The General Motors (GM) Volt and E-Flex: Transportation’s Future

For many reasons, I have never been a big fan of General Motors. With the exception of the Corvette and the short lived EV1 electric vehicle, their products have never inspired much enthusiasm from me. Moreover, I am turned off by the company’s shameless use of patriotic rhetoric to market their vehicles. Many of their cars and trucks may be assembled in America (so are Toyota’s), but like most modern companies, GM has a thoroughly global supply chain. Wall Street is also not a big fan of GM these days. The company is habitually losing tons of money (largely due to spiraling costs associated with pensioned workers who’s medical costs alone are in the billions of dollars annually) and huge swaths of global market share to Toyota. Even so, I am eagerly purchasing some shares of GM and plan to buy more over the next few years. The reason is that I see big things happening at GM in the next 5 years. The company is trimming excess and showing signs of a desire to become a true transportation innovator. This renewed desire to innovate is symbolized by the energy the company is expending developing a new vehicle called the Volt, which is scheduled to hit the US market in 2010.

The Volt is a significant departure from traditional automotive engineering. It is not a hybrid vehicle like the Toyota Prius. It is an extended-range electric vehicle (E-REV). While traditional automobiles and hybrids derive some power from mechanical linkages between an internal combustion engine and the wheels, the Volt will be powered entirely by an electric motor and a lithium-ion battery pack. Even components like AC compressors traditionally powered by pulleys and belts mechanically linked to the engine will be powered electrically in the Volt. To recharge the batteries, you will simply plug the Volt into a standard 110 V household receptacle.

When fully charged, the batteries will propel the car 40 miles, about what most people drive in a typical day. But on extended trips an onboard generator (a traditional gasoline or E85 powered engine) will kick in to recharge the batteries. The combination will deliver a range of about 640 miles on one 12 gallon tank of fuel (50+ miles per gallon). The Volt will be the first GM vehicle based on the E-Flex platform, which strives to standardize many of the components of an electric vehicle but allows for the relatively easy substitution of high capacity battery packs and more efficient electricity generating systems as technology advances. For example, future generators may run on E100, biodiesel, or may even be hydrogen fuel cells.

E-Flex is going to be huge. Electric powered cars are the future (ironically they are also the past). They have fewer moving parts (and thus require less maintenance) and the diversity of electricity generating options is ideal for a future where the energy economy will be much more diversified then the mostly “fossil-fuel” derived economy we have today. GM is one company that seems committed to this future. The Volt and E-Flex platforms are evidence of this commitment as is GM’s interest in investing in Coskata, a company that is striving to commercialize technology that converts almost any biomass feed-stock (from wood chips to switchgrass) into ethanol at a cost of about 1 dollar per gallon. Can Coskata deliver? That is a question that will have to wait for a future post.