An Eye Toward the Future

Elizabeth, you left out on eof the most important alternatives taht I know you already use in Europe. Diesel. I believe the US is primed for the introduction of high performance diesel technology in passenger cars and light trucks. Although I would not expect a diesel powerplant to appear in a Solstice, a Torrent/Equinox or Colorado would be the perfect platforms to use.

John P diesels will not fly in the USA because of the extra cost of the diesel package and the extra cost of fuel. In my area right now diesel is $.50 a gallon more that gasoline and if it stays that way diesel will be a hard sell.

I also think diesel makes a lot of sense- especially in small cars. (Why not a turbo-diesel in a Solstice? Maybe you could shrink the gas tank enough to get some trunk space!)

A diesel Vue, HHR, and Malibu would also be fantastic!

Your long on expelling strategies, and short on viable results. Your simplest, and most effective strategy would have been just simply keeping up with the competition. 5 or 6 speed automatics, diesels, variable valve timing (And cars!!); I think you call that your “near term strategy.” I call this your near term, knee-jerk reaction, to an option you dismissed in a meeting long ago. Your non-fleet market share was around 15% in October; was that a strategy too?

I hope your hydrogen fuel cell plans are a solo effort and not a collaborative one with other companies. I would like to see GM work out this on its own, and profit from it immensely (on its own).

Elizabeth,
The fuel cells you mentioned require a huge infrastructure rebuild and I don't see any significant momentum in the hydrogen production/distribution sector. The only way we will shift to hydrogen as our primary fuel is if we develop a way to generate hydrogen on-the-fly and on-board the vehicle. Since hydrogen is extracted from water and the water distribution infrastructure is already in place, on-the-fly hydrogen generation is the obvious goal. I understand that GM has an incredible amount of bureaucratic inertia, but if you can redirect the focus in that direction your stock price just might show some enthusiasm.

Re;
“If you compare a vehicle using E85 to a typical hybrid vehicle, the hybrid may get better gas mileage but the E85-powered vehicle saves hundreds more gallons of petroleum per vehicle per year”

Also:
“No single technology will resolve the environmental challenges we face”

Great! Why do they have to be separate? Why not combine the two technologies?

A full size SUV with these two technologies combined could possibly use less petroleum and produce less green house gases than a Prius.

Who ever does this first will get all the accolades. Will it be GM? Toyota? Honda? My bet is it won’t be GM.

RE:
John P diesels will not fly in the USA because of the extra cost of the diesel package and the extra cost of fuel. In my area right now diesel is $.50 a gallon more that gasoline and if it stays that way diesel will be a hard sell.
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The only reason it would be a hard sell is because we Americans suck at math.

Take the new Jetta 2.5 vs the Jetta TDI (same price range)

Price of gas vs diesel here:
$2.15 vs 2.49
Cost per mile
2.5 22/30 .098/.072
TDI 36/41 .069/.060

Your tank might cost more, but you're going to go further on it.

If GM is so committed to non-ICE technologies, why did they take back all of the EV1s? These cars were truly beloved! Toyota and Ford at least let some folks keep their electric vehicles.

Jon, you hit the nail on the head. Even with a price differential at today's levels of efficiencies, diesel is more economical. Not always the raw power you may want, but with the renewability of biodiesel components and the ability of some diesel powerplants to run on 100% biofuel then it is just plain makes sense.

The simplest solutions are the ones most often ignored.

No matter how anybody spins it, it makes no difference whether a vehicle is a hybrid, diesel or fuel cell if it's competition is more efficient.

The number one way to gain efficiency is to reduce weight. It is that simple. I would be far more impressed with GM if they took a current model vehicle and put their effort into stripping anything and everything posible out of that vehicle to see what the consumer would save in fuel costs. It is ludicrous that a Saturn Vue is nearly two tons. It is silly that the best solution to power that vehicle (the 2.4 VVT Ecotec and a 5 speed Aisin automatic) is ignored.

