very sophisticated to get so much power and torque out of such a small package," Lauckner says. "And you pay a premium for it."
In a normal vehicle program, GM would have saved money by using standard nondrivetrain parts from its global compact-car architecture. But with the Volt, GM had to change many standard systems.
For instance, Lauckner says, power steering is often a hydraulic system — a pump driven by a belt running off the engine. Because the internal combustion engine in the Volt runs only intermittently to charge the battery, GM switched to more costly electric power steering run by an electric motor on the steering rack.
An air conditioning compressor normally is driven by a belt and pulleys running off the engine; the Volt's compressor is driven by an electric motor. Likewise, the Volt's electrohydraulic brakes use an electric motor to provide the boost assist.
Ka-ching.
Suppliers in short supply
GM found that traditional suppliers lacked expertise in electrical drive systems while companies touting EV technology were small by automotive standards.
"You have to go to suppliers that you think have the experience, the capability and the manufacturing scale to do this," Lauckner says. "In many cases, it's less than the number of fingers on your hand, with some fingers to spare."
Lutz adds that GM's fast-paced development left no time to merge redundant systems, such as cooling and heating pipes.
"There are no systems synergies in that car; everything is stand-alone," Lutz says. "But that was just because the electric guys had to do their job, the cooling guys had to do their job, the hydraulic guys had to do their job, and there wasn't time to go back through it and say, 'Wait a minute, how come we have two of these?'"
As they looked at the cost of the project, GM also built in worst-case assumptions for warranty costs, Lutz says. GM will put a 10-year, 150,000- mile warranty on the Volt battery pack and powertrain. Lauckner says that is necessary to meet California Advanced Technology Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle standards.
High warranty-cost projections have an upside. If warranty costs don't hit projected levels, "the car is OK almost from Day One," Lutz says.
Average transaction: $43K
GM needs to do more than cross its fingers on warranty costs, though. At $40,000-plus, the Volt will be a tough sell in a Chevrolet showroom. By comparison, the Prius starts at $21,750, including shipping — putting it in a similar price range to other Toyota cars that shoppers may be considering.
The Volt's retail base price will be about $40,000, the program source says, because "dealers need a couple thousand reasons to pick up the phone and order one." That means that GM will sell the Volt — at a loss — to dealers for somewhere in the mid- to upper $30,000s. Transaction prices, the source says, are projected to average about $43,000.
Volt buyers will qualify for a federal tax credit of up to $7,500. But, the source notes, the consumer will not recoup that until months after buying the car — and still will have to finance and insure a $40,000-plus vehicle.
The Volt has been costly in another way. The source says that the $1 billion cost of developing the Volt is roughly equivalent to creating three new vehicles on an existing architecture.
GM might have killed another project with the Volt's ballooning costs. But the Volt's high public profile — stoked by a massive public relations effort — made that virtually impossible. Also, several other automakers are developing plug-in hybrids. GM doesn't want to lose its head start on what could be a successful technology.
Range vs. cost
That leaves GM with an urgent need to cut costs on the Volt. GM is focusing on two major areas:
1. Elimination of the redundant systems caused by rapid development, which GM plans for about nine months after launch, Lutz says.
2. Technological gains, especially improved efficiency of lithium ion battery packs
Dave Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., estimates that in five to 10 years, technological advances could cut the cost of the pack in half, to about $4,000 to $5,000. With those and other savings, GM might get the base price down to $30,000, Cole says.
Lutz and Lauckner expect future lithium ion battery packs to offer better energy density. If so, GM will have a choice: Either keep the Volt's 40-mile electric range with a smaller — and cheaper — battery pack or keep the same size of pack and extend the range before the internal combustion engine has to kick in.
Lutz says cost is likely to be the prime consideration: "I think it's all going to head in the direction of a smaller, lighter battery at much lower cost delivering the same range."
GM could spread Volt costs by using the drivetrain in other vehicles, such as the Volt's sibling, the Opel Ampera, in Europe. A Cadillac plug-in concept, the Converj, is in limbo.
Lutz says GM could also use the Volt system in other front-wheel- drive vehicles. But he predicts that GM will move slowly because "vehicle price is going to be a big issue for a long time to come."
In the meantime, GM will strain to push new technology into the mainstream. Range-extended hybrids like the Volt may one day play a major role in a greener automotive industry. But, as GM is learning, getting to the future is neither easy nor cheap.
08-03-09, 11:14 AM
#179
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At least the Volt ended up being a decent looking car. With a $7500 tax incentive there will be EV fans who will choose the Volt over the Prius. I have no doubt. However, what I want to know is if when the battery is depleted if regen. braking and a li-ion battery will make for a vehicle with gas mileage superior to the Prius. Hmmm....
08-03-09, 11:29 AM
#180
Lexus Champion
Well, I've said it before and I'll say it again, if the Volt comes WELL EQUIPPED at 40 grand... like it has power everything, some nice standard high tech toys including hopefully a standard LCD touch screen possibly including nav, xm, LED headlights, etc... then 40 grand is very reasonable for it... especially once the 7500 tax credit is adjusted for. Look at what you'd be getting for 32,500 and compare it to what the Prius would offer you for similar money.
I think it compares VERY favorably to the Prius as 32,500
How the driving experience compares to the Prius is still a big question mark, though... and reliability is too. Driving experience could really add another big plus over the Prius since the Prius isn't really that great to drive... I think the Volt will only improve on that. Reliability... it's unlikely the Volt will be able to improve on the already great reliability of the Prius, so this is probably where GM has the most room to screw up.
And they better get that price down quick before the tax credit goes away.
I think it compares VERY favorably to the Prius as 32,500
How the driving experience compares to the Prius is still a big question mark, though... and reliability is too. Driving experience could really add another big plus over the Prius since the Prius isn't really that great to drive... I think the Volt will only improve on that. Reliability... it's unlikely the Volt will be able to improve on the already great reliability of the Prius, so this is probably where GM has the most room to screw up.
And they better get that price down quick before the tax credit goes away.