What is it Going to Take to Put One Million Plug-In Vehicles Like the Chevy Volt on the Road?
By Tony Posawatz
Chevrolet Volt and Global Electric Vehicle Line Director
It’s a very good question that many are asking and my short answer is: it’s going to take a plug-in ecosystem. One automaker, tech company, research institute, etc., cannot do it alone.
I read a great piece in the December 2008 Harvard Business Review entitled “Reinventing Your Business Model.” It’s an overview of how innovative business models create success, citing Apple’s business model for the iPod as one example.
Everyone knows what an iPod is, but did you know it wasn’t the first MP3 player on the market? Other companies launched similar products in the late 1990s. “Apple did something far smarter than take good technology and wrap it in a snazzy design. It took good technology and wrapped it in a good business model. Apple’s true innovation was to make downloading digital music easy and convenient.” That business model included design, hardware, software, iTunes and service – essentially creating an ecosystem for the iPod.
GM is working with strategic partners to do the same. In order for plug-in electric vehicles to become mainstream, a plug-in ecosystem must be in place when vehicles like the Chevy Volt hit the market.
Since most of us aren’t scientists, you might be wondering what I mean by ecosystem. In simplest terms, an ecosystem is a unit of interdependent entities. In this particular case, we believe there are four pillars that make up a plug-in ecosystem and that must be in place to assure the Volt’s successful commercial launch:
- relevant plug-in vehicles that drive customer demand and are connected;
- enabling technologies like advanced batteries and sophisticated software controls;
- a capable/green grid; and,
- plug-in ready communities with supporting policies.
Strategic partnerships with key stakeholders define and create the ecosystem foundation, as well as help contribute to the new “green economy”. Such stakeholders include: local and federal governments, electric utilities, regulators, Clean Cities coalitions, local employers, universities and early electric vehicle adopters.
GM is focused on the first two pillars: plug-in technology leading vehicles and the enabling technologies. In terms of the Volt, we’re working with key suppliers to ensure every system and component on the vehicle is as efficient as possible, from battery cells and electric motors to low-rolling resistance tires and energy-efficient components.
We’re partnering with organizations like the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) to focus on electric power generation, delivery and use. EPRI and the utility companies are working together to ensure that plug-in vehicles are seamlessly integrated into the power grid. Together, we’re focusing on addressing issues that ensure safe and convenient vehicle charging, public education, and the public policy requirements to enable a transition from petroleum to electricity as a fuel source.
GM also is working with early-adopter cities, such as San Francisco, to develop policies and enablers to make the community plug-in ready. Some of the challenges that need to be addressed include consumer incentives to make the technology affordable; public and workplace charging options; consumer-friendly electricity rates and renewable electricity options; government and corporate vehicle purchases; supportive permitting and codes for vehicle charging; and other incentives such as high-occupancy-vehicle (HOV) lane access.
A few weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Energy announced $2.4 billion in economic stimulus funding to produce plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and batteries in an attempt to have one million vehicles on the road by 2015. Using this plug-in ecosystem business model, GM is aggressively working to garner our share of the total industry volume on the road in that timeframe. The Volt team is clearly focused on delivering the future. Why, you might ask, are we so focused on the future and putting all the right pieces in place? The future is where we will be spending the rest of our lives, and the future will be “electric”.
(Editor’s Note: The following audio clips are excerpts from a recent Web presentation on developing a plug-in ecosystem. The participants are Tony Posawatz, Mark Duvall, with Electric Power Research Institute, and Bob Hayden, a clean transportation advisor with the City and County of San Francisco.)
If you’d like to learn more about out what it will take to make plug-in electric vehicles successful, join us back here tomorrow (April 3) at 4 p.m. EDT to chat with my colleague Britta Gross, our director of electric vehicle infrastructure commercialization. She’ll also field questions and comments from our friends over at EVWorld.com, GreenCarCongress.com and GM-Volt.com. In the meantime, I look forward to hearing from you.
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“Strategic partnerships with key stakeholders define and create the ecosystem foundation,”
* Strategic partnerships…
* Key stakeholders…
* Ecosystem foundation…
Wow, you’ve certainly covered a range of buzzwords there. Too bad you couldn’t have also thrown in a “paradigm shift,” “synergy,” and a “customer-centric” or two.
1 MILLION Hybrid Batteries that we will need to clean up?
1 MILLION electric cars draining our power supply?
1 MILLION oddly proportioned Prius clones?
Hope this electric car craze dies before we ever get to 1 MILLION.
