What's Wrong With This Picture: What We Need More Of Is Science Edition

Edward Niedermeyer
by Edward Niedermeyer

Former EV-1 driver and “science guy” Bill Nye hams it up while promoting GM’s Volt Extended Range Electric Vehicle. And actually, according to a recent gm-volt.com interview with Bob Lutz, GM now prefers that you refer to the Volt as “an electric vehicle with range extension.” Huh? Sounds like they’re gonna need a science guy to break this one down…

Instead, El Lutzbo explains:

We have stopped calling it an extended range electric vehicle and we now call it an electric vehicle with range extension. We’ve kind of swapped the emphasis on that.

We did some research in various areas but predominantly on the West coast, and we conducted this research several times. We have reason to believe that Nissan conducted the same research and is now somewhat less bullish about the volume for their vehicle.

We asked people to pick from three concepts. Once is an electric vehicle of about 40 miles range but with a gasoline powered generator that would permit when necessary another 250 to 300 miles of range. Choice B is an electric vehicle with quick charging of a range of a hundred miles, and Choice C an electric vehicle with swappable batteries, with a range of 100 miles and you find a battery swapping station and you swap out.

83% of the vote went to the Volt concept.

OK Bob, but did you include price point differences in your analysis? Because as long as nobody’s asking about prices, I’d still rather have a 400 horsepower, mid-engined supercar than a Camry. Why isn’t GM building that?

Edward Niedermeyer
Edward Niedermeyer

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  • CamaroKid CamaroKid on Apr 28, 2010

    Did Lutz blog this in from the retirement home, or is he still on the payroll? It is sad to watch someone suffer from dumbentia.

  • ChesterChi ChesterChi on Apr 28, 2010

    And what percentage of the vote went to "rear-wheel drive, 6-speed, diesel wagon for less than $20k" ?

  • Bryanska Bryanska on Apr 28, 2010

    Nice Achewood reference.

  • T2 T2 on Apr 30, 2010

    wmba wrote... The Volt is not a hybrid. When the battery runs down, the gas engine drives the electric motor through a generator to get you to journey’s end. To which I say let us not forget that whatever the VOLT will or will not do depends entirely on the installed software. A significant software change can change the modus operandus but still leave the hardware untouched. glippy wrote... That platform has been optimized for its purpose - everything from controls to suspension components to interior volume is engineered to accomodate the series-hybrid componentry. As I replied to wmba - software can change. There would be no problem to turn the VOLT into an improved version of the Prius. In this case you just go back to the 1.3Kwhr sized pack of the Prius and guess what ? NOW you can be price competitive. Let's play with that using some figures with which I probably am more familiar than most people. You start with the 53kw engine in the VOLT plus the Prius equivalent 21kw battery giving you a total of 74kw as opposed to the 80kw of the 2004-2009 Prius itself. But wait !! That's not the whole story. Things are much better than that !! Anyone who's really up on the Prius knows that the partially coupled system of the Toyota HSD system hobbles the Prius engine which is not able to make full revs and therefore full power until high road speeds. Let me throw some figures. Their INZ-FXE engine makes only 55 Hp at 20mph and doesn't find 76 Hp until at least 51mph. OTOH the fully decoupled VOLT engine can make 53Kw anytime it likes. So at 20mph with battery assist the Volt could push out 74Kw. Meanwhile the Prius makes 55+28 Hp or 83Hp (61Kw). There's more. Hopefully I can make you a believer in the VOLT. Try this.. When the Prius cruises the HSD electrical servo system contrives to put a high torque load on the engine at lower revs in order to reduce engine friction for a given output power. Incidentally the Volt will be obliged to perform this trick also. In the Prius, Virtual Power is generated in the HSD and it can be easily 2 or 3 times that which is needed to actually propel the car at constant speed. The problem with Virtual Power, which by the way also exists on the national power grid, is that it incurs Real losses. In effect you have the two servos in the Prius connected electrically in parallel with the larger traction servo MG2 extracting the excessive mechanical power at the wheels and feeding it back as electricity to the generator servo, MG1. MG1, now acting as a motor is able to assist the engine in producing this excessive power- the Virtual power that is - in the first place. All this may sound just a bit crazy but the overall effect is to make the engine think it is chugging up a hill at 15 mph when in fact the vehicle is cruising along at 70mph. If you