While we are all waiting for Ed’s report on the Volt, let me waste some of your time by mentioning that GM will introduce the thing in China some time in the second half of 2011. They already concede that it will be a flop. Read More >
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Category: Hybrid
Toyota, king of the hybrids, won’t sell their first plug-in hybrid before 2012. But they already have their kind of a perception gap. The car will be able to go 23km (14.29 miles) on battery alone, then, the ICE engine will kick in and start making electricity. However, research shows that only a few people know about the electric-only feature. Or do they care at all? Read More >
Tomorrow your humble Editor boards a plane for Michigan, en route to a date with the Chevrolet Volt. TTAC has followed the Volt’s bumpy road to production-readiness since Bob Lutz decided that the Prius had to be “leapfrogged,” and we’ve tracked every change to the Volt’s mission, message and mechanical blueprint along the way. And though cars don’t exist in a vacuum, giving the Volt a fair review will require us to leave a lot of this contextual baggage at the door.
Porsche has made much of its hybrid drivetrain development efforts, pointing out that its founder helped create the world’s first hybrid drivetrain one hundred years ago. But thus far, the talk has centered on Porsche’s “rolling hybrid laboratory,” the 911 GT3R Hybrid, and the Hybrid Cayenne, with the plug-in 918 Hypercar lurking across the horizon. But, Porsche’s development chief Wolfgang Duerheimer tells Automotive News [sub]
In the future, we will have hybrid drive in every model line
First up will be a Panamera with the Cayenne’s hybrid V6 drivetrain, arriving sometime next year. Duerheimer won’t give a timeline for hybrid versions of the 911, Boxster and Cayman, but he does admit that hybrid drivetrains aren’t the only way for a sportscar firm to shave off the 41 grams of C02 per kilometer that Porsche needs gone by 2015.
Read More >
That doesn’t leave a whole lot to the imagination. The Mazda 5 is six inches longer than the Prius: check. The 5 also stands six inches taller than the Prius; does this? Toyota has said that interior room is 50% larger, so that looks about right. No word on third row seating; I’m guessing at least kiddie seats back there.
Power train? Almost undoubtedly, the bigger 2.4 L HSD version as used in the Camry hybrid and Lexus 250h. Mileage? If the first number isn’t a 4, don’t bother. I know one thing: this will sell in places like Oregon, either replacing Subaru wagons, and/or giving Prius families’ kids some growing room.
Since the recession, I’ve been paying attention to my finances. I’ve re-negotiated my mobile phone plan, changed gas and electricity suppliers and cut my pay-tv package down. I then started to look at driving costs. I re-negotiated my car insurance, but the real saving was in fuel costs. How do I cut the use of an expensive commodity? I did contemplate changing my little 6 year old Toyota Yaris for a hybrid. Whilst I was doing the math, a story was emailed to me. Read More >
TTAC’s long been used to playing the “heel” of the auto journalism world, and sure enough, our skeptical approach to the Chevy Volt is already renewing accusations that TTAC “hates GM.” For the record, this accusation doesn’t fly. We have the tendency to obsess on GM because that company’s rise and fall is the most compelling story in the automotive world. To read GM’s history is to watch a person claw their way up a cliff by his bootstraps, and upon reaching the top, spend the next several decades strangling himself with the very same bootstraps. I challenge anyone who is interested in the world of cars to look away from that.
In any case, our Volt coverage has focused thus far on dispelling myths, so in the interest of seeking the truth everywhere, I thought we should take a moment to make a few Volt myths of our own. After all, despite planning to build only “10-15k” Volts next year and 60k in 2012, Automotive News [sub] says
And even though my personal and professional obligations to the truth make me the worst marketing candidate ever, I may just have an idea of where to start…
Given the controversy of the Volt (earned or not), GM is being closely watched from all angles. Some people think that GM hasn’t changed. Others think that this may delay GM’s IPO. But, ironically what hasn’t changed, despite the witch-hunt of GM’s owners, is Toyota’s unwavering support of GM. Read More >
If the recent flap over the Volt’s drivetrain has taught us anything it’s that A) GM’s internal-combustion-assisted plug-in is more complicated than we thought, and B) GM is fine with simplifying its complex reality in order to make it appear as attractive as possible. Which is just fine: they’re the ones trying to sell a $41k car, and as such they’re entitled to do what they can to make it seem worth its many shortcomings. What the automotive media needs to take away from the brou-ha-ha isn’t necessarily that GM’s hesitance to bring forward “the whole truth” is an intrinsically big deal (let’s just say this wasn’t the first time), but rather that knowledgeable writers should focus on explaining the Volt in ways that are both comprehensible and fully accurate. In this spirit, the most important question isn’t “what should we call the Volt?” but “how efficient is the Volt in the real world?”And on this point, there’s plenty of room for some truthful clarification.
