Is GM abandoning hydrogen fuel cell-powered vehicle hype development in favor of battery-powered electrics? Newly enriched Car Czar "Maximum" Bob Lutz seems to be hinting in that direction. In an interview with PetroZero.org, the Volt's godfather indicated The General is considering building a Volt. No seriously. Building a Volt "without engine and all the plumbing" to meet California's new Zero Emissions Vehicle (ZEV) mandate. The engineers responsible for the test fleet of hydrogen-powered Equinox will be delighted to learn that Max Bob "agreed" that "pure EV was the most sensible route [to meet the ZEV requirements] compared to expensive hydrogen powered fuel cells." But MB didn't stop there. (As if.) He concluded if GM builds an EV Volt, they'd have "a pure electric with more range." More range than what? The EV1? And does this indicate that GM's already working on an all-electric Volt, or is Bob just putting his bid in for next year's Bob Lutz Award? Or both? But definitely not neither.
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As usual, the Lutzster has his finger firmly on the pulse of the automotive future. Then again, he seems to enjoy shooting his mouth off without prior exercise of his acute mental faculties.
Once again, I find myself oddly agreeing with the Lutzmeister (it was diesels last time).
EV is the smart way to meet the ZEV mandate. Hydrogen is at least as big a boondoggle as ethanol, and has a lot of the same problems (no infrastructure, low energy density, massive amounts of energy to produce).
I know we all like to make fun of Bob Lutz and GM, but it’s worth considering what they might well be able to achieve here.
If we go back to the EV-1, we had a true electric with a realistic range of 60 miles. If one were to replace the lead-acid batteries with lithium-ion batteries of the same weight, the range would double.
I think that a 120 mile range EV might well succeed in the market. That range makes it practical for over 90% of commuters.
If you eliminate the IC engine and the gas tank from the Volt, you probably get about 300-500 pounds back which could be replaced with batteries. I suspect that GM has come to the conclusion that, given current technology, the series hybrid is just too heavy to work and that they would be better off re-setting customer expectations and devoting the space and weight to more batteries.
Bob Lutz’ education:
Bachelor’s Degree in Business – Berkley 1961
MBA with Honors – Berkley 1962
http://fastlane.gmblogs.com/archives/2005/01/lutz_biography_1.html
Notice the complete lack of any training in Science or Engineering. No wonder the guy doesn’t know what he is talking about half the time. But hey, at least he flew jets for the US Marines, though I’m not sure how that relates to building cars.
Question: Why is it that university students can make a solar powered race car that can go across the Australian desert, but GM hasn’t, yet, and doesn’t appear to be? I think instead of making a pure electric car, they should be focusing on making a solar/gas hybrid – solar for nice days, gas for nights and cloudy days.
lprocter1982
GM won the first race of the world solar challenge with a car called Sunraycer. That car set the standard for future cars in the race. Now the race is intended to be an incubator for college engineering students to learn and try new things.
Solar energy is still not capable to run a real car. The power density is just not there. Solar can barely generate enough on a fixed ground based application to make it worthwhile.
http://www.speedace.info/solar_racing_events/world_solar_challenge.htm
lprocter1982, You wouldn’t want to drive one of those cars. If we ever get cheap solar cells that can be formed to arbitrary shapes, it probably would be worthwhile to cover an EV with them for a daytime charge (back of the envelope suggests all day in the sun would get you a few miles). But it’s a ways out.
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Why not an 80-100 mile BEV? We have 3 cars and an 80-mile BEV would cover the longest of the 3 family commutes five times over. I can’t drive all 3 cars on a long trip, why shouldn’t one be a BEV runabout?
The problem with BEVs, at present, is both the quality of the BEV (the Zap is a bad electrical joke on wheels), the crashworthiness (the Zap will protect you about as well as a motorcycle), the fit and finish (Zap), the price you pay (isn’t a Zap more than a Yaris?), the perceived value (I’m laughing at the Zap, again) and market familiarity (the average Joe doesn’t know what Zap is – and he’s not missing much). The Zap involves a lot of compromises for what is really a fully capable car price.
A major player could probably sell an 80-100 mile BEV if it had good crash protection, decent top speed, most modern conveniences and was priced to look like a decent value for what you get (a car equipped like a Prius that feels like a Prius for about the same price as a Prius but just doesn’t have driving range of a Prius – just one compromise).
Quite a few people are still happily driving their Rav4-EVs, which had a 100 mile range on NiMH batteries. Toyota didn’t think they could sell that to too many people for $40K or more – and they were probably right. But times change, technology and batteries improve and I’d hope that someone could build something like that today for $22K or so.
I wonder what Toyota could do with the Prius as a platform for a near-term BEV. The Prius III will have a powerful enough electric motor to go 60 on electric. I would think Toyota could remove the ICE and HSD, replace them with similar weight of newer tech batteries than the Rav4-EV had and, if it gets 50 miles or more on a charge and can be done for $25K or less, float it on the market and see what happens.
“Notice the complete lack of any training in Science or Engineering. No wonder the guy doesn’t know what he is talking about half the time.”
Yes, and we all know that every GOOD exectuive in a large corporation has intimate knowledge of the – in this case literal – nuts and bolts of the operation…
Is it possible that Lutz has a bunch of really brilliant engineers (and GM has quite a few to be sure) telling him that this makes sense? He’s been right before, if a bit premature.
So GM’s 21st-century ‘Car of the Future’ has now morphed into a rethink of, well, GM’s 20th-century ‘future car’, the EV1? Maybe they’re wishing they hadn’t recalled and crushed all the originals.
GM is changing course so frequently, and drastically, that you really have to wonder if there’s anyone at the helm these days. Not only are they eating their own words on a biannual (or more frequent) basis, they’re literally having to reinvent their own wheels too.
How many of the EV1’s development staff are still on the payroll? How much of that engineering experience will The General now have to relearn from scratch because they wasted a decade scorning efficiency and alternative power sources in favor of three-ton SUV’s?
Good Job, Bob.
Not.
The funny thing is that GM has a pretty good record of producing real advances in the field (no pun intended) of electromagnetism: Magnequench magnets that made starters smaller and lighter, Magneride shocks and magnetic power steering just to name a few.
The rationale for the Volt has just evaporated:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/27/automobiles/27PLUGIN.html
A123 systems (the battery company GM is counting on to beat Toyota), has come out with a plug-in battery pack for the Prius, which will provide 35-40 miles of battery-only power, with a 3-year warranty, good for 7000 charge cycles. It costs $9,999 retail.
Let’s review:
Prius 2008 + A123 plug-in battery pack
Cost: 32k
EV-only range: 35-40 miles (city)
Availability: Now.
Chevy Volt
Cost: Somewhere between 40-48k
EV-only range: Up to 40 miles (city)
Around 32 miles (highway)
Availability: If everything goes right, 2010.
The plug-in Prius is cheaper, has the same range, and is available now.
At the end of the day the IC engine is a wonderful device that happens to run on foreign provided oil and produce politically incorrect emissions of all types, not just from the tailpipe.
So far none of these green alternatives past any economic tests, only regulations that drive up the cost of current choices can make these alternative sources of energy palatable. The result to the world ‘s economies will be catastrophic
Why is it that the domestic (GM most often) tell us about the future cars they are GOING to build?
Why not build it and then tell us about it?
First we are getting electric cars (90s) and they killed them with a crusher. Then they went on to promise us the Volt, hydrogen powered cars, fuel cell cars and so on and so forth.
Actions build credibility. All their promises and concept cars just prove what they AREN’T going to do.
Altoids, you forgot 1 thing. The prius is also made by toyota. Tips the scale even further. Well maybe the volt will be dependable. However, If the past history of GM tells us anything…
Altoids
The A123 system is NOT available at this time. But they will take your $1000 deposit for installation “some time this summer”. It will be interesting to see if this comes true.
“Yes, and we all know that every GOOD exectuive in a large corporation has intimate knowledge of the – in this case literal – nuts and bolts of the operation…”
Actually if you look at the vast majority of the growth companies of the past 20 years you will find that the answer is that yes, the CEO does have intimate knowledge of the product.
Juniper :
lprocter1982
GM won the first race of the world solar challenge with a car called Sunraycer. That car set the standard for future cars in the race.
Most of the credit should really go to Paul MacCready and his company, Aerovironment. MacCReady was also responsible in large part for EV1, the Gossamer Albatross (first human powered flight over the English Channel), and numerous other engineering marvels.