# The GM Volt - back with a vengence in 2010



## Coley (Jul 26, 2007)

What a deal!!

They crush a perfectly good "All Electric" car, but now are going to "WOW" us with a car that just happens to go less distance and has an ICE, so they can still get the replacment parts business.

What a Deal!!.....


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## favguy (May 2, 2008)

Should be scope to re-engineer a bit though, maybe double up on the battery pack to give it a more sensible range Just goes to show though that even running on petrol generating the electricity it gets 150mpg, they've all known this for years, yet still sold us the uneconomical alternative...


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## kcblkeeley (May 8, 2008)

We all know that it is in their interest to perpetuate the need for oil until the last drop is gone.They have their fingers in every pie having to do with ice, batteries, engines and alternative fuels which is why we are taking on this problem ourselves. I would love to be able to boycott one oil company at a time just to let them build up stockpiles at their expense.


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## michaeljayclark (Apr 3, 2008)

can't wait to hear their first excuse at why they cannot meet the deadline. I would love to be wrong but GM has a bad track record here. Even if they start making them lets see at what price they sell them for and how long before they come up with a not enough demand excuse.

Dont stop the home conversion or the small conversion shops. The grassroots movement for the EV may push GM not to use EV1 tactics again to shut it down. The battle to get an american company to make an EV is won but the WAR to keep it going is not over.


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## favguy (May 2, 2008)

It wouldn't surprise me in the least, after all it's finished now and they're not launching it until 2010!, why the 2 year wait? I wonder if you'll be able to buy it or lease only.....hmm


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## saab96 (Mar 19, 2008)

favguy said:


> it's finished now and they're not launching it until 2010!, why the 2 year wait?


What makes you think it's finished? It's not even close to finished yet.


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## michaeljayclark (Apr 3, 2008)

the test mule is doing the track. I just read the car will only go 40 miles on a charge with lithium batteries then go to gas. 

Must have a small battery pack. I can see DIYers increasing the battery pack size and the range unless GM makes a way for the system to ignore anything but the batteries they make.

40 miles is a far cry from the EV1s 120 mile range.... what did they do with the EV1s design, just throw away all the molds, blueprints, etc?

so I see an even bigger goof by GM. they had an electric car already in production, stop production and waste all that money. now they spend 500 million to develop a car that they ALREADY designed? and the new electric car is NOWHERE near the same car they made 10 years ago!!!!! I thought technology was supposed to increase over time, not go backwards....


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## fshagan (Jun 4, 2008)

The EV1 "Gen One" got only about 75 miles per charge, and the "Gen Two" up to 150. Recharge took about 8 hours, but you could drive with a partial recharge (with less range).

I wouldn't want to see the EV1 "technology" in a modern car; it was a starting point, and the problems with battery overheating (Wikipedia says they had 16 "thermal incidents" and at least one fire out of the 660 Gen One models, a pretty high percentage). Had they continued development, they would have been farther ahead, but the engineering challenges are pretty daunting.


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## Manntis (May 22, 2008)

fshagan said:


> The EV1 "Gen One" got only about 75 miles per charge, and the "Gen Two" up to 150. Recharge took about 8 hours, but you could drive with a partial recharge (with less range).
> 
> I wouldn't want to see the EV1 "technology" in a modern car; it was a starting point, and the problems with battery overheating (Wikipedia says they had 16 "thermal incidents" and at least one fire out of the 660 Gen One models, a pretty high percentage). Had they continued development, they would have been farther ahead, but the engineering challenges are pretty daunting.


In the US, there's a car fire every 96 seconds, on average; that's taken from annual numbers of car fires over a multi-year period, as rates can change drastically year to year. 

In small samples, ratios are less valid. If you had 2 prototypes and 1 malfunctioned, some would say "1 out of every 2 failed!" - which would be accurate if it were, say, 500 out of 1,000. But one defective unit is one defective unit, and in small samples it can skew the stats. 1 in 660 catching fire is still a small sampling, and at the end of the day it is still 1 defective unit.
_
"There are three types of lies - lies, damn lies, and statistics."_


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## fshagan (Jun 4, 2008)

Manntis said:


> In the US, there's a car fire every 96 seconds, on average; that's taken from annual numbers of car fires over a multi-year period, as rates can change drastically year to year.
> 
> In small samples, ratios are less valid. If you had 2 prototypes and 1 malfunctioned, some would say "1 out of every 2 failed!" - which would be accurate if it were, say, 500 out of 1,000. But one defective unit is one defective unit, and in small samples it can skew the stats. 1 in 660 catching fire is still a small sampling, and at the end of the day it is still 1 defective unit.
> _
> "There are three types of lies - lies, damn lies, and statistics."_


It is a small sample, but it was a sufficient enough issue for GM to recall the Gen One for repairs, and I think they were trying to retrofit them to replace the lead acid batteries when lease renewals came up. I don't think they had the battery overheating problem with the nickel-metal batteries, but didn't they also have to introduce a cooling system for the battery pack? 

