Big news on the Volt front.

GM's Bob Lutz has told Edmunds.com's Michelle Krebs that on-street testing of the series hybrid powertrain for the much-anticipated Chevrolet Volt has finally begun and that the Volt team is now aiming at a November, 2010, launch for the game-changing vehicle.

Lutz also said that in the test mule – a modified Chevy Malibu – the gas-electric plug-in powertrain is hitting GM's goal of providing 40 miles of all-electric travel before the gasoline-burning internal combustion engine kicks in to do its job of generating more electricity to keep the Volt running at full power.

The Volt, first introduced as a concept at the 2007 Detroit Auto Show, will use a lithium ion battery pack to store and provide juice for the electric drive motor. The gas engine is there only to generate electricity when the initial battery charge – obtained by plugging-in to the commercial electrical grid overnight – is depleted. 

There still are challenges to overcome, many of them linked to integrating the battery and gas generator for the smoothest and most sensible operating profile.

But Lutz said that despite concerns rival Toyota Motor Corp. and others in the industry have voiced about the reliability and safety of lithium ion batteries in automotive use, GM's engineers have overcome thermal issues. Now, he said, "I can almost say that the battery is the least of our concerns."

He wouldn't tell Michelle which of the battery systems being developed for the Volt by various contractors is being used in the test mule that took to the pubic streets Tuesday around GM's Milford proving grounds.

But his assurances that most battery issues have been resolved are good news in the global hunt for alternatives to cars and trucks that require fossil fuels.

You can read her exclusive interview with Lutz, GM's vice chairman and global product guru, at Edmunds AutoObserver.

John O'Dell, Senior Editor

By John O'Dell, Senior Editor

The idea of spending less on gas seems to be driving far more people into the green car ranks than the idea that you are doing something good for the planet and those who occupy it.

We can see this pretty clearly in the astonishing growth of small car sales in the U.S. – hardly anyone was buying them a few years ago and last month they accounted for a record 22.6 percent of the new car market, according to Edmunds.com's market analysts.

Meantime, large trucks' market share plunged to just 11 percent, down from a high three years ago of 19 percent.

Small used to mean cheap. Now it means fuel efficient (although not all small cars are particularly miserly with gas). And as compacts and subcompacts continue to capture market share, look for automakers to start piling high-margin luxury goodies into their small cars as they seek ways to replace the profits they used to book from truck sales.

Hybrids Rising Too

We can also see concern about fuel prices in the steady rise of hybrid sales – they accounted for a record 3.2 percent of the market in April, with Toyota's Prius the month's 10th best-selling model of any type.

That hybrids are increasing their market penetration even though they cost more than comparably equipped conventional versions of the same models (except the Toyota Prius, which has no conventional counterpart) is testimony to people's desire to pare their fuel bills.

Just a year or so ago, the Prius was the only hybrid with a reasonable chance of providing sufficient fuel savings to pay back the so-called hybrid premium – the price a hybrid purchaser pays to get a car or SUV with two powertrains and enough complex electronics to make a NASA engineer jealous.

Continue reading...

By Dale Buss, Contributor

Prabhakar Patil is used to taking the battery and running with it.

The company he heads, Compact Power, is one of two suppliers of the lithium-ion batteries General Motors is testing to outfit its hypercritical Volt plug-in hybrid project. But the high-pressure task before him only reminds Patil of a decade ago, when he was Employee One in Ford’s crash initiative to develop the Escape Hybrid.

"At the time, I was manager of electrical and electronics for Ford production vehicles," recalls Patil.

"Alex Trotman was [Ford] CEO, and Toyota had just introduced Prius. I got my assignment in the backseat of a Prius when he and I were being driven around, and [Trotman] said, 'Develop a hybrid for Ford.'"

Patil began immediately to build his Escape Hybrid team. He had a crew of about a half-dozen within a month and the team peaked at an enterprise of about 300 people before Ford introduced the vehicle in 2004 as the first hybrid SUV on the American market.

Patil came to Compact Power, a unit of the Korean chaebol LG Group, in late 2005, again as Employee One of what promised to be an ambitious enterprise to produce a market-leading lithium-ion battery and powertrain for the burgeoning U.S. hybrid market.

Continue reading...

By John O'Dell, Senior Editor

Angela Coletti was trying to maintain a cheerful demeanor, but even over the slightly crackly On-Star connection she didn't sound quite as cheerful as usual.

I'd just called to tell her that I might have broken the very expensive Chevrolet Equinox Fuel-Cell Electric Vehicle (that's FCEV in both corporate and electric-car talk) she'd delivered into my hands a few minutes earlier at the start of what was to have been a two-day loan last week.

I really hadn't done anything terrible, I asured Coletti, one of the "driver relationship managers" for GM's Equinox FCEV program.

