Chevy Volt – Peter Fairley

GM’s Feisty and Embarrassing Vice Chairman

“Once again, Bob won’t get the job.” That was the definitive prediction this weekend by Automotive News, the industry’s journal of record, on GM vice chairman Robert Lutz’s chances of being named CEO [link may require subscription]. Yesterday they were proven right when GM’s acting CEO, GM chairman Ed Whitacre, announced that he would continue permanently in the position. What they got wrong, however, was why Lutz was unfit for the top job.

Automotive News let Lutz speak for himself, arguing that at 78 years old he was too “geriatric” for an ailing automaker in need of rejuvenation. That logic flies in the face of Whitacre’s logic that what GM needs most, after ousting two CEOs in 2009, is stability. After all, Lutz has served in top product development and marketing roles for GM since 2001, and previously held top jobs at Chrysler and Ford.

What makes Lutz the wrong man at the wrong time is that he rejects the intensifying concerns for sustainability that now drive automotive markets and innovation worldwide. At the Detroit Auto Show last week Lutz held forth on climate science with the Sydney Morning Herald, explaining that Earth is being cooled by a dearth of solar flares rather than warmed by greenhouse gases from cars and other fossil fuel-burners:

“All I ever say is look at the data, look at the empirical evidence…Katrina was six years ago and we have yet to have the next hurricane.” Continue reading “GM’s Feisty and Embarrassing Vice Chairman”

January 26, 2010January 26, 2010 by pfairley

EV Hold-out Mazda Changes Its Tune

Mazda Motor is shifting direction to make its own hybrid and battery-electric vehicles, according to a report today in Automotive News (may require subscription). The move, if confirmed, would mark a rapid retreat from the ‘trend-bucking’ EV skepticism that has been a staple of Mazda’s message.

Mazda R&D chief Seita affirmed late last month that Mazda would achieve mandated fuel economy savings by improving engines and transmissions, and by redesigning vehicles to reduce their weight. The Detroit News quoted president and CEO Takashi Yamanouchi echoing that sentiment at last week’s New York International Auto Show, promising release of a brand new engine next year.

However, Seita had also admitted that Mazda lacked the cash to finance development of its own EV powertrains. And this weekend’s Automotive News report directly contrasts the old strategy, quoting Yamanouchi as saying that hybrids and battery-powered electric vehicles developed in-house will contribute to its plan in order to “boost the average fuel economy of its cars globally 30 percent by 2015.”

Continue reading “EV Hold-out Mazda Changes Its Tune”

April 13, 2009April 13, 2009 by pfairley

Lutz Departure Another Modest Sign of Modernization

Many in the green car movement are cheering the announcement that Bob Lutz, GM’s vice chairman, will retire at the end of 2009. Environmental Defense Fund automotive guru John DeCicco celebrates the news on HybridCars.com today, calling Lutz part of a “cohort of corporate leaders who rose to the top eerily disconnected from the parallel rise of environmental values in American culture.” But a speech last week by Hyundai North America’s CEO — billed as a wake-up call by the Detroit News — reinforces the impression that changing the industry’s environmental perspective will require a much broader shift in personnel.

Lutz earned the ire of the environmentally-inclined for two reasons. As product development chief he contributed to GM’s reliance on ever larger and less fuel-efficient SUVs trucks. And he made headlines with his contempt for the theory of climate change. Dallas-based D Magazine quoted a private conversation with journalists just one year ago in which Lutz called global warming a, “total crock of ****.”

Lutz added, according to D, that, “my opinion doesn’t matter.” But how could that be, with GM gearing up to woo environmentally-minded consumers with advanced vehicles such as the plug-in hybrid Chevy Volt? Such comments reverberate louder still within the industry, signaling to junior engineers that an environment-be-damned ethic endures in Detroit’s board rooms.

