GM-VOLT : Chevy Volt Electric Car Site

GM CEO Ed Whitacre announced that GM paid back its bankruptcy bailout loans of $5.4 billion to the US Treasury Department, and $1.1 billion to the Canadian government.  This payback is five years ahead of schedule and completes repayment of $7.8 billion in total loans. The government also paid GM $50 billion in exchange for 60% ownership stake in the company. Whitacre later stated he also believes US taxpayers will be made whole too after GM issues an IPO possibly later this year.

“I think the stock could be worth a lot and the taxpayers could get all their money, plus,” Whitacre told reporters. “I’m an optimistic guy.”

“We are encouraged that GM has repaid its debt well ahead of schedule and confident that the company is on a strong path to viability,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said in a statement.

Whitacre made the announcement at a Kansas GM plant where he also announced GM would be putting an additional $120 million investment into the Detroit-Hamtramck plant where the Volt will be built.

Ostensibly, the new money will go into expanding that plant’s production capacity so that GM could use it to build additional Chevrolet Malibus.  Though in theory, the increased production capacity could be used to build more Volts if demand is greater than predicted, or more Malibus if its less than expected.

In its current configuration the plant could build up to 60,000 Volts annually.  The Buick Lucerne and Cadillac DTS are also built there.

Buried in Whitacre’s discussion was an additional nugget.  He appeared to verified previous comments he made to GM-Volt that Volt would roll out early. He specifically stated the car will be released one month early, in October.

Though GM has yet to announce pricing or the ordering and launch process, you can bet they have big plans to announce.

“We’ll have quite a bit more to talk about later this summer,” said Volt marketing manager John Hughes.

As to whether GM will release the Volt early after all. “Will have to stay tuned,” says Hughes.

In even more good news for GM (but bad news for Japanese automakers) a new AP poll shows 38 percent of Americans think US cars are better than Asian ones and only 33 percent believe the opposite is true. In 2006, 46 percent believed Asian cars were better and only 29 percent preferred those made by US companies.

GM has announced that the Chevrolet Cruze’s introduction in North America has been delayed, moving from April of 2010 into the third quarter, namely August. In the meantime, the Cobalt will soldier on until the Cruze’s arrival.

This news is especially of interest to the Volt community, because both it and the Cruze ride on the Delta II platform, share parts and have many commonalities.

When GM first revealed the Cruze to the public, it looked to have a huge jump on the competition, boasting a bold new look and mileage per gallon numbers starting with a four…unseen anywhere else in the GM lineup.

Unfortunately, the Cruze program has been slow to reach fruition domestically, and the lead over next generation offerings such as the new Ford Focus and Honda Civic, is eroding quickly. The Cruze has been on sale in Europe for much of 2009.

The official reason for the delay was because GM wanted to “ensure a flawless launch and to go to market with full availability of high volume content,” however there was quickly speculation in the media that there was supplier issues at work behind the scenes, and maybe even difficulty sourcing the engine lineup in time for the original launch date.

If the Cruze has indeed run into complications with sourcing, it would not be unreasonable to expect the Volt could face the same challenges when attempting to get to market as expected in November of next year.

I spoke to Lesley Hettinger at Chevy Communications, who is unofficially ‘the point for all things Cruze’ at GM, and she happily put those rumors to rest and offered some good information on the program:

“There are no supplier issues. Initially we planned a pull-ahead on Cruze timing with a start of production in the second quarter of 2010 in our plant in Lordstown, OH, we have since revised our production schedule and decided not to compress the program timing to ensure a flawless launch and to go to market with full availability of high volume content. Assembly of pre-production builds will begin in the second quarter of 2010, followed by start of regular production with the full model year in third quarter of 2010.”

Closer to home, on the topic of the Volt, Rob Peterson offered the following reassurances to us here at GM-Volt, “The Volt remains on schedule for November 2010 production launch. The Cruze timing has no impact on the Volt.”

Still, given that this is the second of GM’s new cornerstone products to be delayed (Chevrolet Camaro), and with the added complexities of electric drive added into the mix, one has to wonder if a similar fate to ‘ensure a flawless launch’ might still be in store for the Volt…and that might not be a bad thing in the long run.

GM’s bankruptcy filing doesn’t spell an end to the company but actually a new beginning. The Chevy Volt remains a critical element of GM’s future and therefore the program will not be affected in any way by the filing.

Jon Lauckner is GM’s VP of product development and along with Bob Lutz, co-inventor of the Chevy Volt.

“We’re closing one chapter and opening a new chapter,” he said. “This is really a defining moment for us. Its new future for the company. It going to let us solve problems that have been with us for many many years and really its a once in a lifetime opportunity to reinvent the company for the next 100 years.”

“We in product development really need to stay focused on the future,” said Lauckner. “We are moving valuable assets into the new GM, we’re going to have a more focused product portfolio, a smaller, nimbler, faster moving company; and that’s all part of the reinvention of GM. Over the next 60 to 90 days all of that will take place and we’ll emerge a faster leaner enterprise.”

“We are still open for business,” he said.  “We are out there to make sure that we satisfy customers and that we are backing all of our vehicles with warranty coverage and that we are working on our future portfolio.”

I asked the following questions of Mr. Lauckner.

Are you confident if everything goes to plan and made lean that GM will be able to be profitable even at 10 million SAAR?
Yes, because the viability plan has GM downsized to the point where we can break even at an industry volume of 10 million units, more or less where we are running today. That means as the economy recovers in the US, and industry volumes increase, that really sets the stage for us to generate significant profitability and cash flow. When you look at how the company is going to be resized and refocused we really have a tremendous opportunity to generate the kind of profitability the old company wouldn’t have been able to generate.

How will bankruptcy and government intervention affect the Volt program or will it in any way?
It won’t in any way impact the Volt program.

Production volume plans wont be affected?
Anything material that we’ve had as the plan for the Volt will not be changed. This does not change anything that we’ve set up in terms of the Volt.

The government questioned the Volt’s profitability at one point, does the government now support it fully?
I don’t know if it makes sense for me to speak for the government. The point is that everybody understands the Volt shows the way forward. You go back to the original introduction of the car in 2007 and you look at what’s taken place since then and every one agrees that the the question of electrification of the automobile is not a question of if, it has changed to a question of when.

It makes no sense for us to take a fundamentally different approach on the Volt as compared to where we were before today.

In 5 to 10 years what percentage of GM’s total portfolio will be Voltec vehicles?
That’s almost impossible for me to forecast with any certainty. We’re out there with the Volt and we are working on other potential applications of the Voltec propulsion system, and those studies continue. We’ll just have to see how the whole story develops. Its more fundamental than talking about what the Volt is going to do by itself, but more how the whole environment develops over the next few years.

Are you hopeful Voltec could become quickly a large segment of vehilce sales?
We see it as a very key technology going forward, and while we are in  the late stages of the development of the generation one Volt, we are already looking into generation two that would have technology that might  allow us to have better performance and lower cost.

This is something that we’re going to continue to work on. We know that no doubt as good as the Volt is in employing the very latest and greatest technology that’s out there, things will move forward in the next few years and there will be future developments that we will incorporate into the next generation of the car.

What is the time line of generation 2?
It depends on what you want to characterize as generation 2. There is the car and the technology and they may not line up. We have the propulsion system and it may make sense to make some interim improvements in some of the elements of the propulsion system within a year or two after start of production. And then longer term you talk about the lifecycle of the car itself. I don’t think you can make the evolutionary improvements that may take place in the propulsion system and just roll that up to the car level.

We have to take a look at it and we haven’t got all the work done, and we know we have to make cost reductions and that will involve changes and then of course you have the next generation of the complete car that we typically have on longer lifecycles than 1 to 2 years.

Will GM leapfrog to Volt and skip the small sedan hybrid?
We haven’t excluded any sort of hybrid propulsion systems from our thinking process in terms of what we might do in the future.

What about a pure EV without the generator?
We haven’t announced anything like that.

Is the Cadillac Converj greenlighted?
No the status of the Converj hasn’t changed.

People often ask why will it take so much longer for GM to bring the Volt to market. Considering how much has been done already and the publicity from smaller carmakers, the casual observer often imagines the car should be ready sooner than November 2010.

I asked Volt chief engineer Andrew Farah why it will be another year and a half to bring the Volt to market.

“Most of it truly is the aesthetic side of it,” he said. “The mule cars aren’t pretty. We know that people want a vehicle that is distinctive.”

He admitted GM has “been working the basic powertrain and battery stuff for more than a year or two,” but added that the aesthetic features “only comes together in the final stages before you go.”

Producing a car “is a lot like fashion,” he said. “If you start too soon you’re selling something that’s already old.”

He concluded therefore “the things that are holding it up are really the typical new vehicle kinds of things,” and not in fact the high tech cutting edge battery and powertrain engineering which have so far proven very robust and successful.

In exactly thirteen days, GM will begin building the full true Volt interior and exterior integration vehicles. No major changes will likely occur between those and the final production vehicles, though Farah does note “we’ll do what we have to do to fix problems if any crop up.”

So far with the 30 or so mules he’s been working with for the past several months there were no problems that weren’t anticipated. “Nothing has come up that we haven’t had an answer for,” he said.

GM CEO Rick Wagoner spent some time with reporters today in San Francisco after giving a speech at the Commonwealth Club today.

In the not-too-distant past he had said the 2010 Volt launch was not guaranteed.

However today he said "so far we’re on schedule."

And in response to the fact that Volt battery development work was progressing well, he said "our optimism is building."

In his speech he suggested that oil prices were unlikely to retreat and admitted the recent consumer swing from SUVs to compacts cars is "rational."

Did he say $20,000 for the Volt?

Source (Reuters )

The Wall Street Journal has decided to redeem itself after the recent illogical Volt editorial , and has now published an interview with GM vice-chairman Bob Lutz.

Reporter John Stoll writes that Lutz has "growing confidence" the Volt will indeed be produced in 30 months. Lutz recognizes that the Volt is a "must-win" project for GM. He is quoted as saying, "At this point, we don’t know how important the Volt is going to be," and that one reason for the project is to "eliminate this perception of GM as the environmental antichrist."

Lutz acknowledges that producing 100,000 Volts getting more than 100 mpg each will go along way to helping GM meet future CAFE regulations and even indicates E-Flex technology could be put into a small pick-up truck should it be necessary (why wouldn’t it?)

Source (Wall Street Journal )