I just gave it a little extra gas coming around a wide corner near my home. The tires chirped for a nano-second and when i looked down at the instrument panel there it was -- a bright blue "CALL SERVICE CENTER NOW"  capped by the yellow silhouette of a car emblazoned with an open ended wrench,  just in case the other message wasn't clear.

"Does it say 'call the service center soon'?" Coletti asked in a hopeful tone.

Nope. NOW.

Continue reading...

Hybrid version of BMW's X6 will hit U.S. roads as an '09 model.

BMW says a hybrid version of its X6 "activity vehicle" will, indeed, hit the U.S. market in 2009, initially available only with the company's twin-turbo, 407-horsepower, 4.4-liter V8 coupled to the dual-mode electric drive system co-developed with General Motors and the former DaimlerChrysler.

It's the automotive equivalent of strapping a hydrogen bomb to a nuclear bomb for extra oomph.

In that configuration the hefty X6 won't be the poster child for fuel economy, but it will use less gas than the conventional model.

BMW hasn't disclosed mileage estimates for the hybrid, but says it should be about 20 percent better than the 19 mpg combined city/highway rating for the conventional version. That would put it close to 23 mpg for drivers who can keep the accelerator pedal off the floor.

Continue reading...

Chevrolet Volt Concept was big hit at its 2007 Detroit Auto Show introduction.

One way General Motors would be able to keep its promise to roll out the Chevrolet Volt extended range electric vehicle by the end of 2010 would be to roll it out in pretty small numbers.

That looks like just what the General is intending to do.

GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz says company officials are thinking of launching the car –which can also be described as a type of plug-in hybird – in just a few major markets, with the rest of the country to follow.

In an e-mail reported by the Detroit Free Press, Lutz said that present thinking has the Volt debuting in California, home of both trendy L.A. and the politically important California Air Resources Board, which is requiring automakers to build tens of thousands of plug-ins for sale in the state over the next seven years.

Washington D.C. would follow, Lutz told the paper, with subsequent Volt launches in New York, Florida and other big East Coast markets.

Continue reading...

GM engineers work on Volt's center-mounted, "T"- shaped lithium ion battery pack. Notch in middle is to accomodate a structural crossmember.

By Bill Visnic, Senior Editor, AutoObserver

Sparks flew in Detroit last week as General Motors Corp. engineers teased us with a few more details about the development progress of the high-profile Chevrolet Volt “extended-range” electric vehicle.

The major hurdle, of course, is the task of advancing the prototype lithium ion batteries to a state of production readiness that will allow the 4-seat Volt to travel up to 40 miles solely on electric power.

GM now is confident enough of its battery progress – spearheaded by competing cell suppliers A123 Systems Inc. and LG Chemical – to say that 40 miles of all-electric range is doable.

“We have left the research stage, said Frank Weber, global vehicle chief engineer, Chevrolet Volt and E-Flex systems. “We have generated the data that said, ‘Yes, this can be done.’”

Continue reading...

Fuel-cell Highlander successfully logged 2,300 miles on Alcan Highway, but  even if Toyota built retail version, there's little hydrogen fuel available.

By John O'Dell, Senior Editor

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – The conference is about early commercialization of hydrogen fueling and fuel-cell products and services, but the buzzwords still are "research" and "study," not "build" and "sell."

Granted, the National Hydrogen Association conference has just begun and there are, literally, scores of papers being delivered. Some do talk about things with real market potential – things like Plug Power's hydrogen fuel-cell electric fork lift and Air Products' on-site hydrogen fuel stations for commercial and government fleets. But most still deal with what could be, after a lot more research and development and testing gets done.

A hydrogen economy that relieves our dependency on foreign oil may be in our future, but it hasn't yet arrived.

Continue reading...

Daimler's new generation lithium-ion battery pack -- the one that will power the German automaker's upcoming 2009 Mercedes-Benz S400 mild hybrid -- apparently will be shared by development partner BMW and sold to other interested car companies as well.

The battery pack, which Daimler has described as a "breakthrough" that resolves potential overheating and durability problems that can occur with lithium-ion batteries used in automotive applications, is being supplied by German auto parts maker Continental, assembled from battery cells made by a joint venture of Wisconsin-based Johnson Controls and French battery maker Saft.

German automotive magazine Automobilwoche reports that Continental's agreement with Daimler allows it to market similar battery assemblies to other automakers. 

Continental is a potential suplier of batteries for the Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric car, scheduled to go into production by the end of 2010.

Virgin Atlantic gets three of these GM Equinox fuel cell vehicles for use at  LAX .

Virgin Atlantic Airways and General Motors announced a deal that morning that gives the British air carrier a trio of GM's fuel-cell electric Chevrolet Equnox SUVs to use for select VIP passengers for the next 30  months.

But Virgin, which has been actively pursuing ways to plant a greener footprint,  won't have fuel cell Equinoxes at its beck and call everywhere it flies, just at Los Angeles International Airport -- at least for the first phase of the program.

Continue reading...