This is the car of the future

Well, this certainly is different. Usually, I’m on the other side of the table deriding environweenies for their unrealistic prognostications of what a gasoline-free automotive future looks like. Now, I find myself about to defend the practicality and, even more of a surprise to me, the salability of an over-priced, under-powered (quasi) battery-powered car. Surely, it is the end of days. At the very least, we should be on the lookout for locusts.

Said car is Chevrolet’s new Volt and the reason I’m defending it is that one of your esteemed columnists, Peter Foster, flubbed it off most recently as “revolting,” a pun all we autojournalists have been assiduously trying to avoid. Mr. Foster, being out of the loop, obviously didn’t get the memo.

Mr. Foster’s denigration of General Motors’ battery-powered Electric-Extended Range Vehicle (for those not familiar with the designation, the Volt is an electric car with a range of 64 kilometres on battery power alone after which a small gasoline engine kicks in to recharge the batteries, but not, it should be noted, drive the car) was based on two basic points. First, he thought that the Volt

was too expensive at an estimated price range of between $35,000 and $50,000 when it goes on sale in 2011. More damning, however, was his contention that General Motors was fooling us and, worse, itself into thinking that it can actually produce the Volt.

Much of the skepticism, including Mr. Foster’s, surrounding the debate on whether The General can develop the Volt is on the viability of lithium-ion batteries for automotive use with many predicting all manner of thermal catastrophes (that’s fire to you and me). Adding credibility to the argument, and I suspect making brave many of those skeptics, is the recent contention from Honda that lithium-ion batteries are not quite ready for prime time. Indeed, Honda’s recently-unveiled, low-cost hybrid Insight eschews high-tech lithium-ion for the more proven but not nearly as powerful nickel-metal hydride. Surely, General Motors can’t know something that mighty Honda doesn’t?

It just might. The important thing to remember, says Douglas Dauch, the lead engineer in GM’s Battery Systems Lab, is that there are more than 100 types of lithium-ion batteries. General Motors reviewed dozens of potential candidates and settled on two types: lithium-ion manganese spinell and lithium-ion iron-phosphate. Yes, I know it’s all propellor-head gobbly-gook, but the point is that, unless the naysayers have tested exactly those batteries, they are in no position to denigrate their performance.

Indeed, after Dauch finished his battery technology for dummies explanation, he pointed to the two T-shaped casings sitting on the floor beside us. It turns out these were the very first of the Volt’s battery packs to be put through GM’s rigourous long-term durability testing. Having been running 24/7 since April through real-world driving simulations, the batteries have already accumulated the equivalent of 50,000 kilometres on them… without cooling.

Yes, without cooling. Even though all production Volt will have a cooling system for their batteries, these test units had run their entire lifetime with it disconnected. Yet, they purred (OK, so batteries don’t “purr” per se, but you get the automotive analogy) along at a room-temperature 25 degrees Celsius. The packs just down the hallway running with full cooling? Well, they ran but two degrees cooler. That’s why Mr. Dauch just laughs when he reads media reports of the problems that GM’s development team must be undergoing.

“The battery technology is simply not the challenge anymore,” says Dauch with a certain amount of frustration, “Normal engineering crap is what we spend much of our time working on. Are they going to make the connectors in time for production? Can they reduce the number of fasteners needed since fewer parts means greater reliability? These are the kinds of things that worry us.”

And if Mr. Foster is really going to make GM’s inability make these lithium-ion batteries, should he also not pooh-pooh recent product releases by Nissan, Mercedes and Chrsyler. All have recently announced either electric vehicles or hybrids using lithium-ion batteries (Nissan with a manganese oxide chemistry similar to GM’s) as their energy storage. Both Mercedes’ and Nissan’s versions will be in showrooms before the Volt reaches production. Why no question of their abilities to produce similar technology?

Finally, Mr. Foster objects to the Volt’s projected price that educated guesses place squarely in low $40,000 range. And, yes, Mr. Foster is right; this is definitely more than a similarly-sized vehicle with the same equipment would cost if it were powered by traditional gasoline engine. But does Mr. Foster really expect the first-generation of any ground-breaking technology to cost no more than the outgoing? Does he really think that Toyota made a profit on all those firstgen Priuses it blew out the door at US$19,995?

And if the technology is too expensive for anyone to build at a profit, is Mr. Foster really suggesting GM abandon its alternative fuel strategy? Mr. Foster’s voice would be very faint indeed compared to the howls protesting that Detroit should be forced to make alternative-fuel vehicles at any price.

So, yes, General Motors will soon be selling what is, compared with today’s vehicles, a car that’s overpriced for its performance, size and equipment. But what Mr. Foster didn’t tell you is that all auto manufacturers are going to have to put out some sort of over-priced (or profitless), under-equipped, alternative-fuel, “green” vehicle. And after my sojourn to GM’s test labs, I’m convinced that Chevy’s Volt will prove the most useful of the lot.