True engineering isn't a matter of making something do more by adding, true engineeering is making something do the same with less.

It seems that we are more aware of our environment now. So whether it's for bioethanol-based fuel systems and hybrids. Still,Environmental concerns, roadhog campaign, operating costs, safety concerns are the concern of hydrid automakers. Oh, by the way, dont forget to read these... Tracy's Auto Blog.

Elizabeth:

I agree with GALA's comments. GM has been working on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles since the 1960's. I remember reading an article in AutoWeek on GM's fuel cell powered full size van from that era. It would be a tragedy if GM gave away its competitive advantage in fuel cells such as IBM did with PC's to MicroSoft.

Respectfully,

Eric M. Vest

jon did you include the extra cost of the package and the operating costs like more oil changes. even the TDI board points out that over a civic or any other small gasoline powered car it takes 200,000 miles to break even and most people do not keep cars that long. you need to drive 50,000 mile a year to get any benifit from a diesel power car

E85 will only lower the CAFE as it's energy output is less than 70% of pure petrol. However it will be of some use on short trip vehicles. Conspicuous by it's absence is the no mention of biodiesel(and ULSD)which have a proven 30-40% improvement with the only downside being NOx emissions that can/will be solved with the cleaner fuels. Surely the NA car/truck buyer needs an option other than the huge V8 6600cc DMAX. And hydrogen is the hoax that just won't stop. Will someone please "show me the math" of this?

Fred is correct. Hydrogen is not the answer. There are only two ways to get hydrogen:

1. From natural gas.

2. Electrolysis of water.

Both methods consume far more energy producing hydrogen than the resulting hydrogen contains. (And if you have to use natural gas to get hydrogen, why not just use the natural gas as a fuel?)

Hydrogen might be viable if we learn to build fusion reactors and can use that cheap energy to crack water into hydrogen, of if we build banks of fission reactors close to our rivers, lakes, and oceans to turn water into hydrogen, but fusion reactors are always 30 years in the fuure, and the tree-huggers won't let us build fission reactors.

Ms Lowery,

You say, "GM has an advanced propulsion strategy to increase vehicle fuel economy and reduce emissions by executing a comprehensive technology plan that includes advanced internal combustion engines, new transmissions and hybrids in the near term, and hydrogen fuel cells in the long-term."

If GM's propulsion strategy is so advance, why did I have to buy a VW to get a car with a turbo-charged diesel engine that gets almost 50 mpg?

You also say, "E85 can cost less than gasoline."

E85 may cost less per gallon, but in terms of the energy it delivers it actually costs more. Because of its lower energy density, E85's equal value price point is 72% that of gasoline. Unless E85 costs 72% or less than gasoline, gasoline delivers energy at a lower cost.

Where I live, 100,000 Btu from E85 cost 50 cents more than what I pay for 100,000 Btu when buying gasoline.

Ms. Lowery,

You failed to mention perhaps GM's biggest success story in the push for reduced fuel consumption, the Diesel-Hybrid commuter buses. GM should be working with National and State administrations to figure out how to finance a total conversion to the "green" buses.

You also neglected mentioning "Displacement on Demand" in the V8 engines. GM will be putting over a million DOD engines on the road next year and the aggregate fuel savings will dwarf whatever amount of fuel is saved by the science projects Prius and Insight.

GM has rightly prioritized improving the lowest mileage vehicles first as this will have the biggest effect on fuel consumption. Improving the mileage of a truck from 20 to 25 mpg will bring a larger drop in fuel usage than would be achieved by improving the mileage of a car from 35 to 50 mpg.

My advice is to do more to educate the consumers about GM's motives and strategy. "An Eye Toward the Future" sounded too much like a "Johnny come Lately" sales pitch.

