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Now that the California Air Resources Board (CARB) has an agreement with General Motors regarding how to measure the fuel mileage of the 2011 Chevy Volt, our attention turns to the EPA, which now has to decide what official mileage rating will appear on the new car’s window sticker and how to determine what that number will be. The first recommendation comes from the Automotive X-Prize, the foundation of which will award $10 million from Progressive Insurance to the winner of its competition to design a production-viable car that people would want to drive that gets 100 MPGe or more.

What’s with that little ‘e’ after the familiar miles per gallon? Basically, the X-Prize crew wants to convert all units of energy to a figure that’s equivalent to the power from a gallon of gas. That way, a car’s powerplant – regardless of where it gets that energy from – earns a rating that can be easily compared with everything else. So, EPA, the ball’s in your court… still.

The hopes and dreams of electric car aficionados for a purely battery powered successor to the late, lamented EV1 may soon be satisfied. Or not. It all depends on … you guessed it, the battery. However, the latest utterings from Maximum Bob have people buzzing again. Mr. Lutz spoke to EV site PetroZero the other day and intimated that a purely battery-powered variant of the upcoming Volt is a possibility, leaving the range extender on the cutting room floor. This is actually not a new idea and dates back to the earliest dates of the Volt program. During a media briefing back in December 2006 several weeks before the Volt’s public release, the Volt team showed us images like the one above that included several different powertrain configurations. The premise was to demonstrate the flexibility part of E-Flex. This included a variant with a larger battery and no engine to charge it. This pure EV was described as something that could be built if and when the range and more importantly the cost of the battery reaches a point where it could be successful in the market. Ditching the battery. on the other hand, won’t happen because the inefficiencies inherent in transforming from mechanical to electrical to mechanical power without a battery to store regen energy and grid power just wouldn’t make sense.

Finally, the PetroZero article indicates that Lutz will be driving the first Volt prototype within the next week. Lutz’s use of the word prototype rather than mule led the author to believe this was an actual car with Volt bodywork. We checked with GM’s Rob Peterson, who confirmed that such actual prototypes are still many months away and Lutz would actually be driving the Malibu-bodied mule that is now running with a lithium ion pack installed.
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Wired magazine got in the queue for some face time with Bob Lutz at the Detroit Auto Show, and came back with a quote that’s raised a few brows. When asked what the target market for the car would be, Lutz said “I don’t know. You’d like to have it at about $30,000 for the customer, but what I’m hearing from the team is we’re not going to get there…. [I]f it costs closer to 40 than 30, well, that’s too bad.”

The issue is the timeline. His engineering team said that if they had more time they could cost-optimize the car, but Lutz doesn’t want to wait for that. As for the recent go-round about when the Volt would appear, November 2010 is such a firm deadline in his mind that when it comes to the internal team, his only question is: “What is there about November 2010 that you don’t understand?”

Lutz must know how important it will be to price this car competitively. A $40,000 Volt before you start checking options boxes will do a lot to keep people looking elsewhere for green options. For Lutz, though, the Volt — like the moon landing — is much about prestige, saying, “If it doesn’t work, it’s not fatal. But if it does work, it will be sensational.” It is also just as much about a return to the kind of design and technological form that the marque hasn’t seen in a long time. “GM’s credibility is rapidly returning and it’s beginning to be reflected in the marketplace.,” Lutz said, “[b]ut there is no doubt you’d like to be able to leapfrog Toyota and come out with a car they aren’t ready to do. There’s nothing magic about the technology. Two or three years after the Volt is introduced, everybody will have something like it. We’d just like to be first for once.”
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As so often happens when the first spy shots of a new car surfaces, we jump all over them trying to get them on-line and then we stop and take a closer look at what we have. Then questions start to arise. Is this really what we think it is? If not, what is it? Well, when it comes to one of the most eagerly anticipated new cars to come out Detroit in recent years, the late night availability of the first photos causes us to jump first and look where we’re going later. In this case, it was the first spy shots of Chevy Volt mules that turned up late last night. We already knew that GM has been testing various bits and pieces destined for the Volt in previous model year Malibu body shells, but now, we had pics.

As it turns out the gray car that we posted on last night is only a ride and handling mule. It has various suspension components destined for the extended range EV, but the powertrain is bog standard Malibu. The red Malibu you pictured above, however, is one of the powertrain mules. Notice the big lump in front of the driver? That’s to provide clearance for the prototype power electronics module that goes along with the electric drive motor and engine/generator set. Tying all of this together is a standard nickel metal hydride hybrid battery that acts as a power buffer. These cars are being used to validate powertrain hardware (aside from the lithium batteries of course) and start development of control software. Sometime in the next few weeks these mules should start going back on the hoist to have the new lithium battery packs installed and then the real fun starts.
[Sources: General Motors, AutoblogGreen]