General Motors forms team for hybrids and Electric vehicles!

General Motors forms team for hybrids and Electric vehicles!

www.reuters.com

DETROIT (Reuters) - General Motors Corp (GM.N: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Thursday it formed a new organization to speed up the implementation of advanced battery technology for hybrid and electric vehicles.

The world's largest automaker, which plans to produce the Chevrolet Volt plug-in car by the end of 2010, said the global team will be based in Warren and Milford, Michigan, Mainz- Kastel, Germany and Shanghai, China.

The team will be working on the Saturn Vue plug-in hybrid, which GM has said could precede the Volt as the first commercially-available electric vehicle. The team will also work on the Volt once the vehicle is ready for production.

Unlike earlier gasoline-electric hybrids, which run on a system that twins battery power and a combustion engine, plug- ins are designed for short trips powered entirely by an electric motor and a battery charged through a socket at home.

As the race to bring a mass-market, rechargeable electric vehicle to the market heats up, GM is hoping to be the first to mass production and snatch the lead on environmental technology from Japanese rival Toyota Motor Corp (7203.T: Quote, Profile, Research).

The Volt, designed to run for 40 miles on electricity alone, would be outfitted with new lithium-ion battery packs, which are more powerful than the nickel-metal hydride batteries now used in many hybrid cars.

The Vue would run about 10 miles on electricity. GM is working on battery technology for the Vue as well, hoping to produce it in 2010.

Automakers say lithium-ion technology remains the biggest challenge in producing a plug-in as they try to lower the cost of the batteries and boost their power and storage capacity.

(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 24-1-2008 by DimensionalDetective]

[edit on 24-1-2008 by DimensionalDetective]

Maybe, just maybe, are we starting to see a shift in our auto industry? Perhaps if enough of our auto makers get into this, COMPETITION and mass production will take our travel means in a new and affordable DIRECTION!

Now, if we can just get a vehicle that can hold a charge for 500 to thousand miles or more, we will be set.

www.reuters.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 24-1-2008 by DimensionalDetective]

Somehow this feels like deja vu all over again.

IIRC, about a decade a go GM had brought its first electric and hybrid cars to test markets with great slapping of its own back, only to ditch them and churn out SUVs and monster pick-ups, surprise surprise.

I will believe it when I see GM electrics on the lots, not until.

i was under the impression that they weren't able to make it work the way they wanted so they never mass produced. good to see they might have finally figured it out.

reply to post by gottago



Haha, good point!

Only I don't know if they have the option of doing business as usual anymore, as people are no longer having the freedom financially to purchase the 6 mile-per-gallon behemoths anymore with the rape-prices of fuel...

Only under massive pressure from more and more independent e-car producers who´s existence they cannot suppress and cover-up anymore are they considering to finally go ahead and produce their own line of e-cars.

They better do better than that or they will continue on their decline, until they get bought up for pennies on the dollar. People are more technically knowledgeable because of the Internet these days, and gone are the days when automakers cans seal (hide) a 3 dollar eprom chip in a block of plastic and call it a computer so they can sell it as a $300 upgrade to your vehicle or continue to give us 15 miles per gallon vehicles when we are aware of technology that is 10 times more efficient.

There's smaller unknown companies that will be producing electric cars that carry a small generator & recharge themselves while on the road. If the generators recharge the batteries while in transport they can get 100-300 miles per gallon. I saw one that even had solar panels to augment the power items on the vehicle. Even with a small generator and a less expensive lower tech setup that can't be driven while charging or just a plug in you might have to stop at a rest stop & take a break now & then. This is not ground breaking technology this is simple logic using today's off the shelf tech.

Electric cars equipped with enhanced batteries, generators & solar panels to extend their range will be the norm in 25 years.

If GM and other big auto manufactures continue to support the greedy evil oil companies by using their market power to keep energy saving transport off the market they will continue to wither a slow death until one day it will be too late for them to make changes and new auto companies will be born out of their destruction.

The governments are just as dirty of keeping things the same as they enjoy higher tax revenues when we drive gas hogs and are now already complaining because their tax revenues are declining, because we're using less gas due to high gas prices. When will they get it - you can only bleed us for so much, until we say enough is enough. Duh!