Continue reading “Lutz Departure Another Modest Sign of Modernization”

February 17, 2009April 3, 2009 by pfairley

China’s Green Plug-In Machine

While major automakers such as GM and Toyota prepare to put batteries front and center in their first plug-in hybrid vehicles, a Chinese battery maker has beaten them to the road. As of yesterday, Shenzen-based BYD Auto — a subsidiary of leading Chinese rechargeable battery producer BYD Group — is selling the world’s first mass-produced plug-in hybrid car, according to Bloomberg. This battery-loaded version of BYD’s F3 sedan is said to travel up to 100 kilometers (62 miles) on stored grid power alone.

Many observers deride the car’s styling as plain and derivative. BBC global business correspondent Peter Day, who drove BYD’s plug-in this weekend, says they’re missing the point: “Critics say this is a copycat car, but that is how the Japanese auto industry started.”

Green Car Congress reports that the plug-in is dubbed the F3DM after its ‘dual-mode’ hybrid system. Misleadingly dubbed, that is, because the vehicle actually operates in three distinct modes:

a battery-powered EV mode
a series-hybrid mode whereby the gas engine recharges the batteries while the electric motors drive the wheels, and
a parallel-hybrid mode whereby both motors and engine drive the wheels.

This marks a contrast with GM’s Chevy Volt, due out two years from now, which dispatches with the parallel hybrid option.

BYD Auto’s parent company is making lithium batteries for the car using employ lithium iron phophate cathodes — a safer design than the lithium cobalt oxide cathodes used in cell phone batteries. Boston-area battery developer A123 uses the same chemistry; A123 is believed to have lost out in the competition to supply the first-generation Chevy Volt but is in the running for many other hybrids and electric vehicles in development.

BYD says it will bring the F3DM to the U.S. market in 2011, but must first pass U.S. crash tests and set up a dealer network. It has a well-connected U.S. investor to help navigate the U.S. hurdles: billionaire investor Warren Buffet, whose Berkshire Hathaway investment group bought a one-tenth stake in BYD for $230 million in September.

China beats the U.S. and Europe to market with what was supposed to be GM’s signature development. The headline reinforces a growing sense that China is suddenly a green technology developer to be reckoned with. A top wind power market. Major photovoltaics production. It looks like the Cleantech Group may have got it right earlier this month when, summing up its forum in Shanghai, it concluded that China could soon be, “the world’s leading laboratory, market for and exporter of clean technologies.”

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This post was created for the Technology Review guest blog: Insights, opinions and analysis of the latest in emerging technologies

December 16, 2008December 16, 2008 by pfairley

Peak Lithium: EVs’ Dirty Little Secret?

Electric vehicles web-journal EV World has done the English-speaking world a favor by translating an excellent Peak Lithium story written last week by Le Monde journalist Hervé Kempf. What is Peak Lithium you ask? The notion that a wholesale shift to EVs powered by lithium batteries in response to peaking petroleum production could just as quickly exhaust the global supply of lithium metal.

Kempf credits a May 2008 study by consultancy Meridian International Research — The Trouble with Lithium 2 — as the source of growing concern over peak lithium; the study concluded that reasonable increases in lithium production over the next decade will generate enough of the light, energetic metal to produce batteries for only 8 million batteries of the sort that GM plans to use in its Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid.

But he does his own homework, providing an accessible introduction to the geological distribution of lithium and its likely magnitude. I say ‘likely’ because Kempf shows that industrial secrecy makes it difficult to assess the probability of a peak lithium scenario prematurely squelching the electrification of the automobile.

As George Pichon, CEO of French metals trader Marsmétal puts it in Kempf’s piece, the world of a lithium metal is “un monde fermé.”

Alas, it’s just a little less closed today thanks to Le Monde and EV World.

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This post was created for Tech Talk – Insights into tomorrow’s technology from the editors of IEEE Spectrum.

October 14, 2008December 6, 2008 by pfairley

Déjà? Are Hybrids Already Passé?

Plugs are definitely vogue at this week’s Mondial de l’Automobile in Paris. So where does the hybrid vehicle fit into the picture? It may not, according to Renault. The French carmaker says that electric vehicles, not hybrids, are needed to deliver the emissions reductions that governments and customers demand.

