Lies? Chevy Volt was always a hybrid
But is the Volt cost-effective?
Lies, PR, and hybrid cars
Have you heard the hype? The Chevy Volt is a plug-in hybrid. Wow. Talk about much ado about nothing. That’s been pointed out on this blog, well, forever by both this writer and by many of those commenting about the Volt on this blog.
So what? Has anything really changed?
Yes, GM did lie. Unlike earlier claims, the Volt’s gasoline engine doesn’t only generate electricity. Instead, it can also help power the wheels. Certainly, that does undoubtedly raise some very serious questions. Did GM really lie to protect technology secrets, or did GM simply realize over time that their original powertrain concept needed to be tweaked if efficiency was the focus?
Unfortunately, the truth will never matter, because that’s what happens when you lie. Still, this is barely news. Besides, if GM realized the Volt would be more efficient by making a few tweaks to the powertrain, then they had to make those tweaks. Of course, such a realization creates a marketing conundrum.
Regardless, even though GM claimed that gasoline would never propel, or help propel, the wheels – leading to GM’s range extended electric vehicle nomenclature – the Volt was, nonetheless, always a plug-in hybrid. Always. Volt powertrain engineer Pam Fletcher admitted that to Hybridcarblog several years ago, and we’ve been mocking ‘range-extended’ ever since.
And, despite the lies, maybe it’s a good thing the Volt is more of a hybrid.
Technically, according to mountains of scientific evidence, the most cost-effective plug-in vehicle based on today’s technology is a small battery plug-in vehicle, which means hybrid. This new revelation, therefore, probably enables the Volt’s battery pack to be downsized quite efficiently, and that could be a good thing.
But that’s not really the problem. The problem is that the Volt has not always just been a hybrid, it has always been more about marketing than sales. Bob Lutz admitted that over and over and over. Apparently, too many people just didn’t want to hear it. Too many wanted to believe that GM and the Volt were on the verge of saving America from foreign oil dependence.
40 miles of EV range. Range extended EV versus plug-in hybrid. Such concepts are, and have been, marketing concepts. If such concepts cannot be translated into a cost-effective package, then nothing is really being achieved. Sadly, the Volt is far from cost-effective, and we’ve know that now for years. That’s the real problem with the Volt and other plug-in vehicles, whether purely electric or hybrid. They simply aren’t cost-effective and won’t ever be without a technological breakthrough, or maybe peak oil.
Again, that doesn’t justify the lies, but the real point is cost-effectiveness.
Unfortunately, this issue isn’t just about the Volt. It’s about over-zealous government policies supporting vehicles like the Volt with tax credits that discourage cost-effective hybrid and and plug-in solutions, for instance. Ultimately, intelligence, not marketing, should be driving America’s quest to fight foreign oil dependence. Hopefully, this revelation will help clear America’s focus.
Let the car come out officially in market then only it will be right to speculate about it. We don’t know the exact fact why they have to do this because of technological secret or simply Volt is not purely a hybrid car.
I should have added the technical data and i have regretted that omission, but truthfully, i didn’t and don’t think the fact that the Volt has some parallel hybrid tendencies is that big of a deal. if that’s what the engineering science told them to do, then do it. it doesn’t make or break the volt in any way, in my opinion.
consequently, i thought all the rage about GM ‘lying’ was comical, and it was that rage i was both mocking and trying to spin into a different focus. in my opinion GM’s ‘lie’ was simply a result of over-marketing.
to me, it seems obvious the Volt was largely derived as a marketing platform – but one that also helps develop technologies, so it’s not purely about marketing, and that makes the Volt worthwhile and relevant, but temper the marketing. i love underselling and over-delivering, and when it comes to anything involving money, that’s usually the best approach.
40 miles of EV range? who cares? likewise, i’ve always thought this big focus on ‘range extended’ was a waste of time as well. who cares if its a plug-in hybrid, just make it the best plug-in vehicle. inevitably, that’s what consumers are going to want.
just say, we’re going put a plug-in out there that enables most Americans to drive gasoline free, but also accommodates all of their long distance driving needs as well. even better, just focus on creating the most cost-effective plug-in vehicle possible.