Overtaxed & under represented. Comfortably dumb, but not completely stupid.







[edit on 24-1-2008 by verylowfrequency]

For what it's worth, I have spoken with 2 oldtimer GM Design staff people who said they had prototype electric cars that actually got good range and speed way back in the late 50's or 60's ( i don't recall, they mentioned Harley Earl so it would have to be late 50's). They were scrapped for lack of market. I have had no reason to doubt their stories as I have known these gentleman for over 35 years. The cars were stored at the GM Tech Center with other prototypes that got impressive mileage for their Day. Again I have no way of verifying their stories save for the fact that they each told me the stories separately without being asked about them specifically. They were not men to embellish stories.

The main reasons for those cars not seeing market were consumer driven. The good mileage cars were small and in those days that didn't fly (sound familiar?). The electric cars were deemed not feasible as you you would have had to create a whole system of charging stations and gas was too cheap to even think of that.

reply to post by pavil


Market driven or profit driven. Like many big company's that find themselves obsolete because they were looking for immediate profits instead of future prosperity.

While it's true it would have been more difficult then. That time is over it's the past. They have all the people, the distribution channels & manufacturing facilities to run the show if they choose the right path and pick up the ball.

Either they pick up the ball or we'll see dozens of ma & pa companies making everything from electric bicycles to enhanced golf cart like vehicles stamped out by the hundreds per day in Chinese factories being sold by Walmart.

The Japanese automakers did it to them after the 70's oil crunch & the Chinese & others will do it to them again for good if they don't get off the pot sooner this time.

I lived in this town 26 years ago - Even at that time they only had electric vehicles & horse driven carriages because they would not allow combustible engines to operate in order to keep out air & noise pollution.



I can remember as soon I would leave that town & go to another the first thing I would notice is a taste of oil in the air - I could even feel it's texture on my tongue. Everything everywhere else seemed to be dirtier not just the air. Even my complexion changed from rough & bumpy acne covered to as smooth as a baby's bottom after only the first two months of living in that town.

Electric cars are a good thing for allot of reasons that are not immediately obvious to all.

How quickly we could begin to heal the earth and ourselves by making the air almost as beautiful as Zermatt by reducing the amount of combustible engines from our environment.



[edit on 24-1-2008 by verylowfrequency]

Originally posted by verylowfrequency
reply to post by pavil

 

Market driven or profit driven.

Probably both. Plus GM's domination of the auto market at the time gave them no cause for concern. What motavation did they have to go down that path? None.

Take a look at even more recently. I remember my Geo Metro Manual transmission Convertible. It got about 48 MPG and the Honda CRX got even better mileage and that was 8 years ago. Now only a "hyrbrid" can get that kind of mileage. Give me a break. How did the technology seemingly go do in making regular cars more effiecient?

I am not the only one wondering about that it seems.

cars.about.com... -honda.htm

I agree, the first company to mass produce a viable "green" car will make tons of money.

See my sig below.

Great thread, great posts!!

Yes, huge chrome fins and big boaty cars were the thing back in 50'-60's And you bought a new car every year, to keep up with the new styles.

Anyway...Being a proud (but naive) American during the gas crisis in 1977, I went shopping for a new car. The only "American" car I could find with good gas mileage was really an import from Japan. It didn't feel good sitting in it, so I ended up buying a Honda (only colors that year were red or yellow), which got 42 mpg.

Kind of sad to think that the only way American cars could get better gas mileage was to start reducing their weight, hence more plastic. (Try plastic calipers on a Ford 150 ) Before I read this thread, I got the impression that the only way American cars were going to get better fuel economy was to make them out of paper or sheets of plastic!

You know, when California went through severe drought years back in the 1970's (at a time when Israel had already been using a type of drip irrigation in its desert farms), many farmers balked at the cost of switching over to drip irrigation. Jeez, if some government program had even GIVEN systems to the farmers back then, we would be better off today. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

So I'm reminded of all the tax dollars that are going to war over energy resources, that could have been used to develop new types of engines, etc. Sad. Really sad. I hope the US gets it right this time. If the time is not too late already.

[edit on 24-1-2008 by desert]