The autoblogosphere is agog at the revelation that the Volt’s gas engine occasionally powers its wheels. The GM-created “category” of Extended-Range Electric Vehicles (EREV, or E-REV) as uniquely epitomized by the Volt is suddenly revealed [by Motor Trend via GM] to
[have] more in common with a Prius (and other Toyota, Ford, or Nissan Altima hybrids) than anyone suspected.
So, why did the putative “Father of the Volt” (aka “Maximum” Bob Lutz) tell the car’s primary fan site gm-volt.com that the Volt was born because
My desire was to put an electric car concept out there to show the world that unlike the press reports that painted GM as an unfeeling uncaring squanderer of petroleum resources while wonderful Toyota was reinventing the automobile, I just wanted something on the show stand that would show that hey we’re not just thinking of a Prius hybrid here, we’re trying to get gasoline out of the equation entirely.
?
As GM finally begins to let journalists drive its Chevy Volt, the two-year-long trickle of bad news about the project is turning into a raging torrent. The latest bit of bashing: InsideLine claims that, in direct contradiction to GM’s hype, the Volt is in fact powered by its gasoline engine under certain circumstances.
At the heart of the Volt is the “Voltec” propulsion system and the heart of Voltec is the “4ET50” electric drive unit that contains a pair of electric motors and a “multi-mode transaxle with continuously variable capacity.” This is how GM describes it:
“Unlike a conventional powertrain, there are no step gears within the unit, and no direct mechanical linkage from the engine, through the drive unit to the wheels.”
The 4ET50 is, however, in fact directly bolted to the 1.4-liter, four-cylinder Ecotec internal combustion engine. When the Volt’s lithium-ion battery pack runs down, clutches in the 4ET50 engage and the Ecotec engine is lashed to the generator to produce the electric power necessary to drive the car. However under certain circumstances — speeds near or above 70 mph — in fact the engine will directly drive the front wheels in conjunction with the electric motors.
Popular Mechanics has just published the results of the first extended test of the Volt, covering 900 miles. The results are spectacularly unimpressive: Three different drivers drove the Volt on three successive days, starting with a full charge. The EV ranges were 31, 35 and 33 miles, for an average of 33 miles. Normal driving styles were employed. That’s well below GM’s endlessly proclaimed 40+ mile range, but not exactly terrible. We’ll save that word for the fuel economy numbers: Read More >
10-10-10 marks the tenth anniversary of the first Prius sold in the US. A total of 5800 of the pioneering hybrids were sold in that first year. North American sales peaked with 183.8k in 2007, and then drooped, and are pacing to 141k units in 2010.
Note how Japan’s Prius sales have boomed, surpassing NA, as a result of government incentives. What does the future hold for NA Prius sales in the next ten years?
When Honda first launched its current Insight hybrid, it was the cheapest hybrid on the Japanese market, and it quickly became the best-selling car in the country. Then everyone realized that the Prius was infinitely better for not much more cash, and the Insight dropped off. Now, Honda is trying to recapture its budget-hybrid mojo by releasing the car it probably should have made instead of the Insight: the Fit Hybrid. And they’ve priced the 1.3 liter IMA hybrid Fit at just $19,310 (1.59 million Yen), according to Automotive News [sub]. But this time, Honda’s not trying to take on the Prius directly. Says Honda CEO Takanobu Ito
They are totally different cars. Their price ranges are different and they look different. So I don’t consider the Prius as the Fit’s direct competitor. We just want many more people to own the Fit by expanding our line-up.
No word yet on possible US-market availability.
Toyota has essentially confirmed that a hybrid Yaris will be built at its Valenciennes, France plant beginning in 2012, coinciding with the next generation. Autocar, which also has a gallery of 2012 Yaris spy shots here, points out that Toyota did not name the new hybrid as a Yaris specifically, but that is the where the Yaris is made, and it fits in with with Toyota’s strategy to expand its hybrid line. In this case, it expands it downwards, in a market segment particularly important in Europe and Japan (pretty much everywhere except the US, actually). It also marks the second Toyota car for Europe to be hybridized without a unique exterior, like the Prius and LH 250 here. Toyota already sells an Auris hybrid in Europe, its Golf-fighter, along with the Prius. The big question: will the littlest hybrid find its way stateside? Read More >
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