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I’ll never buy one.
If outlets will be available in public parking lots..
Is there a linear dependency between charging time and battery charge level? If it takes 5h to charge the battery from 30% to 80%, in 1h plug-in time will it get from 30% to 40%, or more?
Are quick partial recharges recommended?
Whaack! Home Run!
This shows that GM management “Get’s it” when it comes to the future of transportation.
From “dazed” above:
“1 MILLION Hybrid Batteries that we will need to clean up?
1 MILLION electric cars draining our power supply?
1 MILLION oddly proportioned Prius clones?
Hope this electric car craze dies before we ever get to 1 MILLION.”
- Batteries can be recycled almost completely.
- Mark Duvall, director of electric transportation at EPRI says that even if we get 10 million plug-in vehicles instantly, we would add just 0.8 percent to the total amount of U.S. electric consumption.
- Not all plug-ins will look the same. There are already quite a variety in development across many vehicle manufacturers.
I hope we get to 10 million plugins on the road before 2015!
Tom,
most of us know the vehicles history began with steam and electricity power moved to fossil fuel due to lack of technology on end of 1800′. It is time to the engineering teams 100 years after that be capable to found the solutions and start an new time for the world.
I sincerly believe that there are lot’s of people with open mind for new technologie and wishes live in a cleaner world.
Best wishes to Volt team !
@AMW:
For every EV you don’t buy I’m going to buy three!
Bill,
How much energy does it take to extract, produce and then recycle these gigantic battery modules?
Why has Toyota continued to refuse to publish cradle-to-grave energy costs to make, use and recycle a Pruis? Will GM be avoiding the same question with the Volt?
Like most of the world’s population, I park my car on the street – How am I supposed to charge a Volt?? With an extension cable??
Volt is one answer to the diversification of the automobile BUT it is not the only answer…and not necessarily the best answer.
Talking about 1 million (or 10 million) Electric cars worries me – It sounds as if GM is focusing on Volt as it is the only answer.
If the number of articles on this blog reflect the amount of focus GM is putting on this one technology GM is going to be left behind on all other technologies.
First of all do the math – 1 million vehicles by 2015 – is going to require SELLING 170,000 plug-in vehicles per year for the NEXT SIX YEARS – and GM has not produced one yet – in fact the Volt is still at least one year away from production!!! When it begins production – GM is forecasting selling 10,000 Volts in the first year (2010-2011).
Even the 3rd Gen of the Prius (2010 model due out in May) is not a plug-in vehicle – and this vehicle is the benchmark for all hybrids.
San Francisco and Oakland (as well as Hawaii) made an agreement with NISSAN MOTORS for their ALL-ELECTRIC vehicles that will be out next year – not with GM – so where’s your ecosystem now?
The harsh reality is that each Volt will actually LOSE money for GM – something the company can ill afford at this moment no matter how green that one model might make GM appear!
It is my hope that Fritz Henderson – who is an accountant – will see through this nonsense and bring CNG vehicles (that are already being produced by the Opel division) to the States.
CNG costs 50% LESS than gasoline – the engines are the cleanest internal combustion engines in the world (and I wager you that they produce LESS CO2 PER KILOMETER – a European benchmark measure) then the electric/gasoline VOLT for a 100 mile trip.
PLUS CNG is for the most part a domestic fuel – ALL fuel money spent will stay in the USA and support our economy – not finance and build indoor skiing worlds in Saudi Arabia!!!
I would drive one in a second.
BUT.
There has to be a change within communities before any changes like this will be significant.
If communities aren’t making an effort to accomodate and encourage these new technologies then nobody will even get the chance to take advantage of them.
This is a great idea and advancement in technology and I would love to see more people being ABLE to use it.
Nothing encourages change like change itself.
It is great that there is a renewed focus on product, but top officials increasingly openly talk about bankruptcy. I would tend to think this is the best scenario as GM could simply take all of its bad assets and group them together to be sold or closed allowing the company to successfully reinvent themselves.
I do wonder however what is going to happen under a bankruptcy scenario. I do believe GM could and should potentially cut more brands under a bankruptcy. Pontiac being reduced to a niche brand is not really going to fit with the company’s overall strategy of being a solid volume seller. Becoming a niche and killing models will further erode Pontiac’s small marketshare here in the U.S. It is my belief that the new leadership and management team would seek to unload pontiac into this widely talked about bad-asset holding company.
