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2011 Chevrolet Volt First Look
The Volt Makes It Halfway Home
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You might have heard that General Motors unveiled the production version of some car called the 2011 Chevrolet Volt at the company's recent centennial celebration. But that's not entirely true.
It would be more accurate to say that the unveiling of the much-ballyhooed Volt is GM's centennial celebration; such is the significance of this vehicle to the ailing company. Also the Volt as presented is not precisely the version of the plug-in electric car that will go on sale in November 2010 (God, GM and lithium-ion batteries willing).
In fact the car that Bob Lutz drove onto the stage at GM's headquarters in downtown Detroit isn't really the Volt that we and the world have come to know, either. Thanks to its inherent appeal and GM's grand publicity push, the image we all have assigned to the name Volt is that of the comely little two-door coupe with the long hood and the big wheel flares from the 2007 Detroit Auto Show. So different is this "production" version that GM's publicity machine has been directed to stop using pictures of the concept car.
GM is only about halfway between the unveiling of the concept nearly two years ago and the sale of the first, true production Volt about two years from now. Nevertheless, GM has already set much of the Volt's engineering and design specifics in stone.
The "No Compromises" Compromise
Back in early 2007, GM's bull-moose car guy Bob Lutz told us, "[T]he Chevy Volt proves another important point. Environmentally conscious cars can actually look good, too! This is a 'no-compromises' design." Here Lutz was referring to the concept-car version of the Volt, of course.
The look of the four-door sedan intended for production carries a couple of the concept car's details, but it's been compromised to serve the demands of the wind tunnel. Given that GM has been determined to build a four-door car about the size of the Toyota Prius or the upcoming Honda Insight, it shouldn't be a huge surprise that all these cars share some basic aero-dictated characteristics. All have vaguely slug-shape silhouettes. All feature a short and rounded nose, an arched roofline and a tall butt. The Volt's blocked-out front grille is an oddly conventional (and functionally useless) design detail in a car that's supposed to be unconventional.
Even so, the Chevy is — to our eyes, at least — the best-looking of these three vehicles. Of course, Toyota will release a new 2010 Prius to do battle with the new Insight next year, although it won't change its looks much. The Volt will arrive on the market a full year later. So check back in two years to see how fresh the smooth design looks.
We know that version of the 2011 Chevy Volt that GM showed at its centennial wore 225/45R18 Goodyear low-rolling resistance tires in place of the 17-inch versions that will be fitted to the production version. This is a bit of time-honored manufacturer sleight of hand, as taller wheels always look better on the show stand. Also the display car lacked the small door on the driver side under the side mirror where the recharging port will be located.
It's Not a Hybrid, OK?!
The 2011 Chevrolet Volt is both more conventional than you might have been lead to believe and quite a bit more advanced than most potential buyers will know.
It is not the world's first electric car. It's not even an electric car in the conventional sense, although it is motivated solely by an electric motor. It carries both a gas- (or E85-) powered internal combustion engine and an electric motor that gets juice from a big pack of batteries, but it's not a hybrid. GM calls it an Extended-Range Electric Vehicle. (E-REV just rolls right off the tongue, no?) That's because the combustion engine never directly powers the wheels but instead generates power to recharge the batteries. This sort of setup is known as a series hybrid, but who's counting?
GM anticipates (and hopes) that the Volt will be used primarily as an electric car. If the 2011 Volt meets its targets, it will go up to 40 miles on a single battery charge in full electric mode using power from the 220-plus lithium-ion cells. Theoretically, the 1.4-liter engine should never need to fire up to recharge the batteries if an owner's daily driving totals fewer than 40 miles. To top off the Volt's battery pack at home, the car can be plugged into 120v household current for an eight-hour recharge. Plug it into a 240v circuit and the batteries will recharge in three, says GM.
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Electrifying Performance
GM estimates that the Volt will get to 60 mph quicker than the 10 seconds it takes a Prius to get there and then reach 100 mph. For extended battery life (GM will put a 10-year warranty on the pack) and to reduce heat, the batteries will never be charged to greater than 80 percent of their maximum and will never be allowed to drop below 30 percent of their capacity. Total power from the electric motor equates to about 150 horsepower and 273 pound-feet of torque. (Remember, the gas engine does not contribute its power to moving the car.) Not that the Volt will be tuned to generate maximum range, according to Bob Lutz. Or in his words: "This is about people who want to drive electrically for 40 miles. To hell with ultimate range."