Hmm, I was referring to your post missing the relevant technical data, not Motortrend or Insideline. As to your personal comment, I will only say that I could easily drive under 70 MPH when I need to.
I understand now is the time that GM has to face the music in the press. But, I’m just not feeling any outrage about Volt Gen1, and this post just seems reactionary to me.
I would say that for savvy technology enthusiasts with an eye on the challenges of electrifying the auto, Volt Gen2 is when GM has to impress or throw in the towel. I say the odds are 50/50 that GM even does a Volt Gen2 because of all the challenges you have smartly listed. If Volt Gen2 is about the same as Gen1, then GM is signaling that Volt is a dead end that they are no longer investing in. But, the silence about Gen2 is a GREAT sign, IMHO. I take it to mean that GM is considering aggressive changes that may or may not pan out. That is the best approach GM could take given all the challenges you’ve written about.
Still, I agree that the Volt will not make a mainstream impact. The Volt is still interesting to me as a business and technology case study.
So you would never drive this car on the freeway, alcatholic? Then what’s the point of buying this car? You’d be buying too much vehicle. Why not just go with a Leaf, or even a Think at half the cost?
The important point here I think is that EV fans claim that electric cars reduce parts and, therefore, costs. This drivetrain isn’t nearly as pure as an electric vehicle, nor is it as clean as what a series hybrid could be. I think that’s the real point, and it does seem that GM has been deceptive on that point. Perhaps that can be fixed, but it does still seem kind of like the same bait and switch as happened with the original body design.
In my opinion GM has been making promises driven by marketing concepts before they even had the facts and they painted themselves into a corner.
Also, all those points you were mentioned were brought up on both Motortrend and Insideline, as well as a number of other mainstream publications. GM-Volt is a fan site. That doesn’t mean it isn’t relevant nor a great site, but it does mean it is dedicated to focusing on the virtues of the Volt. And no doubt the Volt is worthy of hype, but how much hype?
At some point, don’t we have to step back and ask what is being achieved? Where do we go from here? Are we on the right path to effective change?
Even if GM starts selling 100,000 Volts per year next year (still far less scale in a decade than has already been achieved with HSD), the legacy effect of all their gas guzzlers will wreak havoc on foreign oil dependency for decades, that’s what worries me about the hype around the Volt. Placation. The Volt should be part of a larger portfolio of vehicles, then I’d find it far more virtuous. Instead, such a vehicle offers the potential to greenwash away that legacy effect. And, in 2025, we’ll still wonder how American could still be so dependent upon foreign oil after 15 years of the game-changing, revolutionary Volt on the market.
Nonetheless, I do agree that gen 2 could be more viable, but how much more viable? This car goes nowhere today without massive government subsidies. Even if these subsidies are replaced by scale and the price drops to 30,000, this is still a niche vehicle I bet. Plus, those battery gains will only make the Prius more cost effective. If you run the numbers versus a Prius or a Cruze, the cost-effectiveness doesn’t add up unless consumers suddenly change their buying habits entirely. Moreover, not long ago, Fortune claimed that at $41,000 GM still was losing money.
Plus, today, Voltecs are not viable in either smaller or larger vehicles. The current platform is the only platform this drivetrain can work in according to GM. That might change, but until then, how much scale is really possible? Consequently, we won’t really be sure about Voltec viability for another 5 years? That’s a lot of hype and marketing for 9 years of uncertainty.
The Prius and HSD, for example, have moved a couple million units and that hasn’t come close to leading to the kind of scale needed by the Volt to be cost-effective as a solution that could result in a vehicle that could challenge Accord or Camry sales for instance.
Finally, I admit, I’m being harsh on GM. Still, let’s look at the facts. GM owned NiHM technology and developed hybrids before Toyota with tax payer money under Clinton, then sold off the technology as quickly as possible. Claimed mild hybrids would compete with the prius. Claimed that the dual mode hybrid powertrain was far superior and would put Toyota to shame and achieve more real world impact. Now, they claim the Volt will revolutionize the auto industry.
