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Updates from March, 2012

  • GENEVA — Just as the assembly lines making them prepared for a five-week shutdown due to slack demand, General Motors Co‘s Chevrolet Volt and Ampera plug-in electric hybrid cars were named “European Car of the Year” at the Geneva Motor Show.

    “It validates the product story here,” said GM vice-chairman Steve Girsky.

    REUTERS/Rebecca Cook/Files

    The Chevrolet Volt's win "shows this company knows how to put a good car on the road," GM Vice Chairman Steve Girsky said.

    He pointed out that Opel won the European Car of the Year award in 2009 with the Opel Insignia sedan.

    “It shows commitment to product. This did not just get invented post-bankruptcy. This is pre-bankruptcy and it shows this company knows how to put a good car on the road.”

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    Mr. Girsky, who along with Opel chief executive Karl Stracke wore a Car of the Year pin on the lapel of his suit, was referring to the 2009 bankruptcy sponsored by the U.S. government.

    Mr. Stracke said it was the fourth time that Opel had won Europe’s top annual car award.

    GM is working to fix Opel, which lost US$747-million in 2011. Mr. Girsky did not say on Tuesday how much money GM expects to lose in Europe this year.

    Last week, GM announced that it would halt Volt production from March 19 to April 23 and lay off 1,300 workers at the Detroit plant that makes the twin sedans Volt and Ampera.

    GM missed its 2011 U.S. sales target for the Volt and at the end of February had an inventory of 3,600 vehicles, a number that would be higher if it included cars in transit.

    Mr. Girsky said the Ampera and Volt may sell better in Europe than in the United States.

    “There’s a case to be made that it will do better in Europe than in the U.S. because fuel costs are so much higher and I think the governments are very committed to infrastructure here. We’ll see.”

    The Volt was named North American car of the year in 2011, and both U.S. and global “Green Car of the Year” that year, too.


    12:59 pm on March 6, 2012
     

  • Listening to the radio the other day drove home just how little is known about the Chevrolet Volt. The commentator, in an off-script moment, was lamenting the fact that electric vehicles such as the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt do not have the driving range demanded by the vast majority of commuters.

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    While this is true of pure electric cars (most max out at 160 kilometres on a good day), it is positively wrong when it comes to the Volt. Its advanced powertrain has the ability to motivate it for up to 600 km. How can that give anyone range anxiety?

    The Volt is the first of what promises to be a slew of extended-range electric cars and, make no mistake, it is an electric vehicle as the electric motor does 100% of the driving. In simple terms, after charging the main 16-kWh lithium ion battery, the Volt purrs along using this power source for the first 45 km (Chevrolet says 60-plus km, but the reality is that cold weather takes its toll). From here on, the Volt relies on its 63-horsepower 1.4-litre four-cylinder gas engine. It drives a generator. In principle, it is much the same as diesel/electric locomotives — there is no connection whatsoever between the engine and drive wheels.

    Furthering the economy/driving range cause is a buffer that’s contained in the main battery. This is used to store the electrical energy captured through regenerative braking and the excess power developed by the generator. It is this extension that allows the Volt to pull away electrically, and run to 50-plus km/h, even when the instrumentation says there’s zero kilometres of driving range left.

    That’s the techy overview — the manner in which the Volt operates is far simpler.

    Push the start button and a high-tech sound signals you are ready to go. Get on the accelerator and the Volt pulls off the line surprising crisply. I say surprising because the numbers at play are not exactly standouts — the electric motor produces just 150 horsepower, which is not much for a car that weighs 1,715 kilograms. The secret lies in the torque — the electric motor twists out 273 pound-feet from Rev One. The combination delivers a 9.8-second run to 100 km/h and an 80-to-120-km/h passing time of 7.4 seconds.

    THE SPECS

    Type of vehicle Front-wheel-drive mid-sized hatchback
    Drivetrain Lithium ion battery, electric motor and 1.4L four-cylinder
    Power 150 hp; 273 lb-ft of torque @ 1 rpm
    Brakes Four-wheel disc with ABS
    Tires P215/55R17 (optional winters)
    Price: base/as tested $41,545/$44,135
    Destination charge $1,495
    Combined electricity/gasoline fuel economy L/100 km 3.9

    After driving to Detroit and back, a highway-based round trip of 700 km, I had averaged 5.9 L/100 km. At first blush, that’s not overly impressive. However, another 30 km in the city, where the battery and buffer pay the biggest dividend, and the end result was a 1,000-km average of 4.1 L/100 km. True, this does not take into account the cost of recharging the battery, but it is, nonetheless, the lowest average fuel economy I have ever recorded.

    As for the rest of it, the Volt is near normal — there is seating for five and 10.6 cubic feet of cargo space beneath the hatchback. Where the Volt differs is that basically all functions are controlled by touch. The white-faced centre stack is iPad-like in that one simply touches an icon to access that feature. The seven-inch screen at the top of the stack functions in the same manner. The instrumentation is equally out there — to the left of the speedometer is a ball wrapped in leaves. Balance the ball at the mid-point of the scale and you are attaining the best economy. Accelerate and the ball drops, loses its leaves and changes colour and it does the opposite during regenerative braking. In the end, keeping the ball all leafy became like playing Angry Birds — it is addictive, but it’s a good thing in this instance.

    Dynamically, the Volt is equally balanced. The suspension is comfortable without allowing too much body roll, the steering delivers decent feedback and the brake pedal has some semblance of feel — it is still mushy when compared with a conventional pedal, but given the regenerative side, it proved to be remarkably easy to modulate.

    One of the problems with electric cars is the fact they are near silent in operation, which invariably means sneaking up on an unsuspecting pedestrian. Of course, one could use the horn, risk surprising said pedestrian and being told you are Number One. The Volt has a solution — pushing a button on the end of the left-side steering column stalk elicits a discreet three-note “look out” warning.

    However, not all is perfect. If you want to maximize the driving range/fuel mileage, you must select the climate control’s economy setting. As long as the outside temperature is above 10C it works — the strategy relies on the optional heated seats to keep the occupants cozy. Below that temperature, your buns toast, but your toes freeze. This mandates using the less efficient comfort setting.

    Second, the charge time without a 240-volt outlet is long — 12 hours using 110 volts. The other hitch is the rear window. It not only needs a wiper because of its very lazy lie, it splits the rearward view in two. Thankfully, there is a backup camera — a $795 option!

    The Chevrolet Volt is, arguably, the most sophisticated car on the road at the moment — it is clean, efficient and the manner in which it uses its electric/gas combination to eliminate range anxiety represents the near-term solution to the electrification of the automobile. The fact the Volt drives like a normal car is its other endearing trait.


    9:00 am on January 27, 2012
     

  • Detroit • I’ve adopted an almost foolproof method for determining which movies are worth seeing. It’s really simple — the harsher the condemnation from the critics, the more I am likely to find my $10.50 well spent. Whether it is The New York Times or the Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal, movie reviews all have one thing in common: They provide more insight into the intellectual aspirations of the critic than an appreciation of the movie itself. It’s not a foolproof system, however. I did have to sit through the first 45 minutes of the original Rambo before I realized it really was a clunker. But I did manage to avoid Avatar and I have never subjected myself to anything by Ingmar Bergman.

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    I suggest the same inverse proportionality law for automotive news and the generalist media. Indeed, as a general rule of thumb, whenever the mass media is hyping something automotive or there’s a consensus of Facebook motoring tweets, the best policy is to ignore it, run away from it or, at the very least, treat it with the greatest of skepticism.

    You’re probably about to read a whole bunch about a new Tata electric car, a concept the Indian industrial giant revealed at this week’s North American International Auto Show in Detroit. The details of the eMO’s performance are unimportant. What will be trumpeted is the amazingly low (for an electric vehicle) estimated price tag of $20,000. “See, it can be done,” will be the crux of the news stories, a collective “I told you so” from the true believers proving the accepted wisdom that all EVs are expensive is wrong.

    Or is it?

    You might remember a similar hullabaloo about two years ago when Tata revealed the original Nano. Changing the face of the automobile industry was the refrain then as the media hyped its sub-$2,000 price tag.

    The big question of the day was how traditional automakers could possibly survive when some little upstart of a company could sell people a car so cheaply. Surely, we — save perhaps the truly moneyed — would also soon be running around in cheap little Indian runabouts. After all, who could resist the lure of a car that costs less than a pair of Florsheim brogues and a light lunch at Le Cirque?

