GM to Announce Where You Can Get a Volt

GM will use the 2009 L.A. Auto Show to announce where you can buy a new Chevrolet Volt when the groundbreaking vehicle debuts next year.

GM will begin production of the Volt late next year, and it’s scheduled to go on sale by the end of 2010. The announcement of the Volt’s initial retail markets will shed light on how GM plans to introduce Americans to a new, unfamiliar transportation technology.

Dealers must be certified to sell and service the plug-in hybrid vehicles, and by no means will every Chevy dealer in the country have the Volt on their lots.

The only clue so far? Jack Maxton Chevrolet in Columbus, Ohio, is already taking deposits on the Volt, according to Maxton sales representative Mike Garvey.

LA Auto Show: GM to Announce Where Volt Will Be Sold Initially (Detroit Free Press)

Name the Color, Win a Ride in a Chevy Volt

Anyone who has been following the Chevy Volt’s progress knows the distinct grayish-green hue that has coated concept and test vehicles. Now, GM has announced a contest to give the distinct color a distinct name.

Starting today, fans can go to www.chevroletvoltage.com and submit their color name suggestions. The contest runs through Nov. 4. GM will pick three finalists, and fans can vote for the winner from Nov. 16-Dec. 1. The three finalists will be flown to Los Angeles for the announcement of the winner on the eve of the L.A. auto show.

What does the winner get? He or she will become one of the first people in the world — outside of GM — to test drive a pre-production Volt.

I recommend that you not submit your ideas because I totally want to win this (and no, I’m not telling you my color name ideas).

Why MPG May Be Outdated

With word of the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt’s claimed 230 mpg and the all-electric Nissan Leaf’s alleged 367 mpg, it’s become clear that the way we look at mileage has to change. Consumers have to be able to compare cars apples-to-apples, not apples-to-potted-plants, and what they’re most interested in is how much it will cost to drive a specific car.

Nissan Leaf Tops Volt's Mileage

Could this be the birth of a great car rivalry? Perhaps the first of the electric age?

No sooner had GM launched a marketing campaign touting the 230 mpg the Volt will supposedly get in city driving than the NissanEVs Twitter account had launched back with “Nissan Leaf = 367 mpg, not tailpipe, and no gas required. Oh yeah, and it’ll be affordable, too!”

Ouch.

Of course, both mileage claims are completely up in the air, given the EPA has not yet decided exactly how it will measure mileage for extended-range electric vehicles (like the Volt) or pure electric cars (like the Leaf) which don't even use gas.

Nissan says it used the Department of Energy formula to come up with its 367 mpg figure, but we’re still a long way away from knowing the true rating — or, for that matter, pricing information on either the Volt or Leaf.

One thing Nissan will probably not want to mention in its tweets is that as an extended-range vehicle, the Volt will be able to travel much farther thanks to its supplemental gasoline engine. The Leaf will be a limited-range city car.

(NissanEVs via AutoblogGreen)

Volt's 230 MPG Number Not EPA-Approved

As soon as GM launched its now-ubiquitous marketing campaign trumpeting the Chevy Volt’s 230 mpg city mileage, the EPA — you know, the organization that actually measures a car’s fuel economy numbers — was quick to release a statement saying the 230 mpg figure was not EPA-approved.

The EPA will not test the Volt for a while, but GM has said it stands by the methodology it used to come up with 230 mpg. Basically, the city mileage will depend on how often the driver plugs in to recharge. Some drivers may never touch the gasoline engine, while others might not get a chance to recharge at all. GM took the average of these two extremes to come up with 230 mpg.

Obviously, once the EPA decides how it will calculate figures for plug-in hybrids and electric cars, this number could change, but GM seems confident it will not disappoint customers or Volt fans by touting 230 mpg in a massive marketing campaign.

This begs the question, does GM risk a backlash if EPA findings lead to a drastically lower mileage number? What if the Volt’s city mileage turns out to be 120 mpg? This would be incredibly impressive, yet it would also leave GM with egg on its face after having hyped the higher number and sent expectations soaring.

Needless to say, we and every other car blog eagerly await the Volt’s EPA testing.

