GM Pinning Its Hopes On Plug-In Hybrid

The Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in hybrid, will not arrive in showrooms until late 2010. But it is already straining under the weight of an entire company.

Executives at General Motors, the largest and apparently the most imperiled of the three American car companies, are using the Volt as the centerpiece of their case to a skeptical Congress that their business plan for a turnaround is strong, and that a federal bailout would be a good investment in G.M.'s future.

Read the whole story here.

Comments

[RRG64]

The Chevy Dolt, the latest in a line of GM failures and mismanagement.

Just say no.

[Earl]

Imagine if we had to drive back home to fill up our cars with gas. That is how everyone envisions the electric car, including the electric hybrid. We are tethered to a home charging station. What we need is BATTERY SWAPPING STATIONS every 50 miles along interstates, just a cinderblock building with electricity, charging plugs, and a clerk to run it. Consumers wouldn't have traditional ownership of their battery - it would be handled like we do with propane tanks. We have the option to fill it up ourselves if we want, but we can also exchange them. That type of system would liberate us from our home charging stations and allow us to travel anywhere we wanted in an electric vehicle. Hard-welding batteries into these cars is stupid. Disney World's Main Street buses were originally designed decades ago with swappable batteries, and it works. They developed a battery swap system for their electric buses with the criteria that an average high school student working part time at the park could swap the bus batteries in less than five minutes. Been doing it ever since. Other batteries are charging while one is being used.

[KillTheMessenger]

Just because you envision things this way does not mean everybody else does, too. There is serious research into rapid charge batteries which can be recharged in minutes instead of hours. While for automotive batteries this will require enormously powerful chargers (a 20kWh battery charged in 5 minutes requires 250-300kW of power at the "gas station"!), there is nothing inherently impossible about it. The mechanical swap of batteries is problematic because of the different requirements for different cars. There is no "one size fits it all" solution that an engineer can believe in that wouldn't be highly restrictive. Even today each car has a differently shaped and sized gas tank... and the only reason why that works is because gasoline is liquid and automatically fills the shape of the tank. With a solid battery such a scheme is out of the question.

[lovesickbilly]

A $40K car in late 2010 is too little too late. Where the hell was GM's hybrid R&D contingent when they were pounding out Hummers and Escalanches? And they expect a bailout? If we were venture capitalists and this was their meager pitch, who'd be buying?

[peaceplumber]

The most inefficient part of a car is the drive train.
If we made car that took a Q from the boat and train industry we could go far.
ie: a Subaru we 4 electric motors and diesel generator to power them. To easy

[KillTheMessenger]

Diesel electric generation is advantageous because large diesel engines can be made very efficient (ship diesels can achieve 50% thermodynamic efficiency). It is not possible to get quite such a good efficiency in much smaller engines like the ones needed in cars, but even the Prius system efficiency can reach a very good 30% under ideal load conditions. And that is probably a pretty good indicator for what is possible in the real world. If we can increase the efficiency of our cars from maybe 5-10% (for reasonably economic ICE models) to 30-35% (average), we will have more than tripled the effect we can get out of our fuels.

[mamacat]

The last time the Democrats were in control of government, they forced the automakers to make electric vehicles. As soon as the Republicans got back in power, Detroit got the EVs killed.

If Detroit had listened to the Democrats during the Clinton years, instead of working as hard as they could to undermine the Dem effort to make Detroit's cars greener, then they wouldn't find themselves in as bad a situation as they currently are, and maybe we wouldn't have to bail them out.

I know we need to save the jobs of the workers who are as much victims of Detroit's bad decisions as the taxpayers are, but I don't have to like it.

[Woggles]

It all comes from the sun in the end.

[ThinkForYourself2]

http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/

[theirforiam]

We've known about peak oil for awhile now. These guys had a taste of it during the 70's crisis, but then they let the greedy oil companies suck them into being their shills. I say let the oil companies bail them out. It's not like big oil isn't walking away from this gross negligent consumption with their pockets full, except maybe the ones who invested in the stock market.

[pokemon]

And about the car, buy a really nice bike and a trailer. I can go to the grocer about as fast as I do in a car. When the weather is nice is feels great to just bike there and back. My trailer is set up for passengers as well.

[pokemon]

I would rather the government bail out the pensions, pay for re-training of the employees and invest in local small business that hires those employees. Bailing them out is a no win situation... unless of course we require them to give the American people 75% of the stock, and all management to be fired. The employees had nothing to do with their failure. Then they could hire some Toyota trained employees and ethics and get the company back on track.

Of course then the vehicles could be sold with a subsidy to all Americans making them a cheap alternative:)

No we can no longer continue to run business as usual, we have to admit there is a paradigm shift in our lifestyle's as well as business, and to continue to keep these dinosaurs afloat because the UAW and the manufacturers themselves are out dated and incompetent means we will be dealing with this later rather then sooner (yes I have family that sleep on the line and still gets paid as it sits idle).

Until people admit this shift they will suffer and apparently the tax payers as well.

[Ozarks]

$40 k , 40 miles before recharge on $9 k of batteries that may not last more than 4 years. GM management should be canned for incompetence.

[alfrede]

Hi,

At $40,000 a copy, will this vehicle be a big seller???

[Tubalcain]

Too little, too late. The big 3 want a bailout? Ok, on the condition that they will make affordable, fully electric or hybrid cars and no more gas guzzlers.You can have an electric or hybrid SUV, trust me the tech is there. If not let Exxon Mobil ,BP,Shell bail them out. They need them more than we do.

[clsmithj]

40G

Guess if I really want this car, i will have to start saving money on the side.

[GlenRast]

Doomed for failure the Volt is far too expensive and has an extremely limited range. I don't believe the miles per charge number even includes things like running the heat or AC and headlights. While I could commute back and forth from work for a couple days I would either have to rent or own a second car to go on any kind of trip. It's worthless for the average driver. GM might as well be allow to go under now if this is what their banking their future on.

[BlackbirdHighway]

So, the fact that it also has a gasoline engine that powers it after the first 40 miles is way below your awareness? The vehicle saves gas on most short trips, but stil gives you long range, jusat like a regular gasoline powered car.

You should really understand things a little better before criticizing them. Yes, it is too expensive and they need to bring the price down, but you don't need a second car for any kind of trip.

[KillTheMessenger]

It might save a tiny amount of gas but it won't save any money. The difference between a Prius and a car that runs on water is 325 gallons of gasoline/year. The difference between the next Prius and a car that runs on air will be most likely around 275 gallons of gas. As we have more and more efficient hybrids, the savings from a plugin-hybrid or a real EV are getting smaller and smaller, meaning that the economics is more and more in favor of the hybrid and against the "more electric" vehicle. Clearly at $40,000 the Volt is not an economically viable vehicle.

[EinChicago]

GlenRast; are you functionally retarded or just pretending to be so?

The Chevy Volt has unlimited ranges, just like a Prius if it uses gasoline. The difference is average mpg is closer to 100+ as opposed to the Prius's 40 MPG or so.