Renault says that it is engineering a pair of battery-powered electric vehicles (EVs), to be produced starting in 2011. As I report for MIT Technology Review today, Renault claims these EVs will be cheaper to build, cost markedly less to power, and produce far less carbon dioxide. Today they unveiled a partnership with utility géant Electricité de France to “establish electric cars as a viable and
attractive transport solution for consumers.”

And Renault is not the only major automaker planning to produce commuter-oriented EVs. Mitsubishi Motors and Daimler both announced plans in Paris last week to accelerate commercialization of small EVs — Mitsubishi with its i-MiEV minicar and Daimler with a battery version of its popular Smart Fortwo. Volkswagen’s promo materials in Paris confirmed it would join the EV club, producing a tiny commuter EV called the Up! in 2010 with a top speed of 130 kilometers/hour and roughly 100 kms of range.

Ok you say. EV’s are à la mode. But what of the hybrid option? The question is partly semantic. Hybrid technology is everywhere if you count the mild hybrids, which employ a small but potent electric battery to save gas by rebooting the combustion engine on a green light instead of idling through the red; some can also recuperate energy during breaking by recharging their battery. This technology is going mainstream: Renault competitor PSA Peugeot Citroën said it alone will install 1 million stop-start systems by 2011. VW spokesperson Martin Hube said his company viewed stop-start as just an evolution of internal combustion drive. “You can call it a mild hybrid but it’s just a smart technique,” says Hube. “That’s nothing new.”

No automaker questions whether full hybrids like the Prius or GM’s plug-in Chevy Volt that can drive on either electricity or gasoline are something new. But while several showed full hybrid concept cars in Paris, fewer talked up plans to build one. Perhaps they’ve made the same calculation as Renault: it’s not worth the trouble to cram high-energy motors, batteries and an engine into a vehicle when one can go straight to the full EV instead.

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This post was created for Tech Talk – Insights into tomorrow’s technology from the editors of IEEE Spectrum.

October 9, 2008October 9, 2008 by pfairley

Hub Motors: When EVs Smash Open Auto Design

Chrysler leapt back into relevance this week announcing no less than four EVs in development — at least one of which it promises to sell in 2010. Most intriguing for this fan of EV technology is its claim to be experimenting with permanent magnet in-wheel motors for an plug-in hybrid version of the Jeep Wrangler. That step would be an exciting leap in auto design where the electric drivetrain frees the automobile from its heavy and design-constraining mechanical transmission and driveshafts.

For a sense of the hub motor’s potential design impact, consider the experimental Reconnaissance Surveillance Targeting Vehicle that General Dynamics built for the U.S. Marine Corps. The “Shadow” is “a four-ton armored truck that has the payload of a Humvee and yet is svelte enough to deploy from a tactical aircraft.” The Shadow used a series hybrid design in which the engine serves only to keep the lithium battery charged in extended range use–much like GM’s vaunted Chevy Volt.

Unlike the Volt it transmits power to the wheels via power cables, rather than using its stored electricity to drive a central motor and mechanically distributing it to the wheels. The result is unprecedented traction thanks to the direct control of each wheel by its hub motor and the wheels’ freedom to range up and down almost half a meter.

Then there’s the Shadow’s metamorphosis when it rolls out of a V-22 vertical take-off tactical plane. Sizing for the V-22’s cargo hold constrained the Shadow’s chassis to just 150 cm side to side — way narrower than the 215-cm-wide Humvee. How to ensure stability in operation at that width? Upon exiting from the V-22 the Shadow extends its wheels sideways 20 cm beyond the chassis, achieving a total wheelbase of 190 cm. The key is a folding pneumatic suspension, something that’s all but impossible with a mechanically-driven wheel.

The Shadow was General Dynamics’ 2004 bid for what has since become the joint U.S. Army – Marine Corps Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program. Development contracts for the vehicles are expected to be announced next month.

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This post was created for Tech Talk – Insights into tomorrow’s technology from the editors of IEEE Spectrum.

September 25, 2008September 26, 2008 by pfairley