Its an oversimplification to say that the EV1 was perfectly acceptable to the marketplace as an electric car, and if they brought it back that it would be a resounding success. There were still technical issues they had not solved, although they would probably have been solved by now had development continued. 

GM is playing catch-up now with the Volt, but there's always a trade off between existing battery technology and the weight extra batteries provide when trying to increase range.


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## michaeljayclark (Apr 3, 2008)

the fact they didnt simply restart the ev1 project to iron out the details goes to show that GM refuses to make a pure electric car with 100 mile range. They want a car that meets the industries planned obsolescence and constant need of parts and service that make the industry more money.

I am for a company making profit from something they make but dont design the product to break so to secure sales of new ones.

Its funny how people can make electric cars with 100 mile range in home garages but GM cant do it with their vast resources.

here a play on statistics:

And here's the big finish: When you pair the two-mode technology with our Active Fuel Management™ system, the Tahoe Hybrid offers up to 50% better city fuel economy over the non-hybrid Tahoe.(4) That's one hardworking hybrid.

21 MPG.. OHHH WOW! what a HUGE improvement!


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## Coley (Jul 26, 2007)

Quote:
"I am for a company making profit from something they make but dont design the product to break so to secure sales of new ones."

When I worked as Chevy Dealer mechanic, in the 1960s, we had new cars come in with rear end leaks, transmission leaks and olther seals that would go out in disproportionate (SP) numbers, after a few hundred miles.

Seals from a different area of the car in different waves.

When I asked about it at the GM Training Center in Milwaukee, I was told that suppliers to GM, had to put a part of their income into escrow accounts, that would cover faulty parts like seals, for example.

After a while the fund had too much money in it, that could only be used for warranty. The seal maker would then send a batch of slightly faulty seals out to GM.

Soon we would see a series of new cars, come in, that needed warranty work to replace them.

Gm got the money, we got paid to change the parts and the supplier sold GM more good seals...


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## fshagan (Jun 4, 2008)

Coley said:


> Quote:
> "I am for a company making profit from something they make but dont design the product to break so to secure sales of new ones."
> 
> When I worked as Chevy Dealer mechanic, in the 1960s, we had new cars come in with rear end leaks, transmission leaks and olther seals that would go out in disproportionate (SP) numbers, after a few hundred miles.
> ...


I don't doubt you heard this story, but it doesn't ring true. Unclaimed reserves are simply recalculated and the company profits far more by doing a few journal entries than by having warranty claims. 

Companies do not build in obsolescence (at least not in the way people think). There is no grand conspiracy keeping electric cars off the road, or keeping the mechanics employed, or secret chips that cause a car to have mechanical problems after the warranty is expired. Its nice to think that everything is ordered by some grand scheme, but in reality, "stuff just happens".


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## favguy (May 2, 2008)

I would tend to agree with the above sentiment, but add that the reason we often get more early failure on components in the motor industry than we should is that the accountants rather than engineers have the final say on matters as profit is king, so any given component is engineered just well enough to do its job, only just well enough plus a tiny margin beyond expected tolerance in use. 

A good example in the UK is Ford engines, it is often popular to convert ICE cars to LPG (Propane) here in the UK as it's 1/2 the price of Gas, most cars will run fine on this with the very slight differences in engine running temperature and no liquid fuel lubrication effect on the engine valves & seats, but do this on any Ford engine without additional lubricating oil dripped in along with the LPG mix and in short order the engine valves and seats are scrap metal!


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## saab96 (Mar 19, 2008)

michaeljayclark said:


> GM refuses to make a pure electric car with 100 mile range.


But by 2010 others will. Buy one of those if you don't want the Volt. I'm sure many people will be happy to just stick to driving 40 miles or less (as in the case of most lead acid conversions) and rarely fire up the ICE, hence no maintenance to speak of.


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