Check out the linked article. Very objective reporting of the progress of work being done on the Volt. Approached with imho journalistic balance and fairness. Not a rah-rah piece. Not a how can I invoke controversy piece.

For those who still believe that GM crushed all the EV1s and fired or exiled everybody involved, read closely the backgrounds of several of the people named in the article as being central to the Volt development.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/general-motors

Peace,

Martin

 

So this photo was doctored?

 

How funny is it that Chris Preuss is in charge of the Public-Relations effort for the Volt?!!!

 

I seriously doubt that it was doctored. Don't know who would doctor it or why.

Look at it this way.........

• I have several thousand of the same item.
• I only need a couple hundred of them.
• I don't want to sell any of them, for whatever good reasons I have or nefarious reasons that you can think of.
• What should I do with the couple thousand I have just laying around?

I could........

1. Provide some to high schools, colleges and universities, provided that they agree to my terms for how they can use them (CHECK! Did that)
2. Provide some to various automotive museums (CHECK! Did that)
3. Set a few aside for additional product research and technology development (CHECK! Did that)

Okay, but I still have a couple thousand of these things, with no real need for any of them. Should I.......

• Dispose of them
• Stick them in a warehouse or some other potentially usable real estate until........Gee, I don't know until WHAT?

The prudent thing to do is to keep the ones you need and destroy the ones you don't. You should see the experimental, concept, and show vehicles produced by ANY automaker that are demolished on a regular basis.

Nothing unusal about that photograph EXCEPT the emotion it drives among conspiracy theorists.

Peace,

Martin

 

I never thought of it that way, but if you pronounce it the way it looks, it does possess a certain ironic flair. For the record, it's pronounced "Proos", rhymes with BRUCE.

Peace,

Martin

 

Lest I give the wrong impression, I don't buy into the conspiracy thing either.

Big government mechanisms are extremely complex and involve many interests moving in many directions. From time to time these interests conflict. It does not necessarily follow that these independent interests are acting in concert with each other, and even if they did, it would be motivated by a desire to persue common objectives that are in the interest of both.

My beef is not that the EV-1 died, it is that the program was not modified to fit the available technology, and as a result, we lost ten plus years becasue the technology was shelved in favor of short-term gains. This is not entirely GM management's fault as it must be beholding to stockholders and react to the pressures they exhert. But because Mssrs Smith and Wagoner lacked the flexibility to amend and sell a long term, responsible vision that they knew was probably coming, the opportunity was lost.

As a result they lost the experienced engineers, the underlying technician base and specality culture, and the "unwritten" part of the technology base.. i.e. that common low level knowledge that you won't find in any manual because it is what doesn't work, not what does.

And as a result of that, the cost to develop the Volt will be much greater because the culture must be relearned and new resources trained and brought to bear.

 

You can try to justify it all you want, but no one else besides GM is responsible for not letting the people that already had the ev-1's keep them. Period.

There are Electric Ford Rangers and Electric rav-4's out there from the same CARB mandate.

Where oh where is the EV-1...

It's great that GM is making the Volt, but they also need to TAKE responsibility for their greedy, influenced, self serving and proffitable (so they thought) decision...

08feh

 

Isn't this tiresome, the repetitive crying over spilled milk? Can people finally let the EV-1s go and turn their attention to what's here now and what's ahead?

I said it before and it needs repeating: This programme was for California only. All this fricken' drama is over something that only a small portion of Californians could ever experience.

Please, for the love of sincerity, can we try to avoid hijacking every single topic about GM and/or the Volt with what once was?

Martin, if you can get word up to head office (just kidding), I see one thing that plug-ins should require: Instead of using a conventional terminal that is latched or connected with friction, these should be the break-away kind with magnets. That way, if someone pulls a boner and drives-away with it still plugged in, it will just fall away without causing damage.

 

We're perfectly aligned here.

Only because I know a lot about the inner workings of the company, I can say that the vision Smith or Wagoner would have had on this technology is HEAVILY influenced by the input of people closer to and more expert on the technologies and the market conditions. During the time that decisions on the EV1 and other technologies were taking place, there were obvious splits in opinion on that and many technologies and potential portfolio plays.

In other words, they had people telling them that electric was the future, others saying hybrids were the future, others saying diesel was the future, others saying forget all that, place your bets on telematics, or safety technologies, or alternative fuels, or expansion in Russia. You get the point. For every topic, there were multiple positions, all forwarded by very intelligent people with reams and reams of data and analyses. So at the leadership level of the company, it sometimes come down to what you are able to comprehend and how convincing the arguments for or against something are delivered. Apparently those who felt strongly that the EV1 and/or hybrids were not a strong strategic play won out over those that believed they were.

Then you have somebody like Bob Lutz come along. Bob is interesting because from a tactical standpoint, he has the ability to see through the fluff, make a decision and move on with executing it. He's not above recognizing that correct decisions don't always arise from a strong business case. In the same sentence he will tell you that hybrids make no economic sense to the company making them or the customer buying them, but that they are a portfolio necessity.

And from that pov, he'll tell the teams "Go execute". Rick Wagoner trusts Bob Lutz' assessment of the strategy and supports Bob's "Go execute" directive.

Strongly disagree with you here. But I'm in a unique position to do so because I know these people. I know, at varying levels, what they were responsible for on EV1, Precept, and now Volt. Sure, some people left for whatever reasons anybody leaves any company. But many are still here and actively involved in hybrid programs and Volt. If you're a Corvette fan, the name Dave Hill is iconic. But two or three years ago when Dave retired and Tom Wallace took his place, the Corvette program didn't skip a beat. The product on the street now is the best ever. Dave started it, Tom finished it. In a good technology company, people leave, but knowledge is transferred.

You are correct wrt new resources needing to be trained and brought to bear. But it is not because the older resources are no longer here. It ties back to an analogy I put forth in another thread. The relative significance of and resources applied to the Volt as compared to the EV1 is parallel to the importance and resource involvement of the Space Shuttle compared to restoring a classic Corvette. (WOW! two Corvette references in the same HYBRID thread! What's on my mind?) The culture is different, but out of necessity. The EV1 was a project of defined term. The end goal was to prove a technology and make some (internal) statement as to the feasibility of a mass market product based on the technology. The end result was opinion that the technology was not ready for mass production.

The Volt is a vehicle program. Just like Malibu is a vehicle program, just like Impala is a vehicle program, just like VUE is a vehicle program. Difference is, this one has some high powered parents (Bob Lutz, Jon Lauckner, Rick Wagoner) measuring its progress on a daily basis. That is the big cultural difference.

Peace,

Martin

 

I love it when you say what I'm thinking.

I would assume that at the very least there would be a default that would not allow you to shift into gear without disconnecting from the grid. Sorta like how today you can't shift out of park without putting your foot on the brake.

Peace,

Martin