    Well, Indians, as it turns out. Had those proselytizers followed up their initial enthusiasm, they would have found out the Nano is a failure in its own country, current sales running at about one-third the projected 250,000 annual production. (Last September, Tata sold but 1,200 Nanos, hardly what one expects from an econocar in a country with a population of about one billion.) Why? Some critics point to the lack of a diesel powertrain; others report spontaneous fires. But what’s killing the Nano is that it’s too cheap even for Indian consumption.

    Hide-bound North American newspaper reporters may have been amazed by the Nano. Unfortunately for Tata, its intended audience is not. I suspect the company’s concept EV will be more of the same — much ado about the possibilities but precious little focus spent on the realities.

    This pretty much sums up the entire alternative powerplant movement these days. Walk the halls of the auto show and you’d swear there’s some huge pent-up demand for electrified vehicles of any nature. Auto manufacturers are typically the most market-driven of capitalists and this level of dedication would normally indicate a huge consumer demand as yet unfilled.

    Unfortunately, the reality of the green market says otherwise. As this column has detailed previously, there is still precious little indication that mainstream consumers are buying into the green revolution. Hybrids, for instance, have been the darling of the airwaves for more than a decade, yet they only have a toehold in North America. Sales are barely at 2% of all light vehicles sold. (According to auto analyst Dennis DesRosiers, of the 18 million light vehicles Canadians bought between 2000 and 2010, only 58,000 — 0.3% — were hybrids.) Other than Toyota’s success with its extensive lineup of Priuses, there’s been little financial success in the hybrid segment.

    It’s not for lack of effort or sophisticated product, either. Even upstarts such as Kia can brag a truly excellent combination of electric and gasoline motors, but the truth is that the company will sell about 20 times more conventionally powered Optimas than hybrids. BMW introduced a new ActiveHybrid 5 version of its luxurious 5 Series sedan in Detroit. It will assuredly be a marvel of technical innovation and seamless comportment. But, if the success of the company’s ActiveHybrid X6 is any indication, precious few will pony up the extra dollars to save a few litres of premium unleaded every 100 kilometres.

    And what of electric vehicles themselves? Well, both Chevrolet’s Volt and the Nissan Leaf have been on the market for a year. Both are amazingly sophisticated cars. Both offer substantial emissions reduction. Yet, for all their hype and the enormous subsidies governments have thrown at them, they combined for less than 18,000 sales in the U.S. last year and barely 25,000 worldwide, their emissions-reducing frugality barely offsetting the 21,500 extra Porsches — mostly Cayennes — the German sports car maker sold in 2011 compared with 2010.

    Despite all the alternatives revealed here in Detroit, despite all the hype surrounding the electrification of the automobile and despite the incentives governments the world over are tossing around like so much penny candy, there is no green revolution. What consumers really want is conventional automobiles with no quirky habits or driveability compromises that get a bit better fuel economy so they can save a few bucks.

    Consumers are buying fuel economy — emissions reduction, not so much.


    1:22 pm on January 13, 2012
     

  • DETROIT • General Motors will know by May or June if its plug-in electric Volt will succeed in the market, product planning chief Stephen Girksky said Tuesday.

    “We’ll know by June if this car is gonna have legs or not,” Girsky told the Automotive News World Congress on the sidelines of the Detroit auto show.

    Related

    “We are prepared for it if it does.”

    GM has sold 8,000 Volts since its launch just over a year ago, less than the 10,000 units forecast. But the primary constraint has been a tight supply, which has limited the ability of dealers to deliver and market the vehicles, Girsky said.

    Despite the low volumes, the Volt has paid dividends in terms of helping the once-struggling automaker’s attract new customers and burnishing its green credentials. The Volt was the first plug-in to reach the U.S. market.

    The Volt is also attracting a lot of wealthy customers to GM, Girsky said, noting that it is “bringing more BMW customers to GM than [luxury marque] Cadillac these days.”

    If Volt sales don’t take off, GM has a number of other green cars on offer, from highly efficient traditional gas powertrains, to natural gas-, diesel- and hybrid- powered engines. “We want to have a range of product to provide our customers,” Girsky said.

    “People perceive us as a truck company. That has changed in 2011 and there’s more to come.”

    GM’s compact Cruze sold more than a million vehicles worldwide last year and it unveiled prototypes of several more small cars at the Detroit auto show.

    “In the long term, we need to be relevant for small cars,” Girsky said, noting that environmental concerns and rising fuel prices will become more pressing issues in the years to come.


    11:54 am on January 11, 2012