A quick bankruptcy would allow the corporation to get rid of costly contracts, debt, bad brands and unprofitable business units. and the costs to dissolve brands would be non-existant since the newly formed bad-asset holding company would have control over the brands.
a quick filing could allow GM to unload Pontiac,Saab,Saturn,Hummer, excess unprofitable business units, contracts, and trim the fat in a way that a non-bankruptcy restructuring never could.
I do know many people are hardcore pontiac fans but the brand has been so tarnished by GM that it will never regain its heritage or heydey that many car buyers wish was still reminiscant of Pontiac.
GM could potentially kill the entire BPG network under this scenario. but we will see what the company and governmental leaders see as important business strategies for the company going forward.
I would hope that management would let their intentions be openly known through this blog, and invite the public to sound off on plans and offer their suggestions throughout this restructuring process. after all we are the ones paying for the restructuring of GM arent we?
I believe George Will was right with his column,”Industrial policy laid bare” when he wrote about the Volt. “This vehicle was concocted to serve GM’s prolonged attempt to ingratiate itself with the few hundred environmentally obsessed automotive engineers in Congress”.
Had GM stayed the course with the EV1 in the first place we wouldn’t be in this predicament, Yes demand was low for them, but most people fear new things, it takes a culture change, ever heard the phrase it doesnt happen over night? Well had GM stayed with the EV1 and improved it over the years, perhaps a change would have occured much sooner.
It does not take a green grid, enabling technologies or plug-in ready communities to put 1 million EV/RE-EVs on the road.
All it takes is a manufacturer to build them, in quantity, at mainstream prices.
I’d recommend you stop wasting whatever money you’re spending on communications, community building and whatnot and just pour it into design, engineering and manufacturing.
When the car is in showrooms, if it’s a good value, people will buy it. Focus on that.
The GM-Segway PUMA program may provide the quick answer to getting a million electric vehicles on the road. The Infrastructure needed would be easy to add, but one thing that concerns me is that a small personal vehicle like the PUMA is not geared towards fast transit (35 mph speed), and there will be a need for commuter routes specifically tailored to these type of units.
In California and other sun-belt areas there are probably good bikeing paths established that a PUMA could run on. The rest of the US would have to build up these routes to allow PUMA commuters and bicycles to share a common road. I suspect E-Bikes could run on these too.
Cool job on the PUMA, now make it a reality.
The VOLT reportedly is going to be priced about $40,000. I don’t think you will be putting many on the road.
There has been Golf Carts by the thousands all over Arizona for years and there not cheep to run
The new cost is: 12 to 19k to start and the bateries are caput’ tn two years and a new set of six will set you back $800~ bucks and if you use them to run arens in trafic you are asking for big trouble with your insurance company this electric idea is nuts. or get a horse same trouble.
Dazed,
____________________________________________________________________________
“Volt is one answer to the diversification of the automobile BUT it is not the only answer…and not necessarily the best answer.
Talking about 1 million (or 10 million) Electric cars worries me – It sounds as if GM is focusing on Volt as it is the only answer.
If the number of articles on this blog reflect the amount of focus GM is putting on this one technology GM is going to be left behind on all other technologies.”
____________________________________________________________________________
Have you looked at GMs website? If you had you would notice that they are not only, working on the Volt , but also fuel cell, biofuels and hybrids. You can read about GMs fuel cell test vehicle the Equinox, that has been testing in New York, So. Cal., and Wash, D.C. since 2008. GM also has the largest inventory of Flex Fuel vehicles on the Road. GM has been the most aggressive alternative fuel vehicle manufacturer in recent history. What I ask you, is what have the other Auto companies done? Ford, released one hybrid, Toyota only recently added to its hybrid lineup beyond the Prius. Honda is the only other company aggressively testing fuel cell vehicles, and how may other companies have produced vehicles capable of using E85 to the same extent as GM. I believe GM is one of the few auto manufacturers willing to seriously look beyond the petro economy.
As a high school teacher, I have spent the last 4 years doing a 40 mile round-trip commute to get to my campus. Please don’t ask me why I don’t move closer to my campus; It’s very complicated.
I have been extremely excited about teh Volt since first hearing about it, but know find myself disappointed to to discover that the price approaches my yearly salary after taxes and deductions.
Given the known long-term Purchase Price vs. fuel savings breakpoint with exisitng hibrid vehicles, I have to wonder if Volt’s $40,000 price tag will encourage more people to look at the Prius as a lower cost alternative.
Please don’t shoot yourselves in the foot again.