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AutoblogGreen (www.autobloggreen.com) has great Chevrolet Volt news, photos, videos and more
Wednesday, Aug 12
Chevy Volt will move without gas in the tank
With the big Chevy Volt = 230 mpg push by General Motors, there's understandably going to be a lot of interest in just what that numbers means and people trying to understand how the car actually works. Here's the reality: you can't put a gallon of gas into the Chevy Volt and then drive 230 mile...
REPORT: GM to build its own electric motors, control systems
Sure, General Motors has outsourced production of the individual battery cells to LG Chem, but the American automaker isn't willing to give up much control over the Volt's extended-range EV powertrain. According to a report on Automotive News (sub. req'd), GM plans to focus in on three EV...
Chevy Volt and 230 mpg: Negative reactions abound, but not from Bob Lutz
Our friend Darryl Siry was quick to call the 230 number "unrealistic," adding that "the problem is that anytime you try to get to "miles per gallon" using vehicles that don't necessary use "gallons" you end up in a very strange debate with very strange outcomes." Indeed. Siry made sure to say...
Tuesday, Aug 11
EPA backs away from GM claim of 230 mpg for Volt
Apparently, we're not the only ones trying to figure out the exact methodology that was used to determine the supposed 230 mile per gallon city rating claimed by General Motors for the upcoming Chevy Volt. In response to a query from the boys at Green Car Advisor, the EPA issued the followin...
GM shows off 120V and 240V chargers for 2011 Chevy Volt
As part of the massive media blitz being rolled out today by General Motors in preparation for the new 230-mpg Chevy Volt and some B20 biodiesel trucks (more on these later), we finally got to see the two chargers that will come with the Volt when it becomes available in November 2010.
Two new GM concepts go back to the Bare Necessities (w/VIDEO)
General Motors says that it's learned a lot since the Chevy Volt concept was introduced a few years back. Paramount among these new revelations is that not all green vehicles are created equally, and not all customers looking for an eco-friendly ride really want the same thing. Some want a f...
Chevy Volt gets 230 mpg, but how?
Under the new methodology being developed, EPA weights plug-in electric vehicles as traveling more city miles than highway miles on only electricity. The EPA methodology uses kilowatt hours per 100 miles traveled to define the electrical efficiency of plug-ins. Applying EPA's method...
GM announces that 2011 Chevrolet Volt will get 230 mpg city!
The biggest bombshell is Henderson's announcement that the "230" marketing campaign that's been floating around for the past week is related to the Volt. The EPA has released a new methodology for determining a draft fuel economy standard for extended-range EVs like the Volt, and under...
REPORT: GM admits Volt concerns to U.S. Treasury
According to a report on Autocar, General Motors submitted a regulatory filing with the U.S. Treasury on Sunday that disclosed a number of potential problems with the Chevy Volt program. Not only is it possible the car may not be ready by its promised launch in November of 2010, but GM knows it...
Friday, Aug 7
Chevy Volt battery plant location to be announced this week
Back in January at the Detroit Auto Show, then-CEO Rick Wagoner announced that General Motors would be building the battery packs for the Chevy Volt at a new plant to be located somewhere in Michigan. At the time, no one from the company would admit where the plant would be located although i...
Monday, Aug 3
REPORT: How the Chevy Volt got its $40,000 price tag, and what GM's going to do about it
It sort of common wisdom that when the first Chevy Volts become available in GM showrooms (or on eBay) in late 2010, they'll be priced at around $40,000. GM hasn't made any official statement declaring this specific price - and for a while there was speculation on which way the ticker would g...
Sunday, Aug 2
VIDEO: Before you weld a Volt, you have to stamp out the bodies
The other day we pointed you at a video produced by General Motors that is part of a series on the building of the pre-production Chevy Volt prototypes. That video showed the IVER (integration vehicle engineering release) bodies being assembled, welded and painted in the body shop at the p...