I realize people want hope. They want to believe that a company like GM can again lead America to greatness, but their record the past decade speaks for itself. Even the UAW and Obama’s task force have acknowledged that, and the Volt did spawn from that same ‘old’ GM.
Maybe this is a new GM, as Larry is suggesting, but I definitely don’t believe the Volt is going to revolutionize the auto industry. Nonetheless, seriously, I would absolutely love for GM to make me eat my words. I’ll gladly accept some GM egg on my fact and will happily, even cheerfully admit that I was wrong.
I’ve admitted that my prediction – many years ago – that hybrids and plug-in hybrids, powered by lithium, would begin revolutionizing the auto industry in meaningful numbers by 2010 was wrong many times. This time around, however, I’m letting letting the facts skew my views, not hype.
We don’t know yet – and we won’t know until the Volt hits the streets how successful GM was (or was not) at trying to achieve a goal – and that goal may be very different than what some of us think it ought to be.
It sounds like to me based on what alcatholic said someone has put some thought into the design – with an eye towards having the car operate reliably for the average consumer.
I think cars that – can encounter conditions – where they can’t “go” are not going to garner good reputations so if someone at GM said “we can’t produce a car that under some conditions won’t “go” they were not dumb in that realization.
Hey, Volt gen 1 is a low-volume Beta, with an over sized battery and cautious drive train to ensure a reliable roll out. It is more expensive than could have been designed, but is probably more reliable and more heavily tested than any recent GM car, I figure.
Volt Gen 2 is when viability and cost effectiveness needs to be judged. GM can afford to be more aggressive on the battery size and drive train simplicity.
Besides, Motortrend and Insideline are the type of publications I NEVER read to find out useful analysis about hybrids. I don’t care what they say about a car like the Volt, and this type of gotcha post is not that informative.
I had to go read gm-volt.com to learn that the engine will help drive the wheels only when 1) the battery is depleted, 2) the engine is recharging the battery, 3) the car goes over 70 MPH. I would probably never encounter that condition, but that’s just me.
I’m just not thinking that GM operates much differently than most other companies when it comes to how they operate.
Oh.. and I agree ..that sometimes GM does some stupid things with their products. I stopped buying GM products a long time ago because they did stupid things in their designs and were fully expecting to rip you off when the warranty die and you needed things fixed that should not have broken in the first place.
Chrysler is worse by 2X.
Ford has varied back and forth depending on year and model but my local Ford Dealer repair shop is as predatory as any I have encountered and because of that – buying a FORD is risky business… unless it’s top rated by CR which, in theory means I won’t have to deal with te dealership that often.
All US manufacturers have taken the attitude that they tell the customers what they need rather than the other way around but I don’t see GM as fundamentally much worse or better.
The bailout – had a good effect in my view as it forced GM to dump their redundant product lines…. apparently something that took big nasty “incompetent” govt to accomplish rather than GM management.. but I digress.
Any company – foreign or domestic is run by humans who are accountable to their customers and the investors.
I just do’t see GM as being significantly different.. but maybe I’m just ignorant of the facts.
Tom-
Here’s a few links, but I heard a description of the Volt as a vehicle that is a parallel hybrid, serial hybrid and EV all rolled into one. Ultimately, I think what’s really driving the dissenters, aside from the marketing misdirection, is the fact that the Voltec powertrain isn’t as clean as what many had hoped. Instead, lots of extra parts and complexity is involved, and that means extra costs. What many were hoping is that by focusing on a pure serial design, less parts could help offset the battery costs.
http://www.motortrend.com/features/editorial/1010_unbolting_the_chevy_volt_to_see_how_it_ticks/index.html
http://www.insideline.com/chevrolet/volt/2011/gm-lied-chevy-volt-is-not-a-true-ev.html
i don’t think gm is a lying company. i think they are a company too focused on marketing and driving perception rather than actually demonstrating real corporate leadership.
