07 Jan 07
Who resuscitated the electric car? General Motors. GM's big unveiling at the Detroit Motor Show was the Chevrolet Volt, the latest manifestation of the company's renewed enthusiasm for electricity as the way ahead for passenger cars.
Bob Lutz, GM's product chief, alluding to both Al Gore's climate warming film An Inconvenient Truth and the recent movie Who Killed the Electric Car? (which gave the answer: GM), quipped: 'I am shocked, truly shocked. A GM electric vehicle is an inconvenient truth.'
The Volt concept is a coupe-shaped four-door, along the lines of the Mazda RX-8, developed in co-operation with GE Plastics, who helped create the car's lightweight roof and body panels.
But more significant than the body is the car's powertrain, which comes under the E-Flex banner. GM chairman and chief executive Rick Wagoner announced at the show: 'GM has begun production work on E-Flex, a family of electrically driven propulsion systems, especially for small and medium-size vehicles.'
GM product chief Bob Lutz said: 'We are moving forward with technology that unifies several sources of energy.'
The E of E-Flex refers to electricity: GM stresses that in every E-Flex car it will always be an electric motor that drives the wheels. The Flex bit of the name refers to where that electricity comes from. In some cases, there will be an internal combustion engine to top up the lithium-ion battery pack. In others, a hydrogen fuel cell.
This will vary from model to model, and from market to market, depending on local tastes and the local availability of biofuel, hydrogen and other sources of energy. Lutz said that in Europe the emphasis was likely to be on biodiesel, while China could be the first nation to develop a fuel cell-based infrastructure.
The Volt has an electric motor up front, drawing its power from a lithium-ion battery in the back, topped up by regenerative braking. On its own, the battery can take the car up to 40 miles a day. Also up front is a flexfuel engine, capable of running on E85 biofuel. That engine never drives the wheels; it's there to recharge the battery. So if you drive less than 40 miles a day and recharge the battery from the mains overnight, you need never buy petrol or diesel ever again.
'I am as excited and passionate about this programme as anything I have done in my 40 years in the business,' said Lutz.