Friday, Jul 31
Don't buy the hype, says GM; Volt's aerodynamics "superior to most, if not all our competition"
We should have a bit more to go on soon regarding the Volt's aero properties. Boniface also said that GM would soon be testing a new 2010 Prius in its own wind tunnel and expects the Volt to compare favorably with Toyota's hybrid hatchback. Gallery: 2011 Chevy Volt
Sunday, Jul 26
Webchat with Volt design boss Bob Boniface on Tuesday, July 28
Filed under: EV/Plug-in, Hybrid, Chevrolet, GM Source: General Motors]Continue reading Webchat with Volt design boss Bob Boniface on Tuesday, July 28 originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Sun, 26 Jul 2009 15:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Friday, Jul 24
STUDY: Even with electricity from coal, electric vehicles beat gas in CO2 emissions
Filed under: EV/Plug-in, USA Source: Dvice]STUDY: Even with electricity from coal, electric vehicles beat gas in CO2 emissions originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Fri, 24 Jul 2009 14:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Thursday, Jul 23
REPORT: GM may try selling Chevy Volt on eBay
Filed under: EV/Plug-in, Hybrid, Chevrolet, GM, Green Daily Gallery: 2011 Chevy Volt Source: GM-Volt.com]REPORT: GM may try selling Chevy Volt on eBay originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Wednesday, Jul 22
GM's Jon Lauckner says no Volt price until mid to late 2010
Filed under: EV/Plug-in, Hybrid, Chevrolet, GM Source: General Motors]Continue reading GM's Jon Lauckner says no Volt price until mid to late 2010 originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Wed, 22 Jul 2009 17:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Webchat about the Volt with GM VP Jon Lauckner today
General Motors is continuing its executive webchat series this week with Jon Lauckner, VP for Global Program Management. Lauckner has been part of the leadership team on the Chevy Volt program since the earliest days of creating the concept in early 2006. You'll be able to pitch your quest...
Friday, Jul 17
Toyota chafes at Ontario $10,000 EV rebate, calls it GM subsidy
Stephen Beatty, managing director of Toyota Canada is not to thrilled with plug-in rebate plan announced by Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty this week. In fact, Beatty sees the plan as more of a subsidy for General Motors and the Chevy Volt than a real plan for promoting plug-in vehicles. Wh...
Report: GM to locate Volt battery plant in Brownstown Twp, MI
Back in January at the Detroit Auto Show, GM's former CEO Rick Wagoner announced that the automaker would be building its own battery packs for the upcoming Chevrolet Volt using lithium ion cells produced by LG Chem. The pack manufacturing would take place at a new facility in southeast Mi...
Wednesday, Jul 15
REPORT: Ontario announces incentives for plug-in vehicles, up to $10K
The premier of the Canadian province of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty, plans to announce an incentive program for plug-in vehicles today in Toronto. Ontario has already given several billion dollars to General Motors and Chrysler and wants to help boost the industry further to try and recou...
Need a friend? Find the Chevy Volt on Facebook
GM representatives can interact with fans through the Facebook page. One fan asked about what happens to "summer gas" that might sit in the gas tank all the way until winter. Phil (from GM) posted a response by Andrew Farah, the Volt's chief engineer, who said that:
Friday, Jul 10
Day one for The New GM: the more things change... Lutz stays, company needs vehicles that matter
For one thing, Chevy Volt cheerleader and former General Motors product chief Bob Lutz has reversed his decision to retire at the end of this year and may stick around in either marketing and communications or product design, sources told Automotive News (subs req'd).
Tuesday, Jul 7
REPORT: Hyundai planning plug-in sports car for 2012
To that end, Hyundai plans to launch a new sporty plug-in electric car based on the striking Blue-Will concept from the Seoul Motor Show earlier this year. Powered by a 1.6-liter gasoline direct-injected powerplant and 100kw electric motor mated up with a CVT automatic transmission, the...
Monday, Jul 6
What a car feels and sounds like: GM refining Volt driving experience
We don't have to tell you how important the Chevy Volt is to General Motors. The plug-in electric car's success or failure is likely to be seen as a crucial indicator of GM's post-bankruptcy prospects in the eyes of many followers. This being the case, it's not surprising that automaker is pr...
Sunday, Jul 5
REPORT: Toyota will launch series production PHEV Prius in 2012
According to Japan's Nikkei news agency, Toyota has decided to start series production of a plug-in version of the Prius hybrid in 2012. At launch, the automaker plans to build about 20,000-30,000 units a year of the plug-in hybrid. According to the report, the car will be priced comparabl...
Friday, Jul 3
Henrik Fisker distances his company from Tesla, GM
What about the Chevy Volt, which uses a similar range-extended electric architecture as the Fisker Karma? Somewhat disparingly, Fisker suggests that GM's future EV won't really be competition for the Fisker, saying only, "It's a Chevy." He's got a point, though, as the Volt is likely to...
Quicc! Diva wins "Car of the Future"
The Dutch website dedicated to electric and hybrid automobiles, ZERAuto, has been conducting a poll, asking its visitors to rank their favorite ride and offering 12 very nice entrants to choose from. Perhaps not surprisingly, the Netherlands-based DuraCar Quicc! Diva grabbed the top...
Monday, Jun 29
GM: Volt to be sportier alternative to Prius and Insight
Regarding these points, chief engineer Andrew Farah has some interesting things to say about the Volt and the way GM will position it against its competitors. For instance, Farah notes (in reference to the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight), "Our chassis is much more sporty than either of th...
REPORT: GM execs to meet with Toyota regarding hybrid sharing
Rumors that General Motors may get access to Toyota's proprietary hybrid technology just won't go away. Today, Bloomberg cites two unnamed sources in reports that Toyota President Akio Toyoda and GM chief Fritz Henderson will meet this August in Michigan to discuss the possibility of a...
Contrary to reports, the second generation Chevy Volt is already under development
UK magazine AutoCar is claiming that the Chevy Volt and its European twins the Opel/Vauxhall Ampera will be one=generation vehicles. After the first generation, the publication claims, the Voltec propulsion system will just be applied to other existing vehicles like the Astra. While V...
Sunday, Jun 28
Underwriters Laboratories approves SAE J1772 charging plug
The SAE standard J1772 charging connector for plug-in vehicles passed another threshold on its way to finalization this week. Underwriters Laboratories has completed its certification testing on the connector developed by Yazaki. The UL testing has verified the safety and durabilit...
Thursday, Jun 25
GM will do "heavy lifting" toward plug-in goal [w/POLL]
We don't doubt that General Motors truly desires to sell as many Chevy Volts as it can produce, but a number of obstacles still stand in the way of putting a million plug-ins on the road, not the least of which is the availability of large-scale automotive batteries. With that in mind, what ar...
Wednesday, Jun 24
REPORT: Chevy Volt will be built, sold in China
The Chevy Volt is, as has been repeatedly said, the car that could save GM. With the auto market in China poised for expansion (at some point), it's no surprise that The General is thinking of making and selling the extended-range electric vehicle (ER-EV) there. The Detroit Free Press is rep...
Volt chief engineer takes first drive in integration prototype [w/VIDEO]
The technicians and engineers at GM's Pre-Production operations center at the Warren, MI tech center have been hard at work for the last several weeks trying to finish up the first of about 75 integration prototypes of the Chevy Volt. They worked so hard, in fact, that the first car was comp...
GM Veep Beth Lowery: Future Volts will turn a profit
Since the automaker's descent into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, a number of people have taken to referring to GM as Government Motors. That's clever, but Beth Lowery, GM Vice President, Environment, Energy & Safety Policy, has a different acronym on her mind: Green Motors. A bit flowery pe...
Monday, Jun 15
Would it matter if the Chevy Volt is made by an entity other than "GM"? [w/POLL]
When GM is talking about itself these days, the most common new "name" is, well, "the New GM." The Free Press believes that GM should remain GM - why complicate matters. But what if the name does change and, since we're imagining things here, the Volt is used as the symbol of this new brand. A new t...
Saturday, Jun 13
Rendered Speculation: Jaguar working on extended-range electric XE roadster?
If there's any truth to these rumors, the new XE would use a Chevy Volt-like plug-in capable extended-range electric powertrain consisting of a small three-cylinder gasoline-powered engine driving a generator to keep the onboard batteries topped up. The new XE would supposedly debut...
Wednesday, Jun 10
LG Chem starts construction of new battery plant in South Korea
South Korean battery maker LG Chem is getting prepared to supply lithium ion cells General Motors for production of the Chevrolet Volt by building a new cell manufacturing facility. The company broke ground for the new plant in Cheongwon earlier this week and the facility is expected to b...
Tuesday, Jun 9
Lutz does care about the Volt. Stop saying he doesn't
Not so, replies Lutz, who took the time to write a response to the column on GM's Fastlane Blog. Calling the piece "incredibly inaccurate," Lutz goes on to offer his true opinion of the Volt and the future of the electric automobile. Lutz goes on to reiterate his previous assertions that the V...
Vauxhall employees to miss out on building Ampera ER-EV
When General Motors unveiled the Opel Ampera at the Geneva Motor Show last March, employees at Vauxhall got their hopes raised that they would eventually get to build the sibling of the Chevy Volt. Last year, it looked like Voltec-based vehicles could find a home at Vauxhall's Ellesmere P...
Autoline Daily provides first look at production Chevrolet Volt in black
Gallery: 2010 Chevy Volt - Final Production Design Source: Autoline Daily]Continue reading Autoline Daily provides first look at production Chevrolet Volt in black Filed under: EV/Plug-in, Hybrid, Chevrolet, GM, Green Daily
Monday, Jun 8
Rush Limbaugh calling for boycott of GM products
I just want to say, what you were just talking about there about not buying GM products because of Obama, it's exactly how I feel. I just... I have felt this way now for weeks. I have driven a Chevy Tahoe for several years. In fact, right now I've got about 150,000 miles on it. I won't even look at another...
Thursday, Jun 4
GM CEO: we goofed, now let's move forward
GM CEO Fritz Henderson was also interviewed and he admitted that, "We've made mistakes, there's no question we've made mistakes. We need to learn from those mistakes, and we will." He also said that GM "will continue its research in hydrogen fuel cells," he said. "We have demonstrated it can...
Thursday, May 28
BYD looking for more partnerships with Ford, unnamed European automaker?
Now, who might the unnamed automaker be? There aren't any obvious choices. Daimler just announced a partnership with Tesla, but did say that Tesla would not be its only electric vehicle partner. BMW uses AC Propulsion packs in the MINI E. Opel (GM) is using batteries from South Korean compan...
Wednesday, May 27
Blast from 1969: GM ad for Stirling-engine hybrid, the Stir-Lec I
We've seen GM's very ahead-of-the-curve Stir-Lec concept before, but BangShift has found another old magazine ad scan to share with the rest of the class internet. As we wrote last time, the Stir-Lec used a Stirling engine (and a helium reservoir) in the rear of the vehicle that recharged...
Tuesday, May 26
Chelsea Sexton tries out the Chevy Volt, smiles
Not everything is perfect. The Volt (while not yet the finished version) doesn't have the pep that the EV1 had, she says, and she wasn't able to drive long enough to drain the battery and get the range-extender to kick in. GM reps kept telling her, and everyone else who's driven the car, that th...
Thursday, May 21
Ask AutoblogGreen: Do electric vehicles need front air intakes?
While many modern cars, such as Audis, have what appear to be very prominent grilles these are actually mostly for stylistic reasons. If you actually take a close look at the grille area, you will find that much of it is actually closed off, particularly the upper areas. For optimum aerodyna...
VIDEO: Letterman gives ground on Volt, asks Lutz for first production model
When it came to the Volt, Lutz did a much better job of explaining the differences in the way it works compared to current parallel hybrid vehicles that drivers are used to. Ultimately, Letterman asked if he could get the first production Volt before reprising his electrocution schtick fr...
Wednesday, May 20
Ready for Lutz's appearance on Letterman tonight?
While we wait for the big appearance, the Detroit Free Press has put together a top ten list of things that Letterman should know about the Volt. Some are good ("Jay Leno wants one.") and some are not exactly Volt-specific ("Danica Patrick will look great in one."), but they all point to the exc...
VIDEO: Jay Leno drives, loves the Aptera
While Dave Letterman struggles to correctly describe the Chevrolet Volt, rival late-night host Jay Leno takes a bit more care to get things right in his test drive of the Aptera 2e. To get the facts straight, Leno interviews Paul Wilbur, Aptera's president and CEO. Wilbur explains how the c...
Saturday, May 2
WSJ: Keeping the Chevy Volt alive doesn't make sense for Government Motors
One the one hand, there is new government pressure to increase fuel economy and for automakers to design green cars with wide appeal. The Volt manages this in spades. So, it's a good idea to keep it. On the other, it's looking like the government will own about 70 percent of GM after bankruptcy r...
Tuesday, Apr 28
First Drive: Chevrolet Volt powertrain mule w/VIDEO
It's been 28 months since we watched Bob Lutz drive onto the stage at Cobo Hall in Detroit and step out of the Chevrolet Volt concept. In the intervening period, a corporate drama of epic proportions has transpired as Lutz has gone into semi-retirement, Rick Wagoner has been ousted as CEO an...
Thursday, Feb 26
Melbourne 2009: GM releases new shots of Holden Volt
Although it won't actually be present at the event, GM has released three new images of the Holden Volt to coincide with the start of the 2009 Melbourne Motor Show. Like the Opel Ampera that will be shown off at the Geneva Motor Show next week, the Holden is a rebadged version of the range-exte...
Tuesday, Jan 20
GM may not have enough cash for a production Cadillac Converj
Regardless of how much fiscal sense it might make to produce a Cadillac-branded vehicle that features the Voltec drivetrain shared with the upcoming Chevy Volt, General Motors might not have enough money to take the Converj coupe (your fav) from concept to production. The always-quota...
Monday, Jan 12
Detroit 2009: GM to build world's largest battery lab
Along with GM's announcement that it will build a battery pack assembly factory in Michigan later this year, CEO Rick Wagoner also announced that a new battery lab will be built in Michigan. At 31,000 sq ft, the lab will be the largest advanced battery testing facility in the world. Accordin...
BREAKING: Detroit 2009 - GM building Volt battery packs with LG Chem cells
After showing off its latest cars and concepts yesterday at the Detroit Auto Show, General Motors reserved its second press conference today for battery news. As has been rumored for months, South Korea's LG Chem has been selected to supply the lithium-ion cells that will power the Chevy...
Monday, Nov 17
Opinion: Possible reasons A123 lost the Chevy Volt contract
Filed under: EV/Plug-in, ChevroletAs we reported a few months back, all signs point to Compact Power, a subsidiary of LG Chem, being awarded the big initial battery contract for the upcoming Chevy Volt. Why? There are some obvious reasons, including that Compact Power was able to get its...
