GM Criticized Over Chevy Volt's Hybrid Similarities

Attila Dimedici writes "This article says the Chevy Volt is not what GM claimed it was: an Extended Range Electric Vehicle. The Volt is simply a plug-in hybrid. Instead of a vehicle that is only driven with the electric drive train that uses a gasoline engine to charge the batteries, the Volt actually uses the gasoline engine to drive the front wheels at speeds above 70 miles per hour or when the batteries run down. Additionally, the Volt gets nowhere near the 230 mpg that GM was claiming for it. If this is all true, why did GM misrepresent the car? The facts as stated in the article make the Volt a pretty decent competitor to the Prius and other hybrids already on the market." A post at the Car Connection blog takes the opposing view, saying that accusations of GM "lying" are overhyped, since the capability to power the wheels with gasoline is reserved for situations where electricity isn't a viable option. The author says GM didn't mention this ability before now due to concerns over patents and competition from other companies.

Comments

Attempt to delaying uptake of competing products

[DragonWriter]

If this is all true, why did GM misrepresent the car?

Because hybrids like the Prius were already on the market, and "eventually, we'll get around to releasing a slightly-better hybrid on much the same model" isn't the kind of sales pitch that gets people to buy a conventional GM car now while deferring purchasing a hybrid for later.

Sending the message "we are going to real soon now come out with an electric car that will make hybrids obsolete" is somewhat better as an effort to slow the success of the existing, already-on-the-market hybrids.

Decent competitor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not on price. It's fucking forty thousand dollars! It's an ECONOMY car!

Sheesh.

People are pissed because they still owe us (US taxpayers) nearly 50 billion dollars. This was the big 'ace in the hole' the used in part to sell the bailout to us.

This piece of shit is not going to put GM on the road to recovery, and the US taxpayer on the road to becoming whole again.

Re:Decent competitor?

[Revotron]

You actually believe that $400 hammer bullshit?

Hint: When you see a $400 hammer in a government catalog, it's not a hammer. It's a classified device, but they are still required to put it in the catalog. Therefore, they list it as something ridiculous like the infamous NASA "toilet seat".

The $400 hammer joke died 10 years ago.

Re:Decent competitor?

[pixelpusher220]

My understanding was that the wasteful $400 hammers/toilet seats, were actually funding for the 'undisclosed' portions of the budget. But the 'wasteful' tag nicely got people in an uproar over something completely unrelated, thus clouding the issue beyond any rational discussion.

Re:Decent competitor?

[cynyr]

The Prius is a parallel hybrid as well, the gas engine can charge the battery and move the car or simply charge the batteries.

The reason i'm upset(i use that lightly) is that 1) They have been billing and advertising the car as a serial hybrid, 2) The inclusion of all the extra drive train components is a big pile of more stuff that I'll need to maintain. I was looking forward to a car without a transmission, but this one has an extra complicated one.

Re:Decent competitor?

[Chris Burke]

My understanding was that the wasteful $400 hammers/toilet seats, were actually funding for the 'undisclosed' portions of the budget.

That's what Seinfeld's Dad said in Independence Day, but I doubt it is true. All they have to do to fund the undisclosed portions of the budget is to move money from the disclosed portions to the undisclosed while telling everyone they spent it on the disclosed; I mean that's basically what's happening in the ID conspiracy theory, is it not?

The super-expensive items the government buys fall into two categories. First is truly special-purpose limited-run items which as always cost much more than general purpose mass-produced items. Second is misguided attempts at cost savings by specifying government purchasing requirements so precisely that only a single product matches, but then the makers of that product change the formula so it no longer matches and to satisfy the requirement it basically becomes a special-purpose item. On example I saw in an expose on the subject was a simple detergent that at the time of the requirement's creation was both adequate and the cheapest solution. But since the industry moved faster than the speed of government bureaucracy, this basically meant the government was paying to keep the old equipment running to produce the old detergent. Poof, suddenly instead of being the cheapest option it's 10x more expensive than anything else.

Truth is stupider than fiction. :)

Re:Decent competitor?

[bm_luethke]

Further there is a LOT of testing goes into those things. Yea we tend to take a toilet seat for granted but one many of those airplanes and especially things like submarines *every* part is critical. Some engineer has to plan out pretty much everything that can occur to it and make sure that it either doesn't fail or fails in such a way that it doesn't become mission critical - that is expensive and, as you say, when they are only buying 50 of them it really drives the per unit costs up.

I do work in mission critical computing and it is shocking how many SCSI terminators, USB cables, SATA cables, heck even raid controllers have an "acceptable" failure rate (uncaught) that is totally unacceptable when it is either millions of dollars per minute or often peoples lives on the line running through your equipment. Yea, we used to sell SCSI terminators at 1500 dollars piece, but when the countries stock exchange, New York cities 9-11 servers, or citi-banks central credit card processing servers count on it *working* it isn't that expensive. That's why EMC can charge the outrageous prices they do and why those data farms cost so much, it isn't the hardware that is the primary cost.

A toilet seat having a .1% chance of falling off your seat at home is just fine, a .001% chance of one falling off and becoming debris in an aircraft that will probably need to make high-g maneuvers is not. They are paying to make sure that it doesn't become a fairly heavy flying object. So even after tooling up per specifications I bet there was en extensive testing phase that went along with it too.

Similar thing is true for many of the "wasted" science - the part that made it not a waste was never reported. When I was at Oak Ridge National Labs we made the news for figuring out why a shower curtain pulls in when you take a shower instead of puffing out. I do not recall the exact amount spent but it was in the millions. Lots of carping about a waste of time - it was "obvious" (and the "obvious" answer was right too - moving air lowers pressure on the inside). However what the real science was about is that real life didn't follow the model with its margin of error - indeed it was well outside of it. The study modeled down to a molecular level, they eventually found some link with heat and water vapor (I don't recall exactly - I'm a computer scientist so outside of the opening paragraphs, closing paragraphs, and critiquing the methodology I can't do much). The big news about it around the lab was that the discovery was estimated to save several billion in fuel costs in the Aviation industry over the next 10 years. That little tidbit of information was never talked about, just the colossal "waste", the fact was it was an unknown effect and the easiest/cheapest to measure model was a shower. They could have tripled the budget and built a special made lab for it and sounded more "science like" (and is, later on, what they started to do to avoid bad press - yep, good thing people caught that govt waste).

Re:Decent competitor?

[trout007]

I work for NASA and sometimes I am responsible for those types of products. We get very special requests for equipment to work on the Space Shuttle. The first thing we do is try to find off the shelf solutions. If nothing suitable can be found we look for something close that can be modified. Only as a last resort do we actually design a tool from scratch. We have designed an built what was a $50,000 pair of vice grips. It had to produce a specific gripping force, be made of non sparking and non marring materials, be Liquid Oxygen compatible, and reach in at a certain angle. We looked all over for something that would work but we ended up having to make it ourselves. The alternative was to completely disassemble the Main Propulsion Line of an Orbiter which would have taken a year and cost tens of millions of dollars. So if someone wanted to make a big deal of it you could say we wasted $50,000 on a pair of pliers. In reality we saved tens of millions of dollars.

don't see an issue.

[pbjones]

for most daya to day urban running it'll be electric. For long trips it'll be hybrid, so watt is all of the fuss about? The USA has such low oil prices it's lucky to see hybrids at all. I have an old Prius for gadget value, using EV mode to stealth around car parks etc. Still get worried when the motor stops at traffic lights etc. I would like to add the engine stop feature to my 'normal' car.

I DO

[WindBourne]

That transmission is expensive to have in there, and expensive to run. The more layers that you have, the worse your performance. In addition, the higher your maintenance costs are.

My guess is that they did not add this for the end consumer. I am guessing that they added this to increase their bottom line.

As I have said all along, you would have to be a fool to buy a volt.

They have bad ideas

[Anonymous Coward]

I want an electric car with a small generator that runs off gas or diesel. Just a normal electrical car with a small generator and a fuel-tank. It will increase somewhat in size, but there is no reason to make anything complicated out of it.

Re:U have to be a fool to buy a volt

[skids]

Well, one that had interchangeable power plant modules would make sense... going on a road trip? Take out the extended battery module, put in the ICE engine module.

I'm still hoping they'll see the light on in-wheel motors so I'm not holding my breath for that.

Re:Po-TAY-to vs. Po-TAH-to

[pixelpusher220]

Is it really that important what it's called?

It is important. If it is simply a version of the existing hybrid cars, with both gas and electric propulsion systems, then it needs the maintenance that gas and hybrid cars need; oil changes, traditional transmission, etc.

By being a fully electric vehicle it no longer needs those parts since there is only electric propulsion. Where that electricity comes from is where GM said the Volt differed. By adding a gas generator (range extender) module you lessen the chance of being stranded with a dead battery. It gives it a 'usable' range for family trips and such. More importantly, the range module can be swapped out for something else, an extra battery, a fuel cell..anything that produces electricity.

If it turns out that the gas generator is actually driving the wheels, it can no longer be swapped out...

The price is marginally (very marginally) acceptable given the new technology and abilities and projected savings that have been touted by GM. But if it's 'just' a hybrid with slightly better numbers, then the $40K price tag is simply ridiculous...

Re:Gasp! Not additional features!

[betterunixthanunix]

Personally, I would take the simple maintenance on an electric car over a hybrid, at least for the sort of commute I have (which I can just do on my bicycle, so maybe add a few extra miles). Electric vehicles are meant for local commuting, with distances that resemble an urban or surburban commute to work, not an extended trip through a remote region. Electric vehicles win for local commutes, especially in major urban areas where traffic jams are common and gas powered cars waste a lot of energy idling their engines.

GM did this for the simple reason that they make so much money selling spare parts. Electric vehicles have fewer parts, so that hurts GM's bottom line.

The Volt uses a planetary gearset

[rabtech]

The Volt uses a planetary gearset where the main gear is driven by the primary electric motor. The planet and ring gears can also optionally by driven by the engine and a second assist electric motor when needed. This allows the computer to continuously vary the power source that is driving the wheels. The only part of this equation that was not previously known was that the engine can directly give torque to the wheels under certain circumstances (without going through a generator).

Typical operation for a daily commuter is stop and go traffic of 20 miles or less each way, which means the typical commuter in a Volt will use only the electric motor. The gasoline engine will never even start up. The Volt also comes with plug-in support from the factory. These two things are what make it different than existing hybrid cars. If you can sell these cars and start moving them in large numbers then you can start moving the battery prices down and scaling the electric-only range up. You can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good otherwise you'll never ship anything. We know that in software, in hardware (think 1st gen iPod), and it is just as true in cars. The Volt is a necessary evolutionary step and I hope it sells really well because battery prices will drop and we can take the next step even sooner.

I also find it disingenuous to run the Volt around with drained batteries so you can see its "true" MPG (whatever your definition of "true" is with this sort of test). That's like saying a hard-top convertible sucks because I wanted to see how it performed in the rain but purposely left the hard top in the garage. The whole point of the Volt is using 100% electric power for most people's daily commutes. If my commute is 37 miles round-trip, then the Volt gives me infinite MPG, which makes no sense because the electricity does have a cost to it. This just highlights how inadequate MPG is as an efficiency measurement.

Re:The Volt uses a planetary gearset

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

The Volt uses a planetary gearset where the main gear is driven by the primary electric motor. The planet and ring gears can also optionally by driven by the engine and a second assist electric motor when needed. This allows the computer to continuously vary the power source that is driving the wheels. The only part of this equation that was not previously known was that the engine can directly give torque to the wheels under certain circumstances (without going through a generator).

This is exactly how the Prius works. The plug-in version of the Prius (currently in testing) even has ability to charge the battery from the grid, just like the Volt.

It's a sensible, efficient design. The problem is that it's neither particularly new nor particularly innovative, and it underscores the fact that the Volt is probably overpriced, which leaves GM open to being undercut by competitors like Honda or Toyota.

What's particularly ridiculous to me is that the Volt only goes ~40 miles on a 16kWh battery pack (2.5 mi per kWh). The Leaf goes ~100 miles on a 24kWh battery pack (4.2 mi per kWh). That tells me that the Volt is too big and too heavy.

Re:The Volt uses a planetary gearset

[NuShrike]

Wtf, the planetary gearset IS the mechanical linkage between the wheels and the engine. On the Prius, the center gear is driven by the ICE, and the outer ring is driven by the electric motor. Together, they drive the axles of the wheels.

If the Volt is using the same system, it's violating Toyota-patents on this.

Since this planetary gearset is what Ford originally patented on the Model-T, and not much different from a differential, then might as well claim there's no mechanical linkage between the engine and wheels if any differential is involved.

Re:Gasp! Not additional features!

[Chris Burke]

If they made it so that the gas engine could completely run the car, rather than simply maintaining highway speeds when the battery is empty as TFAs state, then that's a further reduction in the Volt's advantages. It means the Volt would require a full-blown ICE drive train and transmission and the ICE would be required to run across a wide range of sub-optimal RPMs. At that point, I'd rather have a vehicle that just optimally shares power at all times between the electric and gas engines, like traditional hybrids only with bigger batteries.

If instead this feature is designed solely to maintain highways speeds when the battery is empty, then while still not the imagined ideal, it would mean that the transmission and ICE could still be optimized for a narrow RPM range and thus be lighter and more efficient. However it would also mean that the feature you describe would not exist, as it would not be able to provide enough torque to move the car at low speeds.

Re:Obvious question...

[pavera]

My guess would be charge times. If you are driving on the freeway at 70mph, and the battery becomes depleted, you'd need to supply some number of watts, through the generator, to the batteries to maintain speed... if the generator can only realtime charge and provide enough power to travel at 50mph, then, your car is going to slow to 50mph. However, if the motor has extra power, but the generator is not large enough to use that extra power, it makes sense to rev up the engine a bit more, send that power to the wheels directly, maintain 70mph speeds, and charge the battery simultaneously.

Maybe putting in a larger generator that could handle real time charging at 70mph would increase costs... maybe the motor would need to be more powerful, I'm pretty sure these types of things are exponential in nature, IE, realtime charging for enough power at 50mph takes 100HP, at 70mph it takes 180HP or something, at 75mph it takes 220HP IE its not linear. And at some point it becomes inefficient to attempt, its better to just send the power straight to the wheels.

Re:Attempt to delaying uptake of competing product

[Low Ranked Craig]

Alternatively, you should never be driving the car at more than 70 mph as it is illegal to do so. Therefore it isn't an issue. Or at least that is the case with the identical Vauxhall Ampere sold in the UK. The rest of Europe uses km/h for its speed limits and the speed limit is typically between 110 km/h and 130 km/h. 70 mph is 112km/h.

I routinely drive from Phoenix to LA and back. The speed limit is 75 on I-10 between Phoenix and Blythe. In CA it drops to 70. If you're doing 75 you'd better not be in the passing lane because the average speed on that road is 85 to 90 for cars in my experience. I've driven that route more than 50 times...

Re:Gasp! Not additional features!

[adolf]

Umm...

It's simpler than that.

First, let's start at the beginning. The Volt was promised to be a series hybrid. That is: a gasoline-fired generator, which in turn would power an electric motor and/or charge the batteries. There was to be no mechanical connection between the gasoline engine and the driven wheels.

There is nothing wrong with the original concept which would have prevented the car from moving in the event of having completely dead-flat batteries in the middle of the desert. Systems just like this have been in use for a Really Long Time on diesel-electric locomotives and work just fine without any batteries at all.

And it's improper to think of "charging the batteries" as being somehow different from "powering the motors." Volts is volts, and with 55kW of electrical generation capacity, it can do both at the same time.

I, for one, am willing to assume that the statements about the original concept were true at that time, and that later design revisions changed things up a bit. The question is then: Why was it changed?

And here are some probable answers:

1. It's now stated that the gasoline engine is directly driving the wheels when speeds exceed 70MPH. This may simply be due to the electronics and batteries being unable to keep themselves cool during sustained driving at above 70MPH.

And why 70MPH instead of 50MPH or 90MPH? Probably, and I'm guessing here because nobody who's driven one of these cars seems to actually write about it: Unlike the Prius, I doubt the Volt has a transmission at all -- at most, it's just a mechanical clutch feeding the differential. Which is good, because it's fewer parts to wear out, and one less mechanical system to waste energy with.

In a transmissionless drivetrain, it's completely likely that below 70MPH the engine would be running at an inefficient speed, whereas at 70MPH and up the engine can begin to run within its peak torque (read: most efficient) powerband.

2. It's also now stated that the engine directly drives the wheels at all speeds when the batteries are flat. If this is actually the case, then my above theory about having no transmission is false. However, I'm going to stick to my guns on this one, and assume the reports are simply wrong about this function. After all, the media test-drives occurred only yesterday, and so far we're still in the smoke-and-mirrors level of blogospheric bullshit regarding the whole thing.

And since the car can be so broadly manipulated and fine-tuned by GM in software, it's even possible for them to give the car a last-minute firmware update on launch day.

Therefore, I reckon that my own postulation is as good as anyone else's, and would like to submit that we really won't know much about how the Volt actually operates until they're at the dealerships for sale.

Re:Distinction without a difference?