What this means practically is that the gas engine (a version of a GM four-cylinder that sees duty in other parts of the world) isn't cycling on and off keeping the batteries topped up from the moment a driver sets off. Instead, according to Lutz, it will power up the batteries at the beginning of a trip, and then once the lithium-ion cells are depleted to the 30 percent of a full, charge them up again. Essentially the engine is meant to give the car 40-mile chunks of electric-only power.
In fact, GM has been able to fit a very small gas tank into the Volt. How small, the company won't say. It wanted a large enough tank to get a total cruising range of 600 miles, but the actual range is more like 200 to 300 miles.
All Ate Up With Engine
Why, you might ask, would the Chevy need to use a decent-size four-cylinder engine as a battery charger? Couldn't it have used something smaller than a 1.4-liter inline-4? According to Chief Engineer Frank Weber, the team needs about 70 hp to juice the batteries. But while a smaller engine would do, Weber says that a smaller engine would have to run at higher revs to generate enough power to do the trick. The 1.4-liter runs between 2,000 and 4,000 rpm for efficiency and to keep noise and vibration to a minimum. Also, Weber notes, the 1.4-liter already exists and so it makes sense to use it just to keep costs down.
The Volt is built on a version of GM's new Delta platform that will also underpin the 2011 Cruze sedan. Think of its setup with its MacPherson strut front suspension and torsion-beam rear axle twist as an evolution of the current Cobalt's Opel Astra-derived setup. The 2011 Chevrolet Volt casts a shadow almost exactly the same size as the Prius. At 105.7 inches, the Volt's wheelbase is less than an inch shorter than the Toyota's. Stretching 177 inches in overall length, the Chevy is a couple inches longer than the current Prius. The Volt is also a few inches wider and a couple inches shorter in height than the Prius, so it has a more grounded, visually appealing stance on the road.
And in an attempt to contain costs, the Volt is built of steel. When you combine all this steel with the weight of the battery pack, it's clear that Chevy's electric car will be no flyweight. Of course, this construction strategy helps offset some of the cost involved in developing and using the lithium-ion batteries and various other Volt-specific soft- and hardware. It also means that the Volt will weigh in around 3,300 pounds — the battery pack alone is about 400 pounds.
All Ate Up With Batteries
The T-shape battery pack compromises interior space a bit. The pack is mounted in the center tunnel and under the rear seats, so it precludes a middle position in the rear seat. To package a human on top of the battery pack would have meant raising the roof to an unacceptably dorky extreme.
The center stack of the instrument panel is done in shiny off-white plastic with touch-sensitive controls in place of conventional buttons. It's a self-conscious reference to the iPod aesthetic, but an attractive one. For that extra-techie look, the Volt has no analog gauges. Instead drivers will be faced with two small video screens. The one mounted atop the center stack displays climate, entertainment, navigation and power status information. The one behind the steering carries the same information a set of conventional gauges would, from what we could gather. The company says both are "reconfigurable."
Pricier Than the First iPhone
Here's perhaps the trickiest part of the 2011 Chevrolet Volt: its cost. As in, how much is that E-REV in the window?
"Even if we forgo most or all of the profit on it, still it wouldn't be an inexpensive thing," says Lutz, the Volt's proud papa. "If the government would do a $7,500 incentive, boy, that would help us a lot to make this easily affordable for people."
What does all this mean? Well, unlike the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius, the Volt will never be about the same purchase price as the average conventional car on the market. Does that mean $30,000? $40,000? We don't know. The lithium-ion batteries are partly to blame here, of course. It's not just the purchase and development cost but also the hefty warranty provision that GM will bake into the price to cover the possible replacement of the battery pack at less than the 100,000 miles.
Still, GM thinks it can sell at least 10,000 examples of the Chevy Volt in the first year and five times that many in the years that follow. It'll be engineered to be left- or right-hand drive from the get-go. And there will be refinements to its power system and variations from other GM brands to offset cost in the future. But for now, the 2011 Chevrolet Volt is a big investment for both the company and the car's potential buyers.
But there have been some pay-offs already. According to one survey from Prime Research, the media coverage of "green" issues in GM corporate news has doubled in the period following the introduction of the 2011 Chevy Volt concept. Also, the car scored Lutz a guest appearance on Comedy Central's Colbert Report.
