34
DETROIT — It was a jarring sight for those who have followed the auto industry over the last decade.
At the crowning moment of an hour-long tribute to the "bigness" of General Motors Corp. — with live video feeds from around the world spouting congratulations on GM's 100th birthday — vice-chairman Bob Lutz drove a four-door hatchback version of the Chevrolet Volt onto a runway stage much like the ones used by fashion models.
This is what the production version of the Volt will look like in two years, when this plug-in hybrid goes on sale, though GM officials insist the term "hybrid" is a misnomer. The Volt, they say, is an electric car with a range-extending gasoline motor on board — just in case you run out of juice beyond the projected 65-kilometre battery range.
Most owners will never need the gasoline engine, they say. They'll plug in at night to recharge using a regular 120-volt socket for an eight-hour charge. (If you're in a hurry, a 240-volt outlet can charge the batteries in three hours.) From a dollars-and-cents perspective, going electric will cut driving costs from about 12 cents a mile to about two cents — that is, if gas prices in the United States remain at $3.60 a gallon and electricity rates don't rise.
The production version of General Motors' Chevrolet Volt is unveiled in Detroit, Michigan, September 16, 2008. (Steve Fecht/General Motors)
Related Articles
Photogallery
What was so jarring, then, was to see GM essentially bet its future, publicly, on a battery-powered car that is unproven in almost every possible way and completely at odds with the company's 100-year-old culture.
GM faces numerous hurdles in its race to get the Volt into showrooms, but perfecting the lithium-ion battery pack is the biggest one by far. The battery pack will hit the marketplace with a 10-year warranty, even though GM engineers and their suppliers will have done less than three years of testing.
"If we're going to warranty a battery for 10 years, we'd like 10 years of testing, ideally," says Tony Posawatz, the vehicle line executive who is directly responsible for getting the Volt on the road.
So GM has found "green" religion and it is, excuse the pun, shocking. Just a few years ago, GM executives dismissed hybrid technology as a fad. Electric cars? Ridiculous.
Using their best MBA-speak, they would point to the high cost of the technology and the cheap price of gasoline as factors that undermined the "business case" for vehicles such as the Toyota Prius hybrid. Why focus on fuel efficiency when Americans were snapping up SUVs and pickups as fast as GM could make them?
How odd it is to be here in 2008 and witness the largest of the three Detroit auto makers putting all its credibility eggs in the electrification basket.
"The electrification of the automobile is absolutely a foregone conclusion," says Lutz, a relatively recent green convert who heads all product development at GM. "The debate has shifted from 'if this would happen' to 'when.'"
GM is counting on the Volt to restore its tarnished reputation for technology leadership. While initial sales are expected to be only about 10,000 cars a year, with prices somewhere between $30,000 and $40,000, the Volt is being counted on to cast a broad halo over all of GM's new models.
Even as work on the Volt proceeds, GM is busy launching a barrage of revised or completely new passenger cars, hybrids and so-called crossover vehicles that often achieve better fuel economy than trucks and SUVs. The company is also pushing hard for ethanol as a fuel of the future that can dramatically reduce the U.S. dependence on fossil fuel.
But it is the Volt that is expected to supercharge GM's shift from dinosaur-like maker of gas-guzzling SUVs to steward of a future of eco-friendly driving. If the plan works, the Volt will bring in a generation of buyers who will see the "new" GM as an industry-leader selling high-tech cars that are friendly to the environment.
That's the plan, at least — the Volt as rolling metaphor for GM in the 21st century.
How it started
