- Posted on Thursday, July 19th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
Chevy Volt Hits D.C. Streets
By John Towriss
GM Consultant
5:00 a.m.: I’m standing at 14 th and F streets in the nation’s capital, exactly 2 blocks from the White House and about 10 blocks from the Capitol, where the nation’s dependence on foreign oil has been hotly debated this year. If only Congress knew what I knew was about to drop on the streets of D.C. As soon as the heavy door opened on the big orange delivery truck and you could see the shapely tail end and the distinctive volt logo, people began to gather.
In a few minutes, the Chevy Volt plug-in electric car – the car that truly represents a path forward on energy and a leap forward in automotive technology - is driving down the same street that Presidents and Prime Ministers, Senators and Statesmen, and Diplomats and Dignitaries use every day. The Volt is parked in front of the National Press Club, where later in the morning a panel on alternative energy will take place. How appropriate. One of GM’s top engineers on the Volt, Tony Posawatz, will participate but what is evident even in the first minutes of rush hour is that the Volt, which was a show stopper in Detroit, is a traffic stopper in D.C.
The first car that comes by, a Ford pick-up, slows down, the driver rolls down the window and yells to me, ”Hey, you … what kind of car is that?”
“The Chevy Volt Plug-in Electric Car,” I respond.
“Can I get one of those somewhere?” he asks.
“Not yet…but someday….”
He smiles and drives off.
Next is the security guard from the Marriott next door. She just bought a new sports car but is smitten by the Volt. “I should have bought one of these,” she says. I tell her it’s a concept so no one can buy it yet. Still she is immediately attracted to the cool rims. She asks, “Can I at least get the rims?”
Before long, traffic is in full swing and since the Volt is sitting on the street in a cordoned-off area, we make sure the view from the street is unobstructed. Car after car slows down, many drivers opening the window and gawking. So many do so that we instruct the people handing out literature on the Volt to position one person on the sidewalk by the street but also to hand literature into car windows.
The people that stop by make up all kinds with all kinds of questions. All are taken by the Volt’s allure, and several “atta-boy” that it is American technology that is at the forefront in the plug-in electric car development. One lady tells me she works for the agency that sets regulations for those with disabilities and wonders how those that are blind will hear the whisper-quiet electric Volt as it approaches on the street. It’s a great question and the kind you’ll only find in D.C.
For me, however, the cool part was the context. I’ve seen the Volt at auto shows where it is in pristine settings with snazzy light, rotating on a turntable and every smudge wiped clean. But sitting here in Washington parked on the street like any other car, with dirty city buses whizzing by blowing exhaust on it, horns honking and the air heavy with humidity, the Volt is somehow different, transformed.
It still has a supermodel’s ability to draw attention from everyone who walks by, but suddenly there is context to understand it. Its size and shape make more sense. A Honda Accord drives by, for example, and you can see it is about the same size. It’s more real somehow and it suddenly it hit me….this is the future….but here it is now sitting on a street corner.
That future is closer than we all think, and I got a brief glimpse of it this morning. Call it my little jolt from the Volt….
24 Comments
altfuels
I remember the day ten and a half years ago when I first saw the GM EV1 on the lot at my local Saturn dealer (Torrance, CA). I may have alarmed some of the Saturn folks (and other customers!) with my response, which was very much in line with what you describe here. “Look, you can kick the tires! There’s bird @$#% on the hood! It’s real!” Well, we know how that story turned out; I sure hope that GM’s follow-through on the Volt is better. For starters, sell it outright — don’t just make a few hundred, lease them without a buyout option, then declare defeat and crush them.
Nino Baldacci
Please, let’s save the hyperbole and gushing for the day when someone can actually walk into a dealer’s showroom and buy one.
Nino
Noel Park
Bring it on! What’s the target date now? I’ve got the money, sitting in the bank. Where do I send the deposit?
Until then, we’ll just keep driving our old Impala SS, which doesn’t create any cash flow for GM.
Dave
Glad to see it. But we’d like to see more of it. The transparency of Tesla Motors Co. has established a huge fan base. The same could be for the Volt. Keep the clips coming!
C Miles
Hello, and congratulations on the Volt traveling around DC.
That was a great sight to see.
Strange as it seems, just today it was reported that Toyota Motors “requested permission from Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport by the end of July for the testing of a prototype plug-in
Prius on public roads.”
OK here’s an Old fashioned PR idea -
TAKE THE DRIVABLE VOLT TO TOKYO ASAP.
(or ask for permission soon, anyhow- even asking for permission might get some attention)
This, (like Doolittle’s stunt raid, in ‘42) might rally your troops, and scare the folks over there just a wee bit.
I really think you’d get a lot of press by driving a working PHEV car around Tokyo before Toyota does.
You could put a big banner on it “The General is Awake!”
Or something equally corny.
