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GM's announced due to the Carpocalypse , it will halt construction on the new 552,000 square foot Flint Engine Plant responsible for the 1.4-liter inline four destined for the Chevy Volt and Chevy Cruze . Back in September GM announced it would construct an all-new plant in Flint, Michigan to produce the 1.4 liter direct injection inline four cylinder engine planned to act as a generator in the Chevy Volt and main power in the Chevy Cruze. GM Spokeswoman Sharon Basel would not say when construction might resume if government loans are made available, but asserted there is time in both programs to accommodate the delay, and GM currently builds the engine in Austria, so they "...have lots of options. The construction of the new plant is not going to interrupt our plans for the Volt or Cruze." Due to a tightening cash situation GM is immediately halting construction of the plant in an effort to stay afloat over the sea of bankruptcy. A delay in the production timing for both...
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We reported back in July the European version of the Chevy Volt could be built in the UK. Now we're hearing that those rumors are in fact true. The European Volt ( Opel Volt perhaps?) will be built in the UK at the Ellesmere Port plant, home of the current Vauxhall Astra, and not imported from the Hamtramck plant in the U.S. GM sources say that the project has caught the interest of UK business secretary, Lord Mandelson and that he is interested in seeing the plug-in electric car manufactured locally in the UK. GM Europe President, Carl-Peter Forster said, “We would look at assembling Volt at Ellesmere Port if super-credits were included in the EU CO2 legislation - because this would encourage automakers to provide more ultra-low CO2 vehicles earlier and in greater volume. While the CO2 policy is close to finalisation, we will wait to see the final policy before making any further decisions." It is expected that within the next couple months GM will release a business plan before...
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Edmunds Inside Line stirred up kind of a hornets nest yesterday when they made the claim the Chevy Volt won't use the engine to recharge the battery. Turns out they weren't exactly right. GM's VP for Global Program Management, John Lauckner, rebuffed Edmunds' claims and stated, in no uncertain terms, that the engine can recharge the battery, but recharging the battery is not its objective. Engines are most efficient when operated at a steady state — tons of tricks can be implemented to optimize performance at a constant RPM, and that's the plan for the Volt. As with any steady-state output, sometimes there will be surpluses. Those surpluses of electricity not used by the electric motor, as might occur during light loads, will be dumped into the battery so that energy isn't wasted. But recharging the battery is not the objective of running the engine. In addition to extra electricity from the engine/generator, energy reclaimed from regenerative braking will...
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GM has announced it will invest $370 million in a new 552,000 square-foot plant in Flint, Michigan to produce the 1.4-liter four-cylinder engines intended for duty in the Chevy Cruze and Chevy Volt . The engines will be rolling off those new lines in two flavors — turbocharged with 140 HP and 148 lb-ft of torque for the Cruze, and a non-turbocharged 100 HP version for the Volt. The plans also indicate the 1.4-liter is destined for service in two additional U.S.-bound models expected to debut in the 2011 time frame — helping GM to their planned goal of "one-third of...North American engine volume will be four-cylinders by 2011." Complete details on this huge win for the city of Flint (Won't Michael Moore be proud!) and details on the tech in the engines below the jump. GM's 'Boost' In Efficient Four-Cylinders Includes More Turbos Strategy Highlighted by the 2011 Chevy Cruze's new 1.4L Turbo that is Expected to Be a Fuel Economy Leader FLINT, Mich...
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When Chrysler dropped its bevy of extended-range electric vehicles in our laps today as part of the company's new ENVI program, we wondered how coincidental it was that Chrysler was claiming the same all-electric range as the much ballyhooed Chevy Volt . The Volt makes concessions to seating and obsessively maximizes aerodynamics to get its 40 mile range, but the Chrysler EV and the Jeep EV both claim 40 miles as well. No funny-shaped center consoles, no wacky aero-trickery, just batteries and electric motors. So what's the deal? Not surprisingly, it's mainly the batteries that make the difference here. Battery storage capacity is measured in watt-hours, more or less the total amount of energy used over time. A kilowatt-hour (kWh) is simply a thousand watt-hours and this is what's used to measure big batteries, the kind used in modern hybrids.The Chevy Volt uses a 16 kWh battery and only really functions within a range of 50-80% charge in order to extend battery life. In...
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Thanks to the folks at GM-Volt.com , you can now not only see the Chevy Volt slowly moving on a GM road course, you can see it with a soundtrack! Yes friends, a spaceship-like sedan apparently deserves Coldplay, as its spacey sprocket of an unofficial musical accompaniment. Check it out below the jump and tell us in the comments how long you were able to watch before the music became too annoying to bear any longer. We made it nine seconds. [via GM-Volt ]
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Yesterday's reveal of the production Chevy Volt got us thinking we should take a closer look at the design features, both inside and out, that make GM's plug-in hybrid unique. We've picked out what we think are the five exterior and an equal number of interior design elements we feel are most important, and taken a little deeper look at each. Without further ado, hit the jump for our top ten key design elements that make the Volt so...eclectically electric.
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At GM's "blogger town hall" at the end of yesterday's Chevy Volt unveil , the General's Vice Chairman and product czar, "Maximum" Bob Lutz , made mention to a Volt feature we hadn't yet heard about, and is even more techie-cool than the iPod-like interface on the center stack. Apparently, the Volt will "know how far you are from home" using what we're assuming is an on-board GPS system. The plug-in electric extended range hybrid's computer will then use that distance, along with route information, to determine how long the car needs to run the gas engine to charge the on-board battery pack, allowing the vehicle to truly maximize fuel economy. Even if you're not drinking the GM Kool-Aid, you've got to be wow'ed by a system like that — as long as it actually works. Read the full quote from "The" Bob after the galleries and the jump below. "with the Volt, you never have to worry you use the full 40 (mile...