GM Reveals Future Lineup Plans

Today, GM announced it will release 25 new vehicles by the end of 2011. Included in that number are current new releases like the Chevy Equinox, Chevy Camaro and Buick LaCrosse. The usually tight-lipped automotive world is loosening at GM headquarters; they revealed that the well-received Chevy Malibu will get a refresh in 2011 for the 2012 model year. And that’s just one of the vehicles they discussed.

Chevy Says Volt to Get 230 MPG

In a bold move, Chevy claims that the 2011 Chevy Volt plug-in electric will get 230 mpg in city driving; the automaker got this fuel economy number using a newly devised EPA method. This isn’t an official number, but the company hosted a web conference this morning and boldly touted the claim. They even advertised the fuel economy number leading up to today’s announcement in anonymous ads on television. This would be the first vehicle to ever receive an EPA rating of more than 100 mpg.

The skepticism of the claim comes from a number of factors:

1. The 230-mpg rating was devised using a new EPA methodology created specifically for the Chevy Volt and other plug-in hybrids like it.The methodology itself is still not set in stone and is preliminary.
2. The Volt’s overall range will be 40 miles on an electric charge and 300 miles after that. If it packs a 10-gallon gas tank (we know it’ll be less than 12), our simple math finds that it will get 34 mpg overall. GM says it will get 40 mpg once the battery is depleted, which would mean an exceptionally small 8.5-gallon gas tank.

Here is the methodology explanation provided by GM: “Under the new methodology being developed, EPA weights plug-in electric vehicles as traveling more city miles than highway miles on only electricity.”

We’re not sure if that means they’re factoring in a nightly recharge nor do we know how many miles their new cycle includes. If it is only a 40-mile cycle, it would lead to extremely high results.

The Volt’s premise and underlying technology hasn’t changed since our last round of reporting on it. The Volt will likely be an extremely efficient vehicle, and one without the “range anxiety” of future electric-only vehicles. But to the layman, it will likely never get 230 mpg in the real world.  

More Chevy Volt News

New Plug-in Hybrid Buick Crossover Slated for 2011

Today, GM announced it would launch an all-new five-passenger Buick crossover in late 2010. The bigger news is that the crossover will get a plug-in hybrid model in 2011. The crossover itself shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s likely to be based on the popular Chevy Equinox and upcoming GMC Terrain. GM said it will feature the same fuel-efficient four-cylinder engine as those two models.

The plug-in hybrid powertrain, however, is not lifted entirely from the upcoming Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid. Instead, GM will be using its 2-Mode Hybrid system first utilized in large SUVs like the Chevy Tahoe and the never-sold-to-the-public Saturn Vue 2-Mode Hybrid.  The Buick plug-in will use two electric motors teamed to a 3.6-liter V-6; it’s flex-fuel compatible, which means it can run on E85 ethanol.

That system will be matched to an advanced battery pack that is lifted from the Volt, but the power delivery will shift from engine to motor depending on driving conditions. The Volt will utilize an electric motor to power the wheels at all times; the teamed engine will work like a generator to recharge the batteries that power the motor.

Chevy Volt Charging Port Moved

Looking at a few new images of the Chevy Volt pre-production car that were released this week, the GM Source noted that the company has moved the charging port for the electric motor from a stylized design element on the front fender (see picture below) to a covered input that looks similar to a standard gas cap.

It’s not a big deal to most, but it is one of those practical changes that will make the final Volt a little less futuristic than the concept was. We can’t see the standard gasoline cap in two released images that show the driver’s side in profile. We can only assume it’s on the passenger side’s rear fender. 

Chevy Rolls Out First Pre-Production Volts

Chevrolet has turned out the first line of pre-production Volts. The vehicles will be used as something akin to trial balloons — the final stage of testing for production and design.

For instance, some of the vehicles will be used to finalize the development of the software and controls for the interface between the driver and the vehicle. Others will be used for crash-testing, endurance-testing, battery-drivetrain interface — even windshield wiper and door function.

More than two years after GM unveiled the Volt at the 2007 Detroit auto show, and in the midst of a bankruptcy crisis, the automaker is ahead of schedule for its pre-production deadlines. It will produce 80 pre-production Volts in the next year, with the target for the vehicle’s debut still at the end of 2010.

General Motors Begins Pre-Production of the Chevy Volt (Newsmarket)