Green Design

GM’s Big Bet: the Chevy Volt

The Atlantic has a fun piece on GM's ambitious plan to bring the Volt to market by 2010. I generally don't go in for overripe tales of corporate heroism, and I definitely don't go in for economic nationalism, but hell if the story didn't make me want to hoist up an American flag and blast the Mellencamp from the transistor radio in my '68 Chevelle:

Because it will have both an electric and a gasoline motor on board, the Volt will be a hybrid. But it will be like no hybrid on the road today. Existing hybrids are gasoline-powered cars, with an electric assist to improve the gas mileage. The Volt will be an electric-powered car, with a gasoline assist to increase the battery's range.

Doesn't sound like a big deal, perhaps, but most industry watchers seem to think GM's goal simply isn't possible with today's technology. And, in fact, they're right: GM has basically placed all their chips on the table, betting that they can develop a radically new car and a radically new battery simultaneously. It's an inspired and somewhat desperate act from a company that has been better known for its missteps and setbacks in recent years.

The car will get something like 50 miles to the gallon when it uses its engine to recharge the batteries, but this stat has led to some confusion by obscuring the more important point: for most drivers, the engine will rarely kick in. The car has a range of 40 miles on batteries alone, which can be recharged from a standard outlet. Typical commuters could go their whole lives without ever filling the tank.

Others have made the mistake of unfavorably comparing the 40-mile battery-only range of the Volt with the 75+ mile range of GM's ill-fated all-electric EV-1. There are a lot of reasons this comparison doesn't hold up, but suffice to say that the EV-1, however nifty a piece of technology, simply wasn't a mass-market vehicle capable of replacing the typical sedan.

While the engineering is no doubt impressive, the most brilliant thing about the Volt seems to be the publicity campaign. By opening up their normally secretive product design process to outside scrutiny, GM has practically turned the car -- which doesn't even exist yet -- into a consumer movement. Buyers are practically willing this thing into existence. It's hard not to root for the beleaguered giant.

The author of the article thinks that GM will probably not quite succeed, but come close enough. Dates will slip a bit, prices will rise, but not so far or so high that the Volt becomes GM's latest public flop. Here's the great thing, though: it doesn't really matter if the Volt itself is the car that pushes electric drivetrains to the mainstream. The competition -- Toyota, BMW, Nissan, Tesla -- has taken notice. I'm not necessarily betting on the Volt to win, but I am willing to bet that my next car will be electric .

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(Posted by Adam Stein in Transportation at 11:11 AM)