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Source: http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/d...132046?tid=edmunds.il.home.photopanel..2.*#18
The Volt Makes It Halfway Home
You might have heard that General Motors unveiled the production version of some car called the 2011 Chevrolet Volt at the company's recent centennial celebration. But that's not entirely true.
It would be more accurate to say that the unveiling of the much-ballyhooed Volt is GM's centennial celebration; such is the significance of this vehicle to the ailing company. Also the Volt as presented is not precisely the version of the plug-in electric car that will go on sale in November 2010 (God, GM and lithium-ion batteries willing).
In fact the car that Bob Lutz drove onto the stage at GM's headquarters in downtown Detroit isn't really the Volt that we and the world have come to know, either. Thanks to its inherent appeal and GM's grand publicity push, the image we all have assigned to the name Volt is that of the comely little two-door coupe with the long hood and the big wheel flares from the 2007 Detroit Auto Show. So different is this "production" version that GM's publicity machine has been directed to stop using pictures of the concept car.
GM is only about halfway between the unveiling of the concept nearly two years ago and the sale of the first, true production Volt about two years from now. Nevertheless, GM has already set much of the Volt's engineering and design specifics in stone.
The "No Compromises" Compromise
Back in early 2007, GM's bull-moose car guy Bob Lutz told us, "[T]he Chevy Volt proves another important point. Environmentally conscious cars can actually look good, too! This is a 'no-compromises' design." Here Lutz was referring to the concept-car version of the Volt, of course.
The look of the four-door sedan intended for production carries a couple of the concept car's details, but it's been compromised to serve the demands of the wind tunnel. Given that GM has been determined to build a four-door car about the size of the Toyota Prius or the upcoming Honda Insight, it shouldn't be a huge surprise that all these cars share some basic aero-dictated characteristics. All have vaguely slug-shape silhouettes. All feature a short and rounded nose, an arched roofline and a tall butt. The Volt's blocked-out front grille is an oddly conventional (and functionally useless) design detail in a car that's supposed to be unconventional.
Even so, the Chevy is — to our eyes, at least — the best-looking of these three vehicles. Of course, Toyota will release a new 2010 Prius to do battle with the new Insight next year, although it won't change its looks much. The Volt will arrive on the market a full year later. So check back in two years to see how fresh the smooth design looks.
We know that version of the 2011 Chevy Volt that GM showed at its centennial wore 225/45R18 Goodyear low-rolling resistance tires in place of the 17-inch versions that will be fitted to the production version. This is a bit of time-honored manufacturer sleight of hand, as taller wheels always look better on the show stand. Also the display car lacked the small door on the driver side under the side mirror where the recharging port will be located.
It's Not a Hybrid, OK?!
The 2011 Chevrolet Volt is both more conventional than you might have been lead to believe and quite a bit more advanced than most potential buyers will know.
It is not the world's first electric car. It's not even an electric car in the conventional sense, although it is motivated solely by an electric motor. It carries both a gas- (or E85-) powered internal combustion engine and an electric motor that gets juice from a big pack of batteries, but it's not a hybrid. GM calls it an Extended-Range Electric Vehicle. (E-REV just rolls right off the tongue, no?) That's because the combustion engine never directly powers the wheels but instead generates power to recharge the batteries. This sort of setup is known as a series hybrid, but who's counting?
GM anticipates (and hopes) that the Volt will be used primarily as an electric car. If the 2011 Volt meets its targets, it will go up to 40 miles on a single battery charge in full electric mode using power from the 220-plus lithium-ion cells. Theoretically, the 1.4-liter engine should never need to fire up to recharge the batteries if an owner's daily driving totals fewer than 40 miles. To top off the Volt's battery pack at home, the car can be plugged into 120v household current for an eight-hour recharge. Plug it into a 240v circuit and the batteries will recharge in three, says GM.
Electrifying Performance
GM estimates that the Volt will get to 60 mph quicker than the 10 seconds it takes a Prius to get there and then reach 100 mph. For extended battery life (GM will put a 10-year warranty on the pack) and to reduce heat, the batteries will never be charged to greater than 80 percent of their maximum and will never be allowed to drop below 30 percent of their capacity. Total power from the electric motor equates to about 150 horsepower and 273 pound-feet of torque. (Remember, the gas engine does not contribute its power to moving the car.) Not that the Volt will be tuned to generate maximum range, according to Bob Lutz. Or in his words: "This is about people who want to drive electrically for 40 miles. To hell with ultimate range."