In response to the post from Gary Dikkers:

There are more than two ways to produce hydrogen. Here are links to two examples you didn't mention:

http://www.isracast.com/tech_news/090905_tech.htm

http://www.isracast.com/tech_news/231005_tech.htm

The goal of extracting hydrogen from water on-board the vehicle is attainable if we make the effort to seek the solution.

"There are more than two ways to produce hydrogen." In response to Tom W.

Thanks for the information Tom. It would indeed be nice if they prove viable.

You also neglected mentioning "Displacement on Demand" in the V8 engines. GM will be putting over a million DOD engines on the road next year and the aggregate fuel savings will dwarf whatever amount of fuel is saved by the science projects Prius and Insight.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I read this and scratched my head. With a larger Li ion battery the Prius gets about 100mpg.
I have seen not any tech from GM coming out in the near term that can do that.

It abandoned the EV1. I would try to reintroduce it with LiIon packs. GM needs some serious help in image and focus. As a normal middle class joe I have seen the evil of Gas prices and want no part of it any longer. Things I dont see mentioned is the Diesel bio or not and air quality. A ship yard city in southern cal is a place where people are getting sick because of the bad air from trucks and ships in the yard.
I have said it before and will say it again. The people that work for GM are some of the smartest folks but the management? Why are they allowed to stay when their decisions have driven the company onto the verge of bankruptcy. What a good ole boys network eh?

Bob

Bob,

You seem to really like those Lithium-Ion batteries. But they are HUGELY expensive. They don't last long, and would need to be replaced several times over the lifespan of a car.

If you put a different type, or size, or capacity battery in a Prius, it doesn't change it's gas mileage. The battery just stores the energy produced by the gasoline engine in the Prius. To store more energy in a higher capacity battery, you first have to MAKE that energy, which in a Prius, as in all hybrids, comes from it's gasoline engine.

While the EV1 was, by far, the best electric vehicle ever produced, GM did not "abandon" it. The customers did. GM built a whopping 1000 of them. After being available for eight years almost 200 of them still remained unsold. The only people who did buy them were pretty much limited to eccentric (and rich) hollywood types who could afford to pay over $600 a month (hugely subsidized by GM) for a vehicle with very limited usability just to make a political statement. GM spent over a billion dollars developing and marketing that vehicle. While it is certainly a fantastic example of engineering ingenuity, and very useful for the lessons learned, it is still a failure as far as being a viable product.

Now let's see, if you spend a billion dollars to produce a vehicle line, and you sell 800, you are going to need to charge $1.25 million dollars for each one just to break even. Most customers will want a bit more "car" for their dollar than that.

plz incorporate direct fuel injection. It's proving to be a real performance and economy enhancer in the VW and Audi engines.
And please dump the iron blocks and pushrods - those should have been retired a long time ago.

Cut one cylinder bank off your 3800 and you can have a cast iron three cylinder diesel. This engine has already been turbocharged so rather than making it a DOG, supe it up. That engine can handle it. Soy based bio-diesel is already being sold commercially in Michigan. Import Daewoo bodies from Korea and put Buick drivetrains in them. Make it a hot fast car, yet economical and eco friendly. That could give the Toyota Prius a real run for it's money. It would probably hit the market just about the time all those expensive battery packs need replacing.

Wait a second...

OK, gasoline prices where I am are around $2/gal. Diesel's just under $2.50/gal.

A 2006 Jetta 2.5L gasser gets 30MPG highway. That's $0.067 per mile, assuming $2/gal gasoline (there's also a 2.0L turbocharged gasser that gets slightly higher economy, but it requires premium gasoline.)

A 2006 Jetta TDI gets 42MPG highway. That's $0.060 per mile, assuming $2.50/gal diesel fuel.

Now, here's the thing: the EPA tests appear to favor gas/electric hybrids, then gasoline engines, over diesels. That Jetta TDI can EASILY be taken over 42MPG highway. Try taking the 2.5 gasoline Jetta even TO 30MPG highway, driving normal highway speeds. The EPA's tests assume *FIFTY FIVE MILES PER HOUR HIGHWAY SPEEDS*. The diesels appear to thrive at higher speeds. The gassers don't.

