Volt Battery Plant Workers Paid To Play

Misleading headline. It's not a Chevy Plant it's an LG Chem Plant.

LG Chem's idle Michigan battery plant slammed by federal audit - MSN Autos

 

This plant was mentioned last year at Volt Battery supplier employees have little to do..... | PriusChat. But, there has been more news trickling out about it again lately.

 

Nothing new... the gov't hands out tons of cash to people for questionable (if that) labor.

Shame that the Volt can't seem to get off the negative side of the media... but then again, the tech is just not quite right. Prius Plug-in still kicks its nice person in the engine efficiency department.

 

it's just a shame it doesn't have a larger battery so that overall effeciency is as good as the Volt.

 

LG Chem is not a GM or Volt Plant, it supplies the battery pack for the Volt just like A123 to Fisker Karma or any other supplier.

 

It truly boggles the mind that such a basic economic reality is so easily traded for bragging rights. That quote is a classic example. Misplaced priorities continue to be a problem.

The point of idle-worker report was to bring attention to the consequences of not meeting sales expectations. Profit comes from meeting production goals. Workers get paid whether they build anything or not. Sitting there playing games and watching movies instead of increasing inventory results in financial losses.

Remember, the automaker chooses what to produce. Not meeting their own goals results in a profit penalty. Having a trophy for highest MPG does not pay the bills.

The smaller size of the plug-in Prius battery keeps cost in check, making it a premium package option rather than a substantial price differential. The 4.4 kWh of capacity is clearly more market-competitive than the 16.5 in Volt.

Reality is, waiting for the next generation of Volt is turning into a costly risk. Reports like this will continue to point that out.

Suppliers are directly affected by choices of the automaker.

 

Sure but this has to do with the DOE, not GM. The DOE's strings attached were to build the plant and hire the workers. LG Chem is shipping the cells from korea, and using US government money to pay the workers.

This is part of the sad story of the government not managing grants and loans properely. There should have been a clause that they actually got paid to make batteries, not the stuff they asked for. LG chem would have to lay off workers in korea to produce them in Michigan. With the US government paying the workers here, why would they do that.

 

It has been explained before: overall efficiency of the Volt can be, in many situations, lower than Prius PHV.

 

There is only one easy to define case where the prius phv is more efficient than the volt and that is on long drives. I expect the gen IV based prius phv to have a bigger battery and be more efficient. The rumor is around 20 miles of range.

 

The other one is small drives, roughly up to 12 miles between charges.

 

The current volt is 98 mpge, last I checked that was higher than the prius phv's 95 mpge. Really, I don't think most people will notice that difference. If you are driving very slow the prius might give you a smidge more efficiency, if you drive fast some worse efficiency. Not really anything to talk about, nor important to this story.

 

explained but not demonstrated.

there are tons of threads that enlist mathematics and epa test results to theorize cases where the different phvs might perform better or worse than the other. The switcheroo thread is one of the only actual comparisons.

my own experience of taking a genII prius and a volt on a 180 mile trip (austin to houston) alongside each other seemed to throw water on the mathematical extensions of epa ratings. my mathematical extension of that 180 mile experience indicated it might take as much as a 500 mile drive (austin to new orleans) before the gen II prius would cross under the volt's gasoline consumption, at which point most journeys would allow another full charge of the volt and perhaps another 500 miles.

I don't have a PiP with which to do the same comparison but these mathematical extrapolations are just that ... extrapolations.

for the short trips, ie. less than 12 miles, it would be interesting to have a PiP and Volt travel together and then measure the actual energy consumed. The trip would have to be restricted to less than 62mph, modest limits on acceleration, relatively flat terrain, and a moderate climate to keep the PiP from enlisting the gasoline motor. Under those PiP imposed constraints, I am not sure the PiP would outperform the Volt, but in theory it should. If we remove the constraints, I am confident the Volt would outperform.

I think the PiP can benefit quiet a bit from a larger battery, even with the current speed, power, and heating constraints. trading electric driven miles for gasoline driven miles is an efficiency win.

 

well kind of, with Volt selling way less than GM planned, GM is at fault for LG Chem plant being underutilized. right?

 

I didn't think it would ever be highly utilized. When LG won the bid it was likely going to be shipping the batteries from Korea. The volume is not very different than projected when bids were out, it is very much less than the inflated DOE figures. LG should have never been subsidized.

 

Hmmm,

The thread sounds like Solyndra.

DBCassidy

 

See? Not always, as I said before.

Agree here, but cost is a limitation. And federal benefits are not permanent.

 

Have you seen a thread with a side-by-side test of a PiP and a Volt for a 12mile or less pure EV run?

The EPA did one but the PiP fired up the gas motor for a hill climb. The results from that test rated the PiP 95MPGe and the Volt 98MPGe.

If your concern is about the cost of the battery and the payback economics of the additional cost, you have a claim. But I would ask you to apply the same analysis as you would to evaluate the payback economics of a hybrid drive versus a non-hybrid model of a similar vehicle. These analysis are very dependent on the price of fuel, including the impact of price spikes and inflation over the projected life of the vehicle, often projected to 200,000 miles and 15 years, or more.

 

In the long run, I think it will be money well spent if cars like the Volt catch on with the general population. I see more and more people I know buying Volts, CMAX and Prii. People who I never would have thought would consider such cars. They end up loving the car and do not regret the purchase. That is what we need right now. If it costs us more in the short term so be it. The payback in the end is greater.

 

There is one thread "switcheroo", not side-by-side.
About the same electricity consumption...
PiP/Volt January 7-11 Switcheroo | PriusChat