[pavera]

If you're driving along at freeway speeds and the batteries deplete, maybe the generator can only supply enough electricity to run at 55mph, I don't know, but I'm sure the generator supplies power in watts, its rated for x number of watts, and to maintain speeds above 55 maybe you need more watts than that, maybe the generator would cost twice as much, or be 20% heavier it were rated to supply the extra wattage necessary to maintain 75mph... but for arguments sake, we'll say the generator can only maintain 55mph, well your options then would be to slow to 55mph, or pull over and wait til the batteries are charged again. Me, I'd much rather kick the ICE up a notch, put some power directly to the wheels, and keep going 70mph.

How that is not seen as a feature by EVERYBODY is completely beyond me. In the Nissan Leaf, your option would be... oh wait, you don't have any, pull over and find the nearest power outlet, and wait for an hour or 2. In the prius, you're always burning gasoline no matter what, and you don't have 200k to spend on a tesla roadster... I'm sure there are trade offs in the engineering of the car, and this only happens if you're going above 70mph and the batteries are depleted, so I think for the core market of this car (people commuting less than 40 miles a day on average) this is a completely acceptable and very good trade off.

For me, my commute is about 15 miles each way, 3-5 of that being freeway, speed limit 60mph... so unless I was breaking the law by more than 10mph, which I don't generally do, I'd be in all electric all the time (even when the motor needs to kick in to charge the batteries). I'd never burn a drop of gas in this car on my normal commute as long as I plug the thing in every day. However, if my wife called while I was on my way home from work, and said "Lets meet at such and such a place downtown for dinner" (downtown is the opposite direction from work, so it would be about 20 extra miles one way) then I could say "sure" and just head there, and stay on the freeway, and keep going 65-70 the whole way, and I'd burn a gallon of gas, but I'd make it home without stopping, or slowing, and if I needed to pass someone and go over 70mph, then the engine would kick in and give me a little extra power and off I go. In the Nissan Leaf (estimated range 70-85) I'd be very hard pressed to make it to work, then downtown, then back to my house, that is about an 85 mile round trip... And assuming I got 30mpg while on gas in the volt, I would only use a little more than 1 gallon of gas to go 85 miles, so my MPG would be like 78mpg... which is at least 150% better than a prius. And most days, I'd never burn a drop of fuel, so I'd be easily destroying the mpg's of a prius or any other hybrid.

Again, how you can see this as anything other than a really nice feature to have when you need it is beyond me.

Re:My concern is what stimulus/tax incentives/prog

[afidel]

I don't think you have ANY clue what you are talking about. One of my dads larger accounts is Timken. Among other things Timken makes bearings, they make lots of bearings for the auto industry, but they also make lots of bearings for the military. Neither customer base is large enough to sustain the enterprise but combined it's enough of a market to make a decent profit when things are going well. Timken is important enough to the military that their bearing plant in Canton Ohio had its own thermonuclear warhead during the cold war. Had GM gone bankrupt and stiffed Timken then Timken would have gone bankrupt and there would be no domestic supplier of a whole host of critical parts. If you WANT the government dependent on some supplier in Malaysia or mainland China for critical parts then you're a fool.

Re:Distinction without a difference?

[mlts]

Don't forget traffic. One drunk driver ramming a semi off the road can cause a 2-4 hour delay, perhaps more if the semi is carrying toxic materials. Not factoring some time for cases like this may cause having to be towed off the highway (and some cities like Austin charge a hefty fine for stalled vehicles on freeways regardless of cause.) Germany is even worse. Run out of gas for any reason, and it is a fine.

the summary is wrong

[YesIAmAScript]

The ICE only drives the wheels when going over 70mph AND the batteries are run down. The summary says OR, this is incorrect.

If you charge up, you do still have 25-50 miles of all-electric range, even at over 70mph.

Re:Attempt to delaying uptake of competing product

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really fair to drag horses into this. I say we take all the commie fascists who want us to get rid of our cars and have them pull us around in rickshaws.

Re:Attempt to delaying uptake of competing product

[commodore64_love]

>>>80? really? Wow, that's fast.

Not when you consider Congressional Law requires interstates to be spec'd for 125 mph speeds. 80 is only 2/3rd of the maximum safe travel speed.

Re:U have to be a fool to buy a volt

[Cyberax]

"And yet, the Nissan Leaf has FAR FAR outsold the volt."

Leaf and Volt are being sold already?