I was wondering if GM had any plans to develop a full electric hybrid.

A battery bank for high power demand combined with a small IC engine that only provides enough power to cruise and top off the batteries is highly efficient. The choice of fuels for the engine are the same. And if fuel cell technology becomes feasible, the system could be easily adapted as the powertrain is already devoted to electric power.

This should also address the complaints current hybrid owners have that their hybrid vehicles don't provide much of an advantage when used for commuting.

GM built a whopping 1000 of them. After being available for eight years almost 200 of them still remained unsold.

CORRECTION: GM never SOLD any EV1's. They were all leased.

I would buy one IMMEDIATELY...but, GM has crushed them all, abandoned in the desert.

Most people BUY cars (even Hollywood types), and nobody wants the threat of a lease ending on a whim. The fact that GM never *sold* an EV1 indicates that they never really wanted the project to succeed at all. GM deserves to go out of business for such a business model.

I just saw a couple of commercials tonight: Acura TL showing off their voice activated integrated GPS/Phone/Stereo/Information system that looks really cool and USEFUL. The GM response in the same hour was heated windshield wiper fluid. You gotta laugh at the disparity. GM just doesn't get it: not one little bit.

GM absolutely deserves to go out of business. Nobody is going to miss you, except your high priced union labor and visionless upper management.

In general, GM builds cars nobody wants to buy. By luck, they produce a car that 50,000 people want to buy, but refuses to sell a single one. It is a crime to keep asking people to buy your cars and prolong the agony of everybody involved. Start making cars like Toyota and Honda and I'll bring my checkbook.

With gas prices flirting with $3.00 a gallon all of a sudden you became the most important woman in Detroit. I am sure the executives had to fumble around their rolladex to find out who was in charge of this position if in fact there was one.

There is no question in my mind when GM puts their resorces into something and mobilizes there is nothing they cannot accomplish. E85, two-mode hybrid technology and hydrogen all look promising and it sounds like you have a winning strategy and formula.

These are also ambitious and admirable goals (unlike Bill Ford who got on a nationwide add campaign and admitted he will catch up to Toyota's 2006 hybrid production by 2010).

I am an optimist and I know that what is on the bottom today usually rises to the top tomorrow. GM is down this year but you seem destined to be on top tomorrow in design, efficiency, technology, flexibility, focus, commitment and openness if not already.

I look forward to sharing my energy with you in a million ways and with that synergy we can power GM forward. And unlike diesel or oil I am not filled with bad obnoxious gas.

Drew, you misunderstood what I was saying.

A full electric HYBRID, means the it is electrically driven only. The primary power source could be an internal combustion engine, diesel, fuel cell, etc. The fuel power source creates electrical energy only, with no mechanical connection to the drivetrain. It is sized only large enough to maintain minimum power for the vehicle, with batteries providing power for high demand situations such as acceleration. This allows for efficient use of a much smaller engine.

The reason is that you don't need 300 hp to cruise along at 70 mph in an average car. The high horsepower gets you up to speed quickly and gives you those low 0 to 60 mph times. But once you reach a cruising speed, all that extra horsepower is unneeded. Displacement on Demand (DOD) is another way of trying to address this.

Current hybrids primarily use an IC engine to provide power directly to the drivetrain and are only augmented by electic motors. They still use engines that produce more power than is normally needed.

Drew,

Regarding GM’s EV1:

There was a market for 800 EV1s, not 50,000. There is very little difference between leasing a car and buying it, except in this case, where leasing it would save you over a million dollars. And GM HAD to lease them instead of selling them. It is ILLEGAL to sell a car for less than it costs. That is called “dumping”, and to avoid this problem, GM would have had to sell each car for over $1,000,000.00. For some reason GM felt they wouldn’t get many buyers. So they leased them to the public at incredibly subsidized prices. So, I’m sorry, but I don’t believe you when you say you would buy one (one million dollars, please).

