http://HTTP://POGUE.BLOGS.NYTIMES.COM/2007/09/20/THE-REBIRTH-OF-THE-ELECTRIC-CAR/?HPSEPTEMBER 20, 2007, 9:58 PM
The Rebirth of the Electric Car
This past Sunday, my report on the rebirth of the electric car aired on “CBS News Sunday Morning.” You can see it here.
CBS gave me a juicy long time for the segment–but the truth is, there was enough good material to fill a miniseries. Like the interview with auto-industry superstar Bob Lutz, now a top executive at General Motors (vice chairman, global of product development), and the driving force between the upcoming Volt electric car. He’s a funny, smart, engaging guy, although he’s certainly got GM’s interests at heart.
But since I now have the luxury of an e-newsletter, and you have the luxury of a scroll bar, here it is: is a longer chunk of that interview.
[UPDATE: Please watch the CBS segment linked above before adding any comments along the lines of, “But what about the Tesla? What about the EV1? What about ‘Who Killed the Electric Car?’”]
DAVID POGUE: The Volt, as I understand it, has both a gas and engine and electric motor. But it’s not a Prius, right?
BOB LUTZ: No. What happens is in conventional hybrids is, there are very few batteries and they’re just designed to give an electric assist. It’s this constant interplay between gasoline and battery.
The Volt is is basically an electric vehicle. With a range of–we’re shooting for a minimum of 40 miles. And then, so that people don’t get caught out, when the battery reaches a certain minimum state of charge, there is a very small internal-combustion engine, four-cylinder engine, that kicks in.
It could be a small diesel. It could run on ethanol. Could run on compressed natural gas. It could be anything. But that engine never drives the car. It’s not hooked up to the wheels. Think of it as a portable generator that gets your battery back up.
Now, if you want to make a big, long trip, like from New York to Chicago, you can do it. But once you’re beyond the range of the batteries, then the small piston engine is probably going to be working most of the time, and your mileage will drop.
But we have impeccable data that show that 82 percent of the daily trips in the United States are 40 miles or less. So, I think there’s going to be a lot of people who find that throughout a month, they’ll never burn a drop of fuel.
DP: Got it. Now [walking over to a skeletal model of the Volt], we have this cool, uh–
BL: Cutaway.
DP: –cutaway. Hey, I don’t know where you got this invisible chassis material, but it’s great. Give me a quick tour of the–
BL: Yeah, okay. This is the small gasoline engine. These things that look like a big stack of blue CDs are to simulate the lithium-ion batteries.
Now, as we are now working with the lithium ion suppliers, the batteries may or may not have exactly that shape. In fact, one of suppliers is even looking at doing them in little foil bags, like those airline toilettes. Except you’d accordion the whole batch of them–
DP: –And they’re not as useful in wiping your face.
BL: No, you would not wan to wipe your face. Although lithium… you know, if you’re bipolar, you can eat your battery. (LAUGHTER)
DP: So, what about torque and RPM? Is it all measured differently?
BL: Yeah, batteries have tremendous performance and torque. Our performance targets for the Volt are 0 to 60 in around five or six seconds. Top speed of 120 miles an hour for a limited time. A hundred miles an hour is sustainable.
DP: And how about the mileage?
BL: If the electricity is produced by renewable means and non-fossil fuels, the mileage is infinite. By our calculation, if a person does a 60-mile trip, so that the internal combustion engine has to help for the last 20, we figure the equivalent mileage would be about 150 miles per gallon.
DP: And, ah, I heard you have a special program for journalists to get a free Volt?
BL: Yeah. (LAUGHS) Actually, what’s planned for journalists is… We’ve run into a great deal of skepticism on this program. There are cynics, and some of them are our competitors, who say, “Don’t be fooled by what General Motors is showing you. They have no intention of building this thing. This is just smoke and mirrors to take everybody’s mind off their sport utilities,” and so forth.
And in order to allay that, at various stages of the program, we are going to bring in members of the media. I’m hoping that as early as spring of ‘08, we will have the first rough prototypes running, which will permit members of the media to drive 30 or 40 miles purely on batteries and listen to the internal combustion engine kick in.
