2010 Launch For Chevy Volt "A Stretch" Even W/O Major Technical Issues - LA Times

[hatrack]

General Motors Corp.'s planned launch of the highly anticipated Chevrolet Volt in 2010 is "a stretch" even though the automaker has not hit any snags in its development of the rechargeable electric car, the automaker's chief executive said Tuesday. Rick Wagoner said the automaker's initial tests of a new-generation of lithium-ion batteries needed to power the Volt had been favorable.

"From the beginning, going for 2010 was a stretch, and it's still a stretch, but we're putting resources like crazy into it and we haven't seen anything yet that says we've hit a glitch on it," Wagoner said at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The Volt represents GM's bid to beat rival Toyota Motor Corp. to the market with a hybrid vehicle that can be recharged at a standard outlet and to win back consumers who have abandoned the Detroit-based automaker's brands because of concern about fuel economy and the environment.

Toyota is working to develop a rechargeable or plug-in version of its market-leading Prius hybrid but has said that the battery technology will not be ready for market by 2010. Wagoner said the Volt development effort was far more complex than the usual process of turning a concept car into a production model, which typically takes three to four years.

EDIT

http://www.latimes.com/business/printedition/la-fi-volt9jan09,1,683315.story?ctrack=2&cset=true

[wtmusic]

1. With electrics, planned obsolescence is a challenge

very few moving parts to break or wear out.

Sticking a big honking internal combustion engine under the hood oughta solve the problem.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. Did GM CEO Rick Wagoner Really Change Anything about the Volt’s Release Date?

http://www.gm-volt.com/2008/01/07/did-gm-ceo-rick-wagoner-really-change-anything-about-the-volts-release-date/

...

Here’s what the E-Flex spokesman Rob Peterson had to say about it:

I think people are reading more into this than what’s really there. Program timing for the Volt has not changed, nor has our commitment to this program.

Mr. Wagoner’s response while phrased differently, is consistent with what we have said all along, “we continue to work aggressively toward our 2010 internal target, but that date is dependent on the availability of battery technology that meets our safety, performance and durability requirements.”

While initial test results for the batteries over the past two months continue to be very encouraging, more data is needed to reliably predict how this battery will perform over 10 years of cycle life in varying conditions. Only through rigorous testing of the battery, which is ongoing as we speak, will we be able to accurately determine where we are in the development of the battery and the ultimate production date of the Volt.

...

[Nihil]

3. He inadvertently cleared away some of the hype-fog obscuring the truth ...

... that GM really don't care that much for non-petrol burners after all.

So who around here (apart from old Brain-Damaged) is surprised?

:shrug:

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. There's a bit more to this than you seem to think

It's not as if they're just slapping together a car. They don't even have production batteries yet (they've gotten trial batteries from one supplier, but not from the other one.)

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/01/08/gm-reaffirms-commitment-to-build-volt-by-2010-refuses-to-commit/

...

The problem is that Wagoner is the Chairman of a huge public company. As such he has to be very careful about making public commitments to anything. When a product program is still three or more years from production and contains technology that may or may not work, he has to equivocate. People buy and sell a lot of stock based on statements from executives like Rick Wagoner and Bob Lutz. When the things they say don't come to fruition, lawsuits often result.

Wagoner is by nature more conservative than Lutz and has his own style. But even the outspoken Lutz has never actually said that GM "will build" the Volt by the end of 2010. That's the target date and they are putting in all the resources necessary to make it happen. Car makers never actually publicly commit to a Job 1 date until the tooling is delivered and they building pilot vehicles which is usually within twelve months of full production and often much closer. If they were to commit to a November 2010 launch and it slipped to March 2011, everyone would be all over them even though such a scenario would be not all unexpected in such a program.

All that being said, everyone below that level at GM still seems supremely confident that Volt will enter production on or about that time. Jon Lauckner, VP for Global Program Management, GM spokesman Rob Peterson and many others continue to say they expect the car to launch around the end of the decade. Depending on what happens between now and then the Volt be produced "on time" or not, but you won't hear it officially until much, much closer to that time. In the meantime, Lutz also has his say on the http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/archives/2008/01/happy_birthday.html#more|GM Fastlane blog>.

http://www.autobloggreen.com/2008/01/10/autobloggreen-qanda-the-latest-on-volt-batteries-with-denise-grey

...

ABG: Is there anything else you want to share about what is going on?

Denise Gray: Yes, we are running this fast as possible. We got a number of different swim lanes all in parallel, from the cell, the battery pack itself, from electronics to the thermal, to manufacturing. How we are going to manufacture these things at high quantities with reliability and robustness and then we got all of the vehicle work happening, the vehicle control work is happening as well. So, there is a lot going on in order to be able to pull this off.

ABG: That control work is probably one of the biggest aspects of the whole project developing the electronics and software infrastructure to let all these various subsystems communicate and work together to optimize the range and performance and durability of the packs.

Denise Gray: Yes, it is a huge effort, because you got to think this vehicle is going to operate differently than the previous vehicles, a non-EV, a non-extended range kind of vehicle. You think about the typical customer comes in, he starts up as he puts his key in, he turns the ignition, the engine starts up, and things get triggered off that sequence of how the traditional vehicle operates. And, so now with this vehicle things will be different and we're still defining that difference so that we can really optimize the overall electrification of the vehicle. So you've got to twist your mind around a different kind of operating strategy. Your power molding is different now and that will really be a huge task.

...

[Nihil]

5. Nope ... I'm not the one who's been hyping the GM "answer" ...

> It's not as if they're just slapping together a car.

True. That would have required them to be on the ball ten years ago.

> They don't even have production batteries yet

Hence my comment that the statement is clearing away some of the media fog
surrounding the endless hype of the Volt as "the new American solution for
the future" by admitting that it's still years away.

I'm not one of the ones who claimed that GM were about to take the lead
from Toyota et al with regard to "green" cars.

:shrug: