GM took tons of heat for killing its first electric car, the EV1. Now it’s back with the Volt. Based on simple concepts, the Volt has revolutionary potential and an audacious 2010 launch target. Better yet: It counts former critics among its leading fans

It’s early on a Sunday morning in December. Motor City is covered in slush and ice as Jon Lauckner, General Motors’ vice-president of global program management, and a handful of colleagues board one of the company’s private jets, a Gulfstream bound for sunny Anaheim, Calif., to attend the 23rd annual Electric Vehicle Symposium (EVS23). There, with thousands of enviro-car enthusiasts in attendance, Lauckner and a few key members of GM’s green team will be exhibiting the company’s latest advances in zero-emission automotive technology, and laying out its strategy and timeline for bringing these to market. GM was a founding sponsor of EVS, and has been attending for more than two decades. But this year is special. For the first time since 2002, when GM scrapped its Saturn EV1 electric-car project - an admitted strategic blunder that disappointed legions of fans and led to the company’s vilification in Chris Paine’s 2006 documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? - North America’s largest automaker will be reporting real progress on the development of a battery-powered vehicle for ordinary drivers: the Chevy Volt. And Lauckner, a plainspoken, mustachioed Michigan native, will have the privilege of delivering the good news.

Frankly, GM needs some good news to talk about. Over the past five years, onerous union obligations, including the legacy health-care costs of its pensioners, have bled GM’s finances at home. Meantime, the automaker has been losing market share to its more fuel-efficient Japanese rivals as the rapid industrialization of China and India boost gasoline prices in the U.S., and weaken demand for the trucks and SUVs that have long been GM’s bread and butter. If these trends sound frightening, the bottom line is downright bleak. Since 2002, GM’s stock has dropped 20%, to a 25-year-low, and the automaker has cumulatively lost a whopping $44 billion (all currencies U.S.) - nearly three times what GM is currently worth on the public markets. A slow turnaround is in the works, though. In September, GM negotiated a more favourable contract with the United Auto Workers, which created an independent trust to administer retiree health-care benefits and move spiralling costs off its balance sheet. It has also won kudos from the automotive press for its 2008 lineup of vehicles, including the Cadillac CTS (Motor Trend’s Car of the Year) and the Chevy Tahoe hybrid (Green Car Journal’s Car of the Year). Still, GM suffers from a troubled reputation and is viewed by motorists as a second-rate automaker that trails its Japanese competitors. “There are people who think we’ve lost our technological edge,” says Lauckner.
A year ago, however, GM took a major step towards reclaiming that edge. At the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS), held in Detroit, Bob Lutz, head of product development, unveiled the muscular Chevy Volt, a concept vehicle that he vowed would become the world’s first mass-produced electric car. A direct descendent of the EV1, the new vehicle Lutz described would derive all its propulsion from a single electric motor. For the first 64 kilometres of a trip - longer than most daily commutes - a rechargeable battery that you could plug into a standard wall socket at home would power the motor all by itself; for longer drives, a gasoline generator would kick in to provide continued electrical current to the motor.

Technically speaking, the car would be a hybrid. But unlike current models such as Toyota’s Prius, it would be propelled entirely by its electric motor, rather than alternating between electric and gas motors. This “series” hybrid design (as opposed to “parallel” technology) would give the Volt a range of about 960 kilometres if you were to drive on one battery charge and a single filling of its 45-litre gas tank. But since its batteries could be recharged between trips, the need to draw on its gasoline generator would be greatly reduced. Over the course of its life, the car would average about 60 kilometres a litre, depending on the length of trips between plug-in battery recharges - a level that would leave today’s gas-electric hybrids eating dust. Or, as Lutz put it at NAIAS, most Americans live within 30 kilometres of work; given the range of the Volt on its battery alone, “you might never burn a drop of gas.”
To some, Lutz’s claim must have sounded like science fiction. But when he pulled the wraps off the Volt 12 months ago, he also announced a production target of November 2010 - a schedule that even electric-car enthusiasts say is audacious. The implications are mind-blowing. In three short years, consumers could be celebrating the arrival of an affordable electric vehicle (GM’s target sticker price is under $30,000) that would cost a driver travelling 100 kilometres a day only $1,000 a year in gas and electricity.
The promise of the Volt, however, doesn’t apply only to drivers. If GM can deliver a car that lives up to its hopes and expectations, the company will have an opportunity to reverse its sliding fortunes - possibly in one fell swoop. With technology that could leapfrog its Japanese rivals on fuel efficiency and the green credibility that Toyota has enjoyed with the widespread success of the Prius, GM is poised to reclaim the reputation - and the vehicle sales - it has lost in these past turbulent years. Beyond that, it has the opportunity to create a technology that it can start building into its entire vehicle fleet, one that has the potential to alter the whole concept of the automobile once and for all.
But there’s a roadblock standing in the way of the Volt’s arrival: the battery. Liquid-cooled and managed by complex software, the lithium-ion power source will be the most advanced energy storage unit in the world, and GM is moving forward on the Volt’s engineering and design under the assumption that the battery will work. At this time, however, that is a big assumption. Lithium-ion batteries may be commonly used in consumer electronics, such as laptop computers. But no one has tried to put one in a car, and it’s an open question as to whether they’ll stand up to the rigours of daily driving, or whether they’ll meet minimum lifespans required in some U.S. states - or even if GM will be able to build them into cars at a price that typical consumers are willing to pay.
In other words, no matter how aggressively GM is pursuing its vision for the Volt, there’s no guarantee it will ever move beyond the stage of being a beautiful idea. The technology is experimental, the schedule is tight and the business plan is risky. Back on the flight to Anaheim, Lauckner admits to challenges but is unfazed. “When we have all the elements, the Volt will be on the road,” he says. “This game’s going to go fast. You just wait and see.”

TOYOTA Toyota has no plans to bring hydrogen-powered cars to market in the near future. But its next-generation Prius, with established technology, will likely have the biggest impact on lowering emissions. It will be the first plug-in hybrid, with an all-electric range of 13 kilometres. The new Prius, however, will not take advantage of advanced lithium-ion battery technology.