GM says it will start testing a fleet of self-driving Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid cars late next year at its giant technical center campus north of Detroit. It also announced two car- and ride-sharing services that it expects to generate added profits. The test Volts will be summoned by employees with a smartphone app.

 

Now that's a surprise, at least to me. $100/kWh is Gigafactory prices.

Me too. I wonder if that is pack or cell cost? Either way, that's way cheaper than I was thinking for 2018.

 

What worries me is the next line in that article has 2 incorrect "facts" in it which does not give me confidence with that $145/kwh to $100/kwh. The press release mentioned nothing about battery costs where are they getting that number?

The company also predicted a 31 percent reduction in battery costs for electric cars that could speed price reductions. Currently its battery cost per kilowatt hour is $145, but that will drop to $100 by 2018, a reduction that could make the cars more competitive with internal combustion engines.

GM now sells the Volt, which can go about 40 miles on battery power before a gasoline generator kicks in. It also has promised to roll out the Chevrolet Bolt, a $40,000 fully electric car with a 200-mile range, in late 2016.

 

Given that the authors source for reduced battery cost is not cited, this looks to me like speculation of rumor feeding off a press release that said nothing about it. I'd like to believe it, but I need to see credible sources.

 

Now that's a surprise, at least to me. $100/kWh is Gigafactory prices.

Actually this doesn't surprise me too much but the numbers seem a bit aggressive. LG Chem has at least a few global facilities that produce automotive battery cells with very high potential production capacity. In fact if I'm not mistaken I believe LG Chem already has more potential production (not yet realized) capacity than Tesla's gigafactory when it's up and running.

A nice article:
http://chargedevs.com/features/lg-c.../lg-chem-power-ceo-were-the-li-ion-leader-for-pevs-because-of-material-science/

 

I believe that they have potential to a significant number of cars, but that's with smaller capacity batteries. To put things in perspective the planned final Gigafactory capacity of 35GWh/year would be enough for 1.9M Volts/year.

 

Okay, here is a link to GM's presentation.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/Externa...net/External.File?t=1&item=VHlwZT0yfFBhcmVudElEPTUxOTQwNzR8Q2hpbGRJRD01OTYxNTU=

What it actually says (slide 52) is:

• $145/kWh at the cell level for 2016 and 2017 (still lower than I thought; I believe that's competitive with Tesla).
• $145/kWh for 2018/19 (forecast)
• $120/kWh by 2020
• $100/kWh by 2022