The Chevy Volt Electric Vehicle
15 Jan 07
“We couldn't afford to lose any more money on a program that appealed to
a very small number of people. As great as it was, it would go about 100
miles and take about six to eight hours to charge.”
General Motors Spokesman Dave Barthmuss on the EV-1 in The New York
Times, 29 Sep 05
Just
15 months after Mr Barthmuss explained why GM’s EV-1 electric vehicle
had no place in the company’s future, GM is back with a mass production
electric vehicle, the Chevy Volt.
Bob Lutz introducing the Volt at Detroit Auto Show, Jan 07
The Volt will be
powered by GM’s “E-flex” design, which the company plans to incorporate
not just into the Volt but also into additional models to be produced by
Saturn and GMC.
The
only problem, and it’s a significant one, is that the battery technology
is not ready yet. GM has a vehicle design but lacks the technology to
power it.
The company’s
suppliers are working on it, however. GM has contracted with a range of
smaller companies, with names like A123 Systems and Energy Conversion
Devices, to deliver a lithium ion battery that can run one of its
electric vehicles for forty miles before requiring a charge.
Back
in October 2005, Ed Tuttle predicted the rise of these kind of “plug-in”
hybrids. Ed is a Managing Principal at Analysis Group and follows the
electric vehicle industry closely. I recently asked him what he
thought of the Volt, and he noted:
“I am pretty excited about the Volt. My main reason is the architecture
-- it's a modular serial hybrid, meaning that the ICE [internal
combustion engine] can work at optimal efficiency as a generator, the
e-drive can be "pure," and the ICE unit can be replaced in later
applications with a diesel, a fuel cell or anything else that can
generate the electricity.
“E-drive with a modular generator is much more the future than parallel
hybrids where all the ICE drive apparatus (transmission, etc) is still
in place along with the e-drive. So I like the fact that GM is working
with a hybrid that feels like it has a future rather than parallel
hybrids, which just feel like the final evolution of the traditional ICE
architecture….
“My fear for GM would be that they get to market first but make some
poor specification decisions and/or fail to adapt and improve fast
enough and find that later adopters of the architecture eat their
lunch.”
Ed Tuttle email 11 Jan 07
Personally, I
would like the Volt to succeed. GM’s announcement is audacious and
points to a desire for big innovations from a company that has been
lacking them for a long time.
Still, I
wouldn’t buy GM stock on the promise of the Volt or the E-drive system.
The Volt tries to “schedule invention” by anticipating breakthroughs in
battery technology, and this is a classic pitfall in product
development. When the invention arrives, it often comes with a
different form or in a different timeframe than managers had
anticipated.
GM acknowledges
this unusual deficiency – it can’t say when the Volt will be produced,
or even give a sense of how much it will cost. The company can,
however, demonstrate its commitment to this radically new vehicle
platform. After all, it’s still the largest auto manufacturer in the
world (although it will probably lose that title to Toyota in 2007).
And this kind of
public commitment from large automakers is vital in creating widespread
acceptance of electric vehicles. As Felix Kramer, who founded the
non-profit group CalCars, told The New York Times:
``We commend GM for being the first out of the starting gate in the
great plug-in car race of 2007''
Felix Kramer in The New York Times, 7 Jan 07
More
Information:
-
This is the
third part of a series on innovation and electric vehicles.
The first part looked at lead users in California. The
second part looked at electric vehicles “crossing the chasm.”
-
Here’s a
link to a page that contains a
video of Rick Wagoner of GM introducing the Chevy Volt.
-
Recent
reporting on the Volt comes from a 7 Jan 07 story in The New York
Times. That’s available
here.
-
My December
05 update on General Motors and its brushes with innovation is
here.
-
Ed Tuttle is
a Managing Principal at Analysis Group, Inc. Their website is
here.
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