DP: But you understand why people are skeptical. I mean, you’re still lobbying to keep the Federal mileage requirements from going up, and so on.
BL: Well, we and Toyota! And Honda. And everybody.
You know, the media likes to say, “The Detroit Big Three are fighting the fuel economic proposals.” No, no, no–the whole automotive industry is fighting! Why? Because they’re impossible.
I mean, it’s easy for the Senate to say, “You know what? 35 miles per gallon sounds like a good number.” And then somebody else says, “Oh, why don’t we say 40?” I mean, these are crazy numbers.
They never talk to us and actually ask us, “What are you capable of doing without having to raise the price of cars by six or seven or eight thousand dollars?” So unfortunately, logic doesn’t always prevail.
What if Congress passes a law that says, to preserve the nation’s highway infrastructure, starting 2017, cars are no longer allowed to touch the road? They must levitate two inches above the road! It’s our duty to say, “Hey, folks. It ain’t going to work.”
DP: Actually, I heard Toyota has a prototype. (LAUGHTER) OK, let’s get back to the Volt real quick. Are you still hoping for 2010 for the release?
BL: It’ll either be late ‘10 or early ‘11, but we’re still holding everybody’s feet to the fire for 2010.
DP: And what are the technical roadblocks?
BL: Well, the problem is nobody has done a lithium ion battery pack this big. But our battery suppliers say, “Hey. Stop saying that. We’re telling you the battery’s going to be OK.” We get the first experimental packs from our two developmental suppliers in October. And then we can start bench testing.
DP: And are you saying, as the cameras roll, that at this moment, you firmly believe that this puppy will see the light of day?
BL: Yeah, I firmly believe it. A lot of us see it as the most interesting and most fascinating technical challenge of our whole careers. I mean, this car means more to me than anything else I’ve had anything to do with in the 42 years that I’ve been in the business. I think this is because it’s transformational.
Everything else has been a better version of what somebody else has already done. Dodge Viper, very exciting, but it targeted the Chevy Corvette. Chevy ZO6, we said, “Well, we’re going to do better than that.” You’re always benchmarking something that already exists.
This…it doesn’t exist. It’s all new, which is why it just truly excites us.
DP: And the price?
BL: My personal target still is to bring this car into the market at, you know, nicely below $30,000. And if we achieve that, it will really become a viable solution. If we have to charge 60 or 70 or 80, then it’ll be bought by Hollywood celebrities and other entertainment figures, and the odd politician for going to rallies, and that’ll be it.
DP: How much of this prototype is what it’s really going to look like?
BL: A lot. Obviously, it’s not going to have, like, 22- or 23-inch wheels. But you always do that with show cars. You have way bigger wheels than you put in production.
It’s going to be close enough to the show car to where, when people see one on the road for the first time, they’re going to say, “That’s the Chevrolet Volt.” And it’ll be totally different from any other General Motors car, which I think is part of the secret of the Prius. By driving a Prius, everybody knows, “Oh, that person is concerned with the environment.” Being noticed for what you’re driving is very powerful motivation for what you drive.
DP: OK, one last question. In the big picture, looking decades out, of all these contenders—you know, biofuel and hydrogen and electric—what do you see?
BL: Well, I have to separate my personal view from the official corporate view. And they’re not that inconsistent.
The corporate view is, we think ethanol is best, and we think that is going to grow. Perhaps not as fast as we would like it to.
There’s certainly a place for diesels, for certain applications. But it’s not a cheap and easy solution.
I think there will be a lot of play on conventional hybrids, gas electric hybrids, which we’re doing in our full-size sport utilities and pickup trucks and a lot of other vehicles. Again, unfortunately, a fairly expensive system.
And then I think, in many cases, the conventional gasoline engine will continue to exist, albeit in more complex and much more sophisticated form, with a lot of devices and mechanical sophistication built in to squeeze out more fuel economy. Of course, that isn’t free either.
Fuel cells probably will play some role, although that is somewhat dependent on how fast the fuel-cell refueling infrastructure gets propagated. So–
DP: But you didn’t mention electric in all that.
BL: Well, that’s because I was saving the best for last.
DP: Oh. (LAUGHTER)
BL: Electric is going to play a big role. A lot of the answer to your question depends on how good a job do we do commercializing the Volt. Will it live up to its promise of 40 plus mile electric range? Will the battery last ten years? Can we bring it in at a price that most people could afford? If the answer is yes to all that, then I think the future for electrics is absolutely unlimited.
• LINK
• E-MAIL THIS
148 comments so far...
• 1.
September 20th,
2007
10:51 pm
9/20 4:30 p.m. Hawaii Time
Hi David:
I appreciated your article on EV but I am not impressed with what Detroit is doing Twenty years ago I drove an EV with Soleq electronics using lead acid sealed batteries 40,000 miles. This was installed in a Ford and I could get 40 miles a day, and one day got 65 (with some extra charging).
I headed up an EV Demonstration project funded by USDOE but the last leader in my final year said it will be up to Detroit. I actually installed a generator in a pickup EV to give me the “limp-home” capability.
Now I am receiving two Toyotas,the 2008 Prius can get 63 miles to a gallon of gas. We are buying 1000 of these to make available to low income families who have long distances to compute to work, and they will be paid by the gas savings as it is now at $3.30 a gallon.
Twenty years ago we suspected the oil industry was “cooperating” with the Detroit industry. Now we are approaching a crisis, and Detroit has made a worthy effort.
Dick Neill gkahmm@Gmail.com (the address of our $1.5 billion dollar program we are launching to provide truly affordable housing, hybrid vehicle, micro-finance, etc) or gni@hawaii.rr.com
— Posted by RICHARD NEILL
• 2.
September 20th,
2007
11:01 pm
David –
I live in Detroit. I’ve worked in and around the car industry all my life. I’ve seem the influence the auto companies wield and I now see the bad state the area is in.
Someone on an airplane asked me what I thought the US auto industry should do given the competition and the gas price and supply trends. They were quite surprised at my answer. I’m going to share it with you in the hopes that Bob Lutz reads it and takes it to heart. I really think that GM is best poised of the Big 3 to act on this idea.
I think the Big 3 should take their still deep engineering talent and coffers and reshape themselves into leaders of mass transit and the transportation of tomorrow. As much as Lutz wants to say that the Volt is something new, it’s still a car. It ignores the economy of scale you get from mass transit. I also believe that it’s possible to improve on what’s out there in a way that acknowledges and addresses the needs of individual transportation better than, for example, subways or buses.
I’ve watched a lot of good mass transit ideas die around Detroit over the last 40 years. I’ve seen a lot of effective mass transit systems in many other cities around the world. I can’t help but think that mass transit in Detroit is killed at least in part by the Big 3. I think they should change that and make it the showcase for mass transit to the world.
— Posted by Stephen Vance
• 3.
September 20th,
2007
11:20 pm
Great article on the Chevy Volt, and excellent piece on CBS News “Sunday Morning.”
I’m also extremely interested in looking for ways to support advanced battery technology for automobiles. The problem (mostly a P.R. problem) the car companies have is that when the public sees the comment “…we’re shooting for a range of 40 miles because we have great data that says most of the commutes are inside that number…,” they think they won’t be able to go farther than 40 miles. The rest of the explanation about how it all works gets lost for most people, except for the geeks.
In my view, Tesla is the company that’s getting it right. They understand that the public demand is for no fossil fuel use, a long range (250 or so miles), and a quick recharge capability. ZAP teases us with the great specs (300-400 mile range, all-electric, recharge in 7-9 minutes). Trouble is, they aren’t for real — they’re still doing golf carts.
Stay with this story, David. As Bob Lutz says, electric cars are transformational, and they are the only technology that will move us away from fossil fueled vehicles sooner rather than later.
Mike Salsgiver
Portland, OR
— Posted by Mike Salsgiver
• 4.
September 20th,
2007
11:52 pm
What might be useful is to talk about battery life (which is maintenance) vs. cost of oil, gas, lube, fuel filter, muffler, etc. Lithium batteries don’t last very long in consumer items - 2 or 3 years? What is the comparable replacement/maintenance vs. fossil fuel comparables? 40 mile range is good for me, and I’m sure whatever battery technology there is can exceed that in a few years, but what are my replacement/maintenance costs? Can a fuel cell or flywheel (how about multiple tiny flywheels?) extend storage life and reduce maintenance costs? I think that is the threshold of utility for electric powered vehicles (and please remember that the first “cars” were electric-powered, with cheap oil-fueled vehicles dominating for both marketing and economic reasons just a few years later).
— Posted by JohnMM
• 5.
September 21st,
2007
12:13 am
oh, yes, and talking about GM getting into public transportation now - quite a laugh! Many communities (including my former home for 25 years in Minneapolis, and current home in LA) have documented how automobile and oil companies bought out public transportation (mostly electric) and substituted gas or diesel buses, while immolating electric coaches and uprooting or paving over light rail lines. In this country, only self-interest spurs community progress. This kind of thing is true in transportation and health care, and, as I mentioned before, electric individual transport. The dominant technology is rarely the one that works the best, and is mostly the one that people perceive as cheap, not convenient. Microsoft is yet another example (why bother making good software like Unix, Linix, or Mac, when you can make adequate software that you can sell to the majority).
So it goes (nb Kurt Vonnegut).
— Posted by JohnMM
• 6.
September 21st,
2007
3:21 am
Hi, I work for ZAP. We’re the little guys in Santa Rosa, California making electric cars today. We’ve actually got a mass-production electric car and truck on the US market right now, a unique $10,000 40 MPH city-car made in China. We also have a manufacturing partnership in China to make future vehicles. I and over 500 US customers have started driving gas-free and you can too. This is not an advertisement, just the truth.
— Posted by Alex Campbell
• 7.
September 21st,
2007
5:29 am
David,
You and your readers should read what your colleague Tom Friedman has to say
to see why the Volt is merely a band-aid (if even that) which will not begin to solve the difficult twin problems of limited fossil fuel resources and global warming. As things stand now, all those “Volts” are going to be charged by plants using coal, nuclear, and petroleum fuels, giving us insufficient, if any, improvement over where we would be with internal combustion vehicles. These efforts may actually be damaging because they divert resources, talent, and attention (such as yours) that could be otherwise devoted to pursing more radical solutions that will be required if there is any possibility of extricating us from the very perilous situation we are in.
Regards,
Peter
Peter Hess, MIT
— Posted by Peter Hess
• 8.
September 21st,
2007
7:32 am
Dear David,
I appreciate your trying to broaden the general knowledge about the Volt, but I will be cynical and not trust what GM is stating. A few years ago there were electric cars already in production and many groups, including the auto industry, made a huge effort to take them away from the market and consumers. There is even a documentary about it, which although might be one sided, clearly shows that the big car makers have previously embarked down this without truly meaning to sell the cars. I will hold my enthusiasm until I see real, production level cars sold to the public.
Carlos G-N.
Burlington, NJ
— Posted by Carlos Gonzalez-Najera
• 9.
September 21st,
2007
8:29 am
What a snow job. GM does not have the batteries. They have promises for batteries. IF the batteries become available, Prius will also have them and there will be a plug in Prius. Ethanol is a politician’s solution not technically viable.
Robert Ross
35 Stewart Place
Mt. Kisco, NY 10549
— Posted by Robert Ross
• 10.
September 21st,
2007
8:51 am
Expanded public transportation if the answer. If every fifth vehicle on the road was a large bus, either electrical, natural gas, or petroleum, there would be far less pollution, much less traffic, and more relaxed people arriving at work. The cowboy concept of everyone having their own vehicle is dysfunctional in large urban contexts, which is the reality of the United States. Our current transportation system poisons our air, our land, and our water, not to mention accelerating global warming exponentially. Our big three auto companies are going to self implode shortly if they don’t adapt to the twenty-first centuries needs. Right now in the New York metropolitan area there is traffic about twenty hours each day. It is time to put an end to that.
About one hundred years ago, when George M. Cohan wrote a song “Only Forty-Five minutes to Broadway” he was reacting to a comment made by the great American actress Maude Adams, who referred to the time it took her to get from her home in Ronkonkoma, Suffolk County, New York, to the theatre in Manhattan. You can probably still do it, but only at 3:00 am. We need public transportation now.
— Posted by Joel L. Friedlander