Likewise, GM was (pretty much) forced to destroy the remaining EV1s. For a car company to have a product on the road (even if it hasn’t been sold for years) the company has to continue to produce service parts, repair facilities, and worry about any long term liability and disposal issues. Those cars were loaded with half a ton of lead-acid batteries, which were going to need replacing every couple of years, and disposing of the old ones is very problematic. (All batteries are made from toxic components)

GM’s EV1 was a “demonstration vehicle”. California was about to impose a strict 10 percent rule. Any company selling cars in California would have to sell at least 10 per cent of them as “zero-emissions vehicles”. That would have basically meant electrics. So GM, in trying to comply, built them. And no company can claim to even come close to building a better (or even close to comparable) electric vehicle. NOBODY (I feel safe referring to 800 out of the entire car-buying population of California as nobody) wanted such an expensive, under performing car. The State of California was also convinced, and they dropped the requirement.

“GM builds cars nobody wants to buy.” Um, Toyota may be getting close, but right now NOBODY sells more cars than GM. That sounds a lot like GM building more cars that people want to buy, than anybody else.

Your comments lead me to believe you don’t really know much about GM products, and have an overly inflated opinion of Toyotas and Hondas.

I am afraid that if I were running GM you would be out of a job. You are offering consumers less, later. Only at GM can one get away with offering someone less and only in the future.

How are you going to help GM improve fuel efficiency in the short and long term? This story does not move me to believe you have a clue on what needs to be done. I would stop work on bio fuels that do not offer material short or long-term solutions to the real issue of fuel efficiency (that is material movement on CAFÉ like fleet stands). I guess you are safe because the big wigs (read CEO) has not a clue on what needs to be done. If Toyota and Honda can build hybrids why can't GM. Why are you messing around with bio-fuels?

The sad fact is that GM has within it all the answers if management would just listen and lead.

It is truly sad that Finance types have RUN GM into the GROUND. Sad for its workers, sad for its customers, sad for America, and sad for the world.

When will we proudly manufacture cars in America for export? When will foot notes stop being treated as news?

It seems to me that the diesel technology is the most proven for the short term. It also is a known as to what the enviroment has to deal with from beginning to end.

Now may be the time for GM to produce the EV2.

Fossil Fuels (gasoline, diesel and even E85) will eventually come to an end and be replaced by E100. But, we will never be able to produce enough ethanol to supply everyone’s needs.

Fuel cells make for good press but the unaddressed question is: what is the cost of a national hydrogen delivery and storage infrastructure? The manufacture, transportation and storage of hydrogen is going to cost billions of dollars!! Where is the money going to come from?? Somehow, using lots of power to make hydrogen in order to generate less power makes sense to some people.

An electric vehicle makes sense (and the transportation infrastructure is already in place). The only problem to date has been the battery. Well, technology is constantly advancing and in November battery technology took a giant step forward. Everyone take a look at A123Systems nanoscale battery (www.a123systems.com). With triple the power density of Li-ion (3 KW/kg), less than 1% capacity loss after 1000 charges and a 5 minute recharge time, it may be time to break out the skateboard chassis from the AUTOnomy and start loading it full of these batteries.

As an Automotive Design Engineer, I get the impression that Detroit's vision of a hybrid powerplant is much different than Japan's. Detroit thinks that hybrids are for "green" buyers who don't want to pollute the environment. Japan realizes the hybrid option can be a PERFORMANCE package as well! Time to move out the "old guard" that seem overly attached to the past and hell-bent on losing this turning point in the automotive industry.

Just like all the rest of the automotive guru's who have crystal balls that work, well I would like to see one. The ball is nothing more then a guess or opinion. I'm sure we all have those.