What this means practically is that the gas engine (a version of a GM four-cylinder that sees duty in other parts of the world) isn't cycling on and off keeping the batteries topped up from the moment a driver sets off. Instead, according to Lutz, it will power up the batteries at the beginning of a trip, and then once the lithium-ion cells are depleted to the 30 percent of a full, charge them up again. Essentially the engine is meant to give the car 40-mile chunks of electric-only power.
In fact, GM has been able to fit a very small gas tank into the Volt. How small, the company won't say. It wanted a large enough tank to get a total cruising range of 600 miles, but the actual range is more like 200 to 300 miles.
All Ate Up With Engine
Why, you might ask, would the Chevy need to use a decent-size four-cylinder engine as a battery charger? Couldn't it have used something smaller than a 1.4-liter inline-4? According to Chief Engineer Frank Weber, the team needs about 70 hp to juice the batteries. But while a smaller engine would do, Weber says that a smaller engine would have to run at higher revs to generate enough power to do the trick. The 1.4-liter runs between 2,000 and 4,000 rpm for efficiency and to keep noise and vibration to a minimum. Also, Weber notes, the 1.4-liter already exists and so it makes sense to use it just to keep costs down.
The Volt is built on a version of GM's new Delta platform that will also underpin the 2011 Cruze sedan. Think of its setup with its MacPherson strut front suspension and torsion-beam rear axle twist as an evolution of the current Cobalt's Opel Astra-derived setup. The 2011 Chevrolet Volt casts a shadow almost exactly the same size as the Prius. At 105.7 inches, the Volt's wheelbase is less than an inch shorter than the Toyota's. Stretching 177 inches in overall length, the Chevy is a couple inches longer than the current Prius. The Volt is also a few inches wider and a couple inches shorter in height than the Prius, so it has a more grounded, visually appealing stance on the road.
And in an attempt to contain costs, the Volt is built of steel. When you combine all this steel with the weight of the battery pack, it's clear that Chevy's electric car will be no flyweight. Of course, this construction strategy helps offset some of the cost involved in developing and using the lithium-ion batteries and various other Volt-specific soft- and hardware. It also means that the Volt will weigh in around 3,300 pounds — the battery pack alone is about 400 pounds.
All Ate Up With Batteries
The T-shape battery pack compromises interior space a bit. The pack is mounted in the center tunnel and under the rear seats, so it precludes a middle position in the rear seat. To package a human on top of the battery pack would have meant raising the roof to an unacceptably dorky extreme.
The center stack of the instrument panel is done in shiny off-white plastic with touch-sensitive controls in place of conventional buttons. It's a self-conscious reference to the iPod aesthetic, but an attractive one. For that extra-techie look, the Volt has no analog gauges. Instead drivers will be faced with two small video screens. The one mounted atop the center stack displays climate, entertainment, navigation and power status information. The one behind the steering carries the same information a set of conventional gauges would, from what we could gather. The company says both are "reconfigurable."
Pricier Than the First iPhone
Here's perhaps the trickiest part of the 2011 Chevrolet Volt: its cost. As in, how much is that E-REV in the window?
"Even if we forgo most or all of the profit on it, still it wouldn't be an inexpensive thing," says Lutz, the Volt's proud papa. "If the government would do a $7,500 incentive, boy, that would help us a lot to make this easily affordable for people."
What does all this mean? Well, unlike the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius, the Volt will never be about the same purchase price as the average conventional car on the market. Does that mean $30,000? $40,000? We don't know. The lithium-ion batteries are partly to blame here, of course. It's not just the purchase and development cost but also the hefty warranty provision that GM will bake into the price to cover the possible replacement of the battery pack at less than the 100,000 miles.
Still, GM thinks it can sell at least 10,000 examples of the Chevy Volt in the first year and five times that many in the years that follow. It'll be engineered to be left- or right-hand drive from the get-go. And there will be refinements to its power system and variations from other GM brands to offset cost in the future. But for now, the 2011 Chevrolet Volt is a big investment for both the company and the car's potential buyers.
But there have been some pay-offs already. According to one survey from Prime Research, the media coverage of "green" issues in GM corporate news has doubled in the period following the introduction of the 2011 Chevy Volt concept. Also, the car scored Lutz a guest appearance on Comedy Central's Colbert Report.
Source: http://www.edmunds.com/insideline/d...132046?tid=edmunds.il.home.photopanel..2.*#18
