GM, Ford Amping Up Electric Plans

In the midst of a race toward mass-produced electric plug-in hybrids, two domestic car manufacturers have recently taken some intriguing baby steps to reach that goal.

Ford delivered the first Escape Plug-In Hybrid at the Anaheim Convention Center in California this past week. The vehicle was given to Southern California Edison during the Electric Vehicle Symposium and is intended to signify the partnership between the utility company and the carmaker. If sold en masse, electric cars could put a strain on electric grids, hence the testing by the utility company.

At the same symposium, GM announced that partners LG Chem and Compact Power had delivered a second-generation test battery for its eagerly awaited Chevy Volt. GM is also working with another partnership of suppliers, A123 Systems and Continental AG, in hopes of creating an extended-range battery that can hold up under real driving conditions while providing enough power and safety to satisfy car buyers.

GM hopes to have the Volt — capable of driving up to 40 miles on just the plug-in electric charge and 640 miles with the aid of the gasoline engine and 12-gallon tank — ready for mass production by 2010.

Ford, for its part, offered no date for when a plug-in hybrid would be available to consumers in the Escape or any other vehicle.

GM Gets Second Test Battery for its Volt (Detroit Free Press)

Comments

Wait a sec...wait a sec...

Now that I've re-read 'bou the Volt...it's not a pure electric vehicle like the Tesla at all! It's just another hybrid, and only with plug-in capabilitiy (in simple term). That's NO excitment or tech. advancement at all! Full plug-in is already available thru' special companies (for Pirius, and now Ford), and what's the point of having a 40 mi distance charge? I wonder @ what speed and condition you must be driving in order to achieve the 40 mi distance...

Finally, to achieve "640 miles [that's total, including the 40 mi electric charge] with the aid of the gasoline engine and 12-gallon tank" - you have vehicles like that today. I saw on national TV commercials that the Altima HEV can achieve 625 mi/tank of gas (but it does use a larger tank - 20 gallon). I would assume that the Civic HEV can pretty much to the same thing. Differences are - you get to set 4 people (or 5) comfortably in the Altima or Civic, they have 4 drs vs 2 for the Volt, they are available now, and most importantly, very likely to be much less in MSRP than the Volt. (Remember - the difference in filling up, assuming ~$4/gal of gas, is only 'bou $30-$35 for 8 gal...but that will give u 600 + mi on all these vehicles, so your yearly gas cost difference is like a few hundred dollars at most!). So what's the point of waiting for another 2 years (and likely to be more than 2 years, as this article has indicated "GM HOPES") when you can buy very similar vehicles at an affordable price today?

Chevy should NOT be spending all this time & $$$ on a hybrid! They should have stuck with an all electric vehicle. It's very likely that by early 201X Toyota/Honda/Nissan will have some type of long range electric vehicle available to the general public (they are actually available now, but in Japan only, and not suited for Americans driving style due to the low hp/speed/sm size).

"Amping" up. I get it.

It's true that there are already companies converting some hybrids to plug-in HEVs, but there are also companies converting ordinary ICE cars to battery electrics. Neither has been done by a major manufacturer yet because they're expensive and very hard on the batteries.

That 640 mile range is with only one initial full charge. If you were to charge the car every night the fuel savings would be significant - however not necessarily enough to offset the higher cost of the car compared to similar models.

Lil'Tom, my point is that, with GM resources, it is wasting all of them on what we Engineers call "reinventing the wheels." Yes, the smaller companies may not be able to make plug-in profitable or affordable...yet, but the technology's there already. All it needs is licensing and more resources from the licensing fees ($$$) to further develop the technology. Why spend resources on re-inventing technology that will allows you to go 640 mi on 1 tank of gas with full plug-in charge, when current technology can give you 625 mi/tank of gas/reg HEV, or 100+ mi/gal/charge (plug-in) already?

What GM should really do is to work with companies like LG, Sony, etc, with partnership from Toyota on Nissan, on batteries development. Current Li-on (commercial term for lithium ion) batteries are good, but long charging time is still a very important issue. My feeling is that GM has, again, take the easy way out just to make more $$$ (which is fine, as it's a corp), rather than delivering the earlier "concept" that they have intended to...

I think the purpose of the vehicle is being missed. The volt's 40 mile range is designed for commuting and local driving. The average commuter does not wake up, shower, eat breakfast and then drive 640 miles. 40 miles is sufficient for something like 85% of all daily trips. The purpose of the vehicle is to eliminate the need for using gas on those trips.

This is but a step toward the right direction of decreasing the need for fossil fuels.

I think Mikey is exactly right. Why is range such a big deal? A diesel powered heavy-duty pickup can go nearly 640 miles between fills up due to an enormous tank (or two), range doesn't mean much. Those 100 mpg figures touted by people who convert hybrids to plug-in hybrids are only achieved by ignoring the electrical energy spent. GM did that in their original publicity blitz when they said the Volt gets 150 mpg.

Who says: "electric cars could put a strain on electric grids?"

Earlier this year, the US Department of Energy reported that if 75% of our current autos were electric and recharged at home overnight, we would not need to build one more power plant.

This is a really old post but im replying anyway just to get this point out there. In california rolling blackouts happen nearly every summer due to the electric grid not being able to handle the power consumed by peoples AC units... imagine if everyone went home and plugged there car in at 5pm everyday. The power grid absouletly cound not handle that it would be a nightmare. The US powergrids are actually in a sad state due mainly to deregulation.

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