Are GM’s battery-powered plans dysfunctional or brilliant?
Buick LaCrosse hybrid more important than Chevy Volt?
With so many options will scale be impossible?
Conceptually and theoretically, the Chevy Volt might be the best car on the planet. In reality, however, the Volt is terribly cost-ineffective and completely dependent upon government aid.
In the auto industry, scale is typically the key to such a problem, but is the Volt and its Voltecs really a scalable platform?
Yes, the Voltecs powering the Volt are going to find their way into other vehicles, such as a compact minivan, but GM has hinted that the Volt’s powertrain is not yet ready to scale into either much larger or much smaller vehicles than the Volt. In fact, Voltecs might never truly spread out across GM’s product portfolio.
In some ways the Volt reminds me of GM’s dual mode hybrid architecture. Before it hit dealerships, the word on the street was how much more sophisticated GM’s dual mode hybrid drive was compared to Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive. Unfortunately, however, the dual mode drive hasn’t been very scalable, working only in GM’s largest vehicles where it has caused massive sticker shock.
Perhaps, had GM’s dual mode drive been more scalable and able to fit into smaller vehicles, the sales potential would have been greater? Instead, for small cars, GM preferred it’s BAS hybrid drive, now already out of production.
Fortunately, GM is upgrading their BAS hybrid drive and relaunching it. Likewise, GM is also reviving their dual mode plug-in hybrid drive that was once destined for the Saturn Vue. Additionally, GM is also committed to battery electric cars, and there is even some word that a scaled down version of the dual mode drive is possible.
Mild hybrids, full hybrids, plug-in hybrids, range extended electric cars, pure battery electric cars. Is this too much battery-powered diversity? Does this diversity make scaling down costs more difficult?
On the other hand, Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive powers all of Toyota’s hybrid vehicles, and it will also power their plug-in and fuel cell hybrids. Like GM, Toyota will also develop battery electric cars.
So, does one battery-powered path offer significant advantages?
The commonality in Toyota’s battery-powered platforms seems a clear cost-cutting advantage for scalable manufacturing.
On the other hand, the diversity of GM’s battery-powered platforms could still be advantageous. For instance, some studies indicate that mild hybrid cars could achieve far greater penetration than conventional hybrid cars and plug-in vehicles through at least the next decade. In fact, while GM’s new mild hybrid powertrain receives little buzz compared to the Volt, it could be drastically more successful in terms of sales and profitability. And, since GM’s new mild hybrid powertrain utilizes lithium batteries, it can also help scale down the battery costs of all GM’s electric vehicles.
Ultimately, GM’s battery-powered plans still seem scattered, even a bit dysfunctional, but there is undoubtedly a lot of potential. Can GM unify this battery-powered diversity into a cost-effective, scalable and, ultimately, unified plan? For now, I don’t think GM has yet answered that question.
