Chevy Volt Team

By Katherine Helmetag

Atomicalex

The way some people talk about it, GM put the EV1 in a box, held a funeral, and buried the thing. Those people wouldn’t be Tony Pasowacz, the leader of GM’s electric vehicle and Volt team. “The people who designed and built the EV1 are mostly still here, and for the Volt, we got the band back together.” That goes a long way to explaining the speed at which GM has been moving on the Volt project. Rob and I sat down with Tony for a few minutes at the 2009 NAIAS to talk about electric vehicles and where GM is going. Continue reading…

Rob was surprised when I mentioned the two EV1s that still ply the roads in SE MI. Tony elaborated: “The program didn’t end in a really good way, but we’ve learned from our mistakes, and that’s giving us a real competitive advantage on a project like this.” The old EV1s are part of GM’s long term studies on the viability of electric cars, and have given the EV team the opportunity to gain real-world experience with the ups and downs of BEVs. The program has even seen pusher trailers constructed to enable extended range testing for the EVs. Wait – that would mean GM was already building series hybrids in, oh, 1997?

I was really interested in Tony’s comments about secondary uses for the Volt battery system. GM is treating the Volt generation and propulsion system as a standalone unit that could be used for other applications. This will improve manufacturing costs and help to develop a new standard that suppliers can stick to. By expanding the supplier base, GM will help prices of components come down. “The Volt will not be priced like the Tesla,” Tony laughed. This talk about alternate uses meant I had to ask about crate motors, and it’s an option GM is pursuing! Holy guacamole! Can you imagine doing series hybrid swaps? We’ve got some serious CarDomain swag put aside for the first member to do one once the crate units hit the road.

For the techies out there, the battery technologies being considered are lithium manganese spinel from LG Chem and lithium iron phosphate from A123. This morning, GM announced that they will go with the LG Chem technology, and that they will start a new program up with the University of Michigan to train battery and battery system development engineers. This means that there will be a technology base in Michigan, which is pretty badly needed right now. The LG technology is pretty advanced, and is also being picked up by Hyundai. I was telling Rob that I thought it would be good to go with LG because it would mean more total units sold and the price would come down faster.

Anyway, that’s the latest scoop on the Volt program. The rollout is supposed to be November 2010, but I think GM is sandbagging.