Here is the link to short full story:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/07/toyota-to-obtai.html
Additionally- GM engineers could just drive a few of the new shapes around Tokyo- you woudn’t need them all to really be PHEV’s,
Imagine not one car, but 10 - driving around the streets of Tokyo, testing GM’s “2010 platform.”
This might also get you a lot of press in China- (and maybe sell a lot of future Buicks.)
Good luck - I’m one that’s worried about C02 and will buy the production Volt if you build it. (just please rename it and tell me where to put down a deposit)
C Miles
Philadelphia, Pa
Mephisto
For the record, all my cars are Chevys.
Not sure why GM is so hardup against a whopping 30-35 mpg and 4% increase thereafter 13 years down the road, when the volt on paper will easily do it in 2009/2010.
Maybe if GM spent as much $$ in fuel economy technology as they did in lobbyists they wouldn’t have to worry about higher MPG standards, not to mention being beat by foreign automakers.
Alex
I hope the car can drive in the forward direction too! The video only shows the car backing up.
Alex
The car of course looks great. But let us hope that the underlying technology will be also delivered in a more family-oriented package. I don’t of course mean a SUV. Rather, a stylish four door small sedan for daily commute and short trips.
Paul
I’d like mine as a station wagon, please. And without the high beltline and with good rear visibility. I live in the city and the concept car looks like it would be fairly impossible to parallel park.
Edward S.
I just paid off my import compact. I hope this will be my next car in two years. GM…Please don’t let us down on this one.
Kyle
No need to worry, GM will never produce it…..the public likes it too much and it’s not 10 years after the Japanese have already perfected it. What a shame, the American Auto Makers used to be the first in innovations, now we are the first to be last at it.
Scott
This is great to see. Plug in hybrids offer the best way to keep the planet’s air clean and reduce our dependence on oil. I’m excited to see it launch.
One question: didn’t anyone get some video of it driving forward? As such a forwar-thinking vehicle, its rediculous to show it going backwards.
Ray
Imagine not one car, but 10 - driving around the streets of Tokyo, testing GM’s “2010 platform.”
Only Japanese auto companies can sell in Japan. Japan is off limits to GM, Ford and Dodge. Go Figure.
“Rather, a stylish four door small sedan for daily commute and short trips.”
Umm… the Volt IS a Stylish 4 door small sedan for daily commute and short trips.
Michael
Might I be the pin to burst this Volt balloon. This is yet another indication of GM’s growing arrogance (without the means to back it up). To wit–over half the country now lives in urban (not rural or suburban) areas, and many of these people live in apartments. How is someone who lives in an apartment supposed to “just plug it in and go?” That won’t happen. The Volt will never see the light of production anyway. In five years, we’ll all be driving hybrids (with technology licensed from Toyota). The Volt won’t even get as far as the EV-1. It’s another GM dog and pony show, but (to quote Gertrude Stein), “There’s no there there.”
Paul
I think the Volt would be perfect for car sharing programs. It could sit in the garage charging until someone wanted it, then go about its business and return to the spot it came from.
However, as a city dweller myself I’m pretty sure that my city wouldn’t like me stringing electrical cords up and down my street to charge my car.
Frank Giovinazzi
Hello all, I went to the DC event and shot a 2 minute video of Robert Boniface explaining the Chevy Volt. You can find it here.
Gary Dikkers
Michael:
Paul:
Michael and Paul,
You both raise good points — there are many people who live in the city and park on the street, or who live in condos and apartments w/o garages who won’t have any easy method of recharging.
You’ll also be SOL if you try to drive one cross-country and want to spend the night at a motel — unless motels and hotels start providing outlets for recharging, again at a premium I’m sure. Or if you could let your Volt sit in the parking lot idling all night to recharge the battery. (The driver could park it next to the 18-wheelers that sit and idle their engines all night.)
A standard size for modular electric car batteries
Those examples make the case on why all future electric car batteries should be made to standard dimensions and slide in and out on an tray or rails making battery swaps fast and easy. That would make it possible to pull into a service station and have an attendant or robot pull out a discharged battery and slide in a freshly charged one, with the Volt owner paying for the service, plus the difference in KwH between the discharged and the recharged batteries.
A NASCAR Volt?
The ability to swap batteries quickly, could also make the Volt useable on the NASCAR circuit. It’d be fun watching one slide into the pits to see how fast the pit crew could swap batteries. Of course, at racetrack speeds, they might have to do it every 5 miles.
Best,
Gary Dikkers
altfuels
Gary Dikkers –
Don’t forget that the Volt is a plug-in hybrid, meaning that it can run on gasoline alone without plugging in. You won’t have to idle the engine all night to recharge the batteries for the next day’s driving if you can’t plug it in, say at a hotel; just run on gasoline that day. Not as cheap as plugging in, and not as clean, but it’ll get you down the road.
With regard to battery-swapping, the question is whether somebody could make a business case for such a system, given the logistics (who owns the packs? how do you track condition so you don’t swap a pack in good shape for a beater?), as well as whether a case could be made to the automakers for standardization. The only time an electric-vehicle driver would even want to swap packs is when he’s driving more than the range he can get on an overnight charge. This might happen occasionally with the Volt (40 miles on an all-night charge), or frequently if the driver has an unusually long daily driving cycle, but as noted above a plug-in hybrid could just keep going on gasoline. For a battery-only electric vehicle, range per charge (100+ miles on decade-old NiMH technology, twice that or more on modern lithium chemistries) has generally been enough that most drivers who can charge at home will seldom if ever need to use any public recharging (including battery-swapping) infrastructure. Some small-volume makers of electric vehicles are working on quick-charging technology that can replace most of an electric vehicle’s battery charge in five or ten minutes through a specialized high-power charger, but again, where’s the business case for this kind of expensive installation?
Michael –
If you want to be “the pin to burst this Volt balloon,” you’ll have to get in line behind quite a few other pins commenting on these blogs; recently we had somebody talking about how plugging in just moves pollution from the exhaust pipe to a generating plant, and we also see questions about where we’ll put all the new generating plants needed to charge plug-in vehicles, both questions that have been answered repeatedly over the last decade. With regard to your objection that apartment-dwellers or people who park on the street don’t get any benefit from plug-in vehicles — well, don’t buy one. Any given vehicle isn’t for the people whose needs it doesn’t meet; it’s for the people whose needs it does meet. As a family guy, I have no use for a two-seater, unless I suddenly get rich enough to expand our typical American two-car household to three cars and buy a toy; but does that mean automakers should quit making two-seaters? (During the years I was single, I’d have loved to have a two-seater, namely an EV1!) The real question is whether the number of people with garages where they can plug in a vehicle at night is large enough to make a viable target market; I think you’ll find that this potential market segment is larger than a lot of segments to which vehicles have been successfully sold.
Of course, the same is true for the EV1, and the other battery-electric vehicles of a decade ago; as I noted above, range per charge of over 100 miles with decade-old NiMH battery technology (or 50 to 80 miles with century-old lead-acid technology, for that matter) is plenty for many people’s daily driving. So the potential target market there might be characterized as, for example, two-car families who can park at least one vehicle in a garage with electrical wiring, and who only need to drive one vehicle over 100 (or 80, or 200, or …) miles on any given day. Not a small group, right? But in Mr. Lutz’ NPR interview in early June, he continued GM’s spin about “no demand” (same as every other automaker, be it noted), erroneously describing the people interested in the EV1 in culture-wars terms as “a very, very small … faction of mostly Hollywood personalities”. So even as I defend the Volt above (and elsewhere), arguing that it makes sense technically, ecologically, and economically, and expressing confidence that GM’s engineers can build the thing, I have no such confidence that GM’s management can sustain a long-term commitment to creating a new class of vehicles like this, given their track record the last time they were technologically years ahead of other automakers (including the Japanese). For more details, please see the links in my comment dated January 27, 2007, 6:19 p.m., on the FYI blog post “Working Together to Keep Electric Technology Alive,” dated January 25th, 2007, 12:31 p.m.
Dan Frederiksen
you make a video of a very special car and the best you can show is it doing 1mph in reverse…
has anyone seen this car move faster than 10mph?
I don’t believe for a second that they are honestly trying to produce this car. at all.
and btw why did you crush the EV1s in the desert…
Storm
When the EV1 was alive, California had charging stations all over the place. If there are electric cars, charging facilities will be created. Fortunately, the Volt doesn’t require thm, just finds them handy. Too bad GM won’t build the Volt with available technology. Good enough beats unobtainable.
Jeff
I think this is a great idea that maybe moving in the right direction, but GM as other have said have come up short on things in the past. Lets be optimistic about this and say this thing really is going to go into production soon and also it will be easy to charge and get great mileage from a charge and get great mileage from the gasoline as well. And to top it all off, it has at least efficient get up and go to travel on interstate highways easily and safely….but then again, that may be too optimistic
Sean Singh
I am very excited about this car. The posibilities are great. I believe initial battery storage will increase over time at one will get at least 60 miles on an initial charge. I expcially like that the car does not look like something out of space. I love the muscle look. I normally by foreign but I am deffinately going to get one of these volts. Hell I am ready to make a down payment NOW!
Sean
Jim
I believe my employer will be interested in evlauating the Volt for possible use in its fleet, as it appears to meet the requirements of EPACT ‘92.
As for me, I would consider placing an advance deposit on a vehicle, and would definitely like to be placed on a mailing list for updates and early notifications concerning this product.
Steve Williams
Bob Lutz why are you giving so much to Chevrolet. I personally do not like chevy. I think you need to give the other divisions products that g d chevy cant have. You are screwing up GM by kissing chevroelts butt!
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