Volt Enthusiast 1st hand report of visit to the Warehouse

GM web site? I know I'M feeling better ...

 

so, if ex-EV1 people are working this 'volt' project...are they nervous they'll design a great car, only to see it crushed? You know, "guys, let's not make this too good, remember the last good idea"?

I'm still a doubter.

 

I hope a lot more was going on than what was described or that only a little of a much bigger operation was shown. Just two battery packs? Heavy duty industrial testing should have a bank of individual cells being life cycled in various chambers and conditions, A whole series of static and dynamic installations should be ready and waiting, not just a spot or two. (How many engineers did GM claim to have working on fuel cells?)

For example, when working in a seat belt testing lab, there were 10 machines automatically testing 10 different retraction mechanisms 24/7 for months at a time. These batteries have a whole lot of testing to be done. More than two are needed. No way they are ready by 2011 if this is where they are now....but again, this may have been a small snapshot, not the whole story.

During the Prius development, Toyota had around a 100 different vehicles being used for different aspects of total car testing.

 

I am willing to take this account at face value. There is no way GM or any other manufacturer is going to let a "tourist" see much. Such a glowing report is going to make it harder for Lutz to say "the battery technology isn't ready yet". Since others are making the batteries that may be the one part that doesn't fail. I am still sure that GM will find some way to screw this up.

 

Lutz says he'd like to have mule for test drives by Easter more like June. Easter is Mid March this year. June is, well a few months after that. If you expand the ratio they'd like to have the Volt ready by 2010 but more like......?

Click "home" and you get this:

From Lutz:

"“I’ve always said I’d like to be able to sell it at around $30,000. The way things look now, it doesn’t look like that’s going to be possible. It looks like it’s going to be more.â€

and, as to how much more:

“I don’t know. You’d like to have it at about $30,000 for the customer, but what I’m hearing from the team is we’re not going to get there. They say we might get there on the second generation, and they say if they had a lot more time they might be able to cost-optimize it. I don’t want to wait for cost optimization. I’d rather come out in 2010, and if it costs closer to 40 than 30, well, that’s too bad.â€"

Gee, $40,000 and maybe 2010.

I'm not real keen on wanting to rush something to market before it might be ready.

$10,000 premium? (As opposed to the Prius' "$6,000" premium?) Well, Lutz says that's too bad. I guess that's the price you pay for buying American.

Saturn Flextreme anyone?

 

I'm skeptical, but I hope I'm wrong. I'd buy one for $40,000, if it does what they say it'll do (30 miles before the engine starts) and if it's the first car of its kind to become available.

One thing I'm seriously worried about:

GM might intentionally build a lemon, so that buyers would be dissatisfied, and complain, and they could cancel the program on the specious grounds that "EVs are no good." They may have learned a lesson with the EV-1: They built a car so good that the drivers wanted to keep it.

I really hope that Toyota comes out with a PHEV first. I'd be more comfortable buying a Toyota than a Chevy. But as I've said before, first one to market gets my money.

 

I don't believe that any of us want GM to crap out on the Volt promise. Actually, I'd be happy as a clam if they were able to outperform Toyota in the EV race. I'm hoping that they and the other Detroit companies get the fact that most of us would buy American if they were better than the Japanese.

 

Indeed. The global oil situation is FAR different to what it was when the EV-1 was being developed. GM can't afford to cock this up.

 

Exactly!!! I'd much rather buy American. But I won't buy junk. American companies could match Japanese quality if they simply made the management decision to invest in quality. Instead, American companies take the short-term view, cutting corners on quality to increase profit margin and the customer be damned.