no other vehicle has been marketed like the Volt. GM was marketing the virtues of the Volt before it had even figured out many of the technological aspects. cost-effectiveness, for instance, was never even a well-researched driver. it was always about being technologically superior to the Prius, whether it was cost-effective or not. (ironically, the same was said of the dual mode hybrid powertrain just before launch, yet look at the sales results. technologically superior isn’t the key if itsn’t cost-effective).
when the Volt was first debuted at NAIAS Bob Lutz suggested that the Volt would only cost a few thousand more than the Prius and that using electricity versus gasoline would recover the difference. it ended up costing twice as much.
likewise, GM touted the Volt’s original design as being anti-prius. then, after work in the wind tunnel, they radically altered the Volt’s design to be much more prius-like.
then GM insisted the Volt was not a hybrid, not even a series hybrid. it was a pure electric vehicle. now it’s not that either.
gm was marketing a concept that it had no solid evidence would ever be cost-effective compared to something like the prius. hey, but since the feds were pouring massive money into the project, who cares about real details like cost, designs, and real world viability?
GM has marketed this vehicle to death as the second coming of the automobile before they knew many key details and they didn’t care. this was their answer to the Prius, and believe me the Volt was very much about the Prius. bob lutz hated the prius. so instead of taking on the prius, gm gave us years of marketing and some of the worst CAFE fleets of any major automaker.
for what? as Bob Lutz – the driver of the entire Volt project – stated numerous times, to create a vehicle that would appease the 5 percent of Americans willing to pay extra to go green. of course, this vehicle ended up being so much more expensive than the prius that GM lobbied the government to develop it’s plug-in tax credits to ensure that an “electric vehicle” like the Volt achieved the full credit. otherwise, gm’s billion dollar marketing experiment – and lots of taxpayer money – would collapse in their face at a time they need as much positive hype as possible.
by 2020, even as late as 2030, conventional hybrid cars, according to the research, will far outsell plug-in vehicles like the Volt, a plug-in vehicle that the research also claims will never be cost-effective because the commodity prices of the lithium-ion technologies powering the Volt will remain too expensive. but if marketing, not sales, are the key, such research probably doesn’t matter, right?
so instead of taking on the prius – the kind of hybrid researchers claim is going to dominate battery-vehicle sales for at least a decade or two – gm chose marketing, and a product that the engineering hadn’t even been worked out and built on numerous assumptions. but since this was always about marketing it didn’t matter.
by 2020, toyota’s fleet should be 20 – 25 percent hybrid, regardless of government regulations. the Volt and voltecs won’t be anywhere near that.
so is gm really competing? is the Volt really a game changing technology if can’t really affect the game for a decade or more? the way technology is advancing, might not the Volt powertrain be obsolete in a decade?
wouldn’t it be nice, for once, if there were more focus on what can be achieved today, rather than what we might be able to achieve in a decade or two?
yup. I’m not following either. All companies when developing new products – make changes to the product as it develops according to a wide variety of criteria that influence it’s design. Reliability and Usability are two critical areas they often must change as they go from concept to implementation.
I don’t see it as “lying” in general and certainly no more or less with GM than any other company.
What I got out of this is that GM is a lying car company…. and I’m sure that’s not what intended.
O.K. so now I am confused. If the Volt engine only turns a generator then how can it “act like a parallel hybrid.”. Parallel hybrids power the wheels directly and/or charge the battery?
Unless you mean because the ICE engine in the Volt is connected to the battery and the generator therefor it acts like a parallel hybrid?
No. It’s always been a series hybrid – or mostly a series hybrid. It’s just that GM stated that it should be referred to as a range extended vehicle because the gasoline engine ONLY generates electricity, while never powering the wheels in any way, such as a parallel hybrid does. Turns out the Volt can act like a parallel hybrid.
This was a huge story this morning in the auto press. Nonetheless, I should have provided more background. Sometimes I assume everyone is reading the autonews regularly.
Not at all following this blog. What is the lie you are referring to? You seem to indicate that the Volt is not a series hybrid. Is that what you are saying?