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If you're a GM fan-boy, you're probably a pretty happy camper this week. GM's celebrating its centennial and you've seen the live reveals of both the upcoming Chevy Cruze , the 40 MPG+ econobox you can't ignore yesterday , and today , the Chevy Volt , GM's resuscitation of the electric car. One of these two will save GM, the other will not. If you can't tell from the headline, let's make it clear again: Keep your fancy-pants electric cars, GM — you won't be saved by the Chevy Volt. No, instead, it's the little Chevy Cruze that should get the savior-like halo. galleryPost('2011VoltNotSavior', 9, 'Chevy Volt - Mass Market MPG'); galleryPost('2010ChevyCruzeLiveD', 9, 'Chevy Cruze - MPG For The Masses'); Despite the hype, and as I laid out in a piece today for Popular Mechanics , the Volt, Tesla Roadster, the upcoming plug-in Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight will not be what I'd call mass-market game-changers...
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If you're a GM fan-boy, you're probably a pretty happy camper this week. GM's celebrating its centennial and you've seen the live reveals of both the upcoming Chevy Cruze , the 40 MPG+ econobox you can't ignore yesterday , and today , the Chevy Volt , GM's resuscitation of the electric car. One of these two will save GM, the other will not. If you can't tell from the headline, let's make it clear again: Keep your fancy-pants electric cars, GM — you won't be saved by the Chevy Volt. No, instead, it's the little Chevy Cruze that should get the savior-like halo. galleryPost('2011VoltNotSavior', 9, 'Chevy Volt - Mass Market MPG'); galleryPost('2010ChevyCruzeLiveD', 9, 'Chevy Cruze - MPG For The Masses'); Despite the hype, and as I laid out in a piece today for Popular Mechanics , the Volt, Tesla Roadster, the upcoming plug-in Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight will not be what I'd call mass-market game-changers...
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GM's 100th birthday celebration kicks off in a few short hours featuring their revival of the semi-electric car in just a few hours with the official unveil of the Chevy Volt on a very MTV Unplugged-like stage. Click here to get electric with us tomorrow at 8:30 AM EST as we watch Chevy's exercise in generating buzz both under the hood and with the worldwide apparatus collectively known as the "media." For the moment, hit the jump to see our past coverage of the excitement — but whatever you do, wake up early tomorrow here at our Chevy Volt Live-Blog ! (10:10 PM EST) UPDATE: We've got shots of the Renaissance Center Wintergarden stage taken this evening in the gallery below. galleryPost('VoltGMNextEarly', 6, 'GM Gets Ready To Rock Down To Electric Avenue'); The Chevy Volt, A Jalopnik History An Electric Sled Through Time Edmunds Thinks Chevy Volt Design Is "Huge Disappointment," "Completely Unacceptable" First Full Picture...
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The video and images of a Chevy Volt on the set of Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen showed a car very similar to the Volt that GM has been lifting the skirt on . But now GM is saying the dark-blue car is "not the final version at this stage." GM spokesman Rob Peterson told Inside Line that it is "representative of the production vehicle," which makes sense as we've now learned that this prop is just a re-bodied Malibu. Though it should be noted that he wasn't even aware the car was out in California on the movie set. galleryPost('voltsneakpreview', 3, 'Chevy Volt On The Transformers 2 Set'); "I've never seen that vehicle and I've never seen that color... You can tell it caught me off guard. I didn't even realize it (the Volt) was out of the state of Michigan." Jalopnik Snap Judgment: Of course this isn't exactly what the production Volt will look like. The production model likely won't have the big showoff rims...
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newVideoPlayer("/transformerscommentary.flv", 494, 400,""); This new video may not be the clearest shot we've seen of the 2010 Chevy Volt , Corvette Centennial Concept , or any of the other GM product-placement-bots on the set of Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen , but what it does bring to the table is behind-the-scenes commentary from real fanboys. The Transformers geeks inform us that Bumblebee, also known as "that muthafuka riiight there," is "the shiiit." You just can't get this kind of insight anywhere else. [via Transformers.MovieChronicles ]
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The 2010 Chevy Volt has been a landmark project not only for its daring powertrain and breakneck development cycle, but also for GMs general openness with the media during the process. Along the way we've been invited in to see the development first hand, even spending a whole day with the Chevy Volt. But despite the buddy-buddy, easy-publicity PR maneuvering, up until the wee hours of this morning, we still didn't know what it looked like. Now that we've seen it in all but minute detail, it's time to compare the concept against the reality. Front End Given that the original concept body had terrible aerodynamics, a radical change to the front end was not unexpected. In truth, the front corner of the Volt has been getting the Lutz-style sneak preview for months now; so too the smooth, swept-back corners and flush-mounted headlights. It appears the intake detail at the base of the windshield is retained and the lower grille grows to the main intake, with the side intakes...
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newVideoPlayer("/TransformersChevyVolt.flv", 494, 400,""); Here it is kids, our first look at a 2010 Chevy Volt , complete, and in-motion on the set of the still-in-production Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen . We got a glimpse at the upper half of the Chevy Volt earlier this evening, but this is the whole enchilada; tail end, blacked out roof, front end and even the final Volt badge on the back. There happen to be other cars doing their thing like the Corvette Centennial Design Concept and of course the Chevy Camaro and Optimus Prime, but who cares? We finally get to see the skin of revolutionary car we can't get for at least another year and a half for an indeterminate price! Yay! Oh, wait... [ Transformers Live ]
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