Here is my opinion about the automotive market: There are only 5 major OEM's in the world; GM, Ford, Daimler Chrysler, Toyota, and VW. The rest of the car companies are owen by, merged with, have strategic alliances with, or work with those 5 major OEM's.
By the end of 2008, the market will be saturated and you will not gain or lose market share any longer. The automotive OEM's that have the most and best new products before then will gain and the rest will lose market share. Market share is a matter of perception. The American automotive OEM's are perceived as having poorer quality and a higher price tag. I think most Americans would prefer to but American. Other related issues to market share are variables as well i.e. weather, political climate (foreign and domestic), growth rate of economies, etc.
A case in point is China. Just as with companies, uncontrollable growth will put you out of business. It is no different for country economies. China is in this uncontrollable growth stage and if it continues, their economy will be history as well.
If we truely want a global economy, then through negotiations we need to be able to ship dollar for dollar value between all countries of the world i.e. 100 vehicals from your country for 100 vehicals from my country.
My final point is in the year 2010 one-third of the work force in this country will be eligible for retirement. If they retire, who will buy the vehicals every second or third year?

EV2 needs to come back. It was great. Work on the battery technology. It will work!

Dan, you give really an interesting point of view but you have to make difference between facts and speculations, there is lots of question to ask in this story...

Facts:
GM made 1100 EV1 from 1997 to 2000, leasing 800 only on California and Arizona.

questions:
-why only 1100 cars production during 3 years ?
-why only in 2 states instead of whole 50 ?

Compared to what they are used to for their others models, EV1 advertising was anecdotic and worst negative(black pictures, terrific music...) such errors had been never seen for a car maker.

questions:
-Why the marketing director was not fire ?

On california and Arizona only, official(GM) waiting list to lease or/and purchase the car was more than 5000 people with near no avertising.

Dan, you say they were leased because of law, you think it's impossible to sell a car under its production price ?

Do you remember if first S-10 were leased ?
no of course not !

you talk about a $1 000 000
whole value for each EV1 but do you think the first S-10 have been sold at their real production value at first ?
No again, no one can at first pay for tooling, production, marketing first.

They target a market, make a bet with calculation of cost/margin and go for the best sell price they can to take maximum xx% of the market.

strangely for EV1 it was totaly different, they clearly limited themselves...only 2 states, only renting, only 1100 cars...
Why ?

The sell value of the car (with incentive) would have been from 34000$ to 44000$ pretty good imho.
80 000$ without incentive which is still very good for such limited production (remember only 1100 were made in 3 years)

Let's admit renting is a good business(which he is)
questions:
all was going well as is(leasing), so why stopping the production ?
why stopping the lease ?
why crushing the cars ?
why not instead recovering few dollars from selling them ?

GM announced having paid un Billion$(1 milliard) to develop and produce the EV1… certainly yes but a good part come from your taxes (Clinton administration)

If you think it's really big money, i would like to let you know about last GM "green car" project: SUV hybride hydrogen/li-ion the "Sequel"...
as it cost the same 1 billion price ONLY for development...it's time to pay for production/marketing now...
From an european point of view this car is a
nonsens, just an 5000lbs useless car.

GM 2006 numbers 55M$
Margin 1,2M$ so EV1 cost was less than 1 year of margin.

Let's talk about "fun to drive" and efficient cars like EV1 was, maybe GM CEO board will understand that this car (as EV2 four seats project) is our futur, our only futur, gazoline and 20% efficent ICE gazoline cars are dead boys !
Now it's time to produce efficient cars, you have made it once why not making even better with actual batteries and fast charge possibilities ?

thanks for reading and sorry for long message, i hope i was informative and not too much biased.
I'm driving and promoting european EV since ten years now and being very please with them.

I would have dreamed about seing EV1 available this side of the pond, even this "10 years old technologie" EV would be an incredible commercial succes for sure!

May i advise you to see this film:
http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar

and google a little about the impact and sunracer cars.

regards,
philippe from france