GM shows off Volt, progress toward 2010 launch

[cwerdna]

The GM PR machine is hard at work...

GM shows off Volt, progress toward 2010 launch: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance

[Sufferin' Prius Envy]

Funny. . . the picture of the 'car' looks like it had caught on fire and is smoking.

Yeah, that would be about right for a new GM product.

[chogan2]

Putting aside the fact that GM is using it for PR, the content of the article was fairly interesting: November 2010, 400 lb battery pack, either battery supplier would do, 30-something mile highway range, small ongoing improvements in aerodynamics. I think the requirement for a 9 second 0-60 time is foolish but consistent with producing this as a sporty car (which I suppose makes that a foolish consistency).

Maybe I have drunk the Kool-Aid on this one, but if you can ignore the fact that GM's incessantly talking about it, the actual underlying product development sounds plausible. They may yet price the thing out of the market, or persist with that hairbrained battery-rental idea that got floated earlier, or find some excuse only to rent to fleets, but barring that, it seems pretty reasonable.

Wikipedia lists the RAV4-EV at 18 seconds 0-60, 120 mile range, and $42K MSRP in 2002. Adjust that for inflation (via the US BLS inflation calculator) and that would be $49.5K in 2008, plausibly $52K in 2010. But the RAV4 provided a lot of interior room, and there were some large dollar subsidies. By contrast, the proposed GM vehicle is probably going to have a cramped interior (take a look at the back seat of a Cobalt some time), might cost $35K with smaller subsidies available if at all, with 30-some mile electric range and a gas engine.

My point being, if it were all PR and vaporware, why not promise the moon? But that's not what GM is doing. They're promising something that in some respects is better and in some respects worse than a RAV4 EV, for a much lower MSRP but (almost certainly) without the large subsidies the RAV4 EV got. At the least, you have to give them credit for a realistic simulation of an actual product.

The ongoing PR campaign is obnoxious but the underlying product appears plausible. For all I know, the potential for PR might have been the sweetener that convinced GM management to go ahead with this. If so, they can blather all they want if they'll produce the car.

[patsparks]

I also wondered if the battery had caught fire.

Still looks as aerodynamic as a house brick.

With the advances in battery development the range should be better than RAV4-EV was and it should be cheaper. General inflation hasn't been very evident in the automotive market place over recent years, competition is a great thing.

[hill]

yep
that's smoke.

Where's the mirrors?

[john1701a]

Without any braking -- in perfectly traffic-free highway driving -- the range would be closer to 32 miles, GM engineers said.

That end to the article is very interesting.

With the heater or A/C running on my 19-mile mostly-highway commute with very little braking, the misleading "40-mile" promotion really takes hit.

.

[daniel]

The Volt marks the first attempt to adapt lithium-ion batteries, widely used in electronics, for a car, although Toyota is racing ahead with its own work on the same technology.

The above quote is from the article. The author is apparently unaware of the Tesla Roadster, which uses lithium-ion batteries, and which is now rolling off the production line. Should we believe anything else he says when he has demonstrated that he knows nothing at all about electric cars?

John beat me to the punch on the range claim. My requirement is a reliable, worst-case 40 miles on electric. If it turns out only to get 32 miles on electric, it does not meet my needs. I can go 35 miles in my Xebra.

Originally Posted by chogan2

... if it were all PR and vaporware, why not promise the moon? But that's not what GM is doing. They're promising something that in some respects is better and in some respects worse than a RAV4 EV, for a much lower MSRP but (almost certainly) without the large subsidies the RAV4 EV got. At the least, you have to give them credit for a realistic simulation of an actual product. ...

Okay. I'll give them credit for designing an ad campaign sufficiently plausible that a six-year-old would not look at it and say "That's impossible!" But if you think about it, that's the art of advertising: Making false claims that seem sufficiently plausible that people will buy the product; or in this case, sufficiently plausible that people will believe the hype.

[hobbit]

Once again -- Toyota didn't say a word about the Prius until
they were fully ready to sell it.
.
_H*

[Stev0]

I'm starting to think we should have a separate forum just for the daily Volt press releases.

[usbseawolf2000]

It looks like they are finding out what "Hotel Load" means.

They found out that to meet the life cycle of the the li-ion battery, it only has 50% usable state of charge. This makes 8kWh available out of 16kWh. Remember the concept was stated to use 80% of the pack.

So, either the range will drop or the cost will go up along with the weight of the pack. Come on, they should have done all these work before creating the concept.

I just hope Toyota IQ plug-in announcement with 50 miles range does not appear. This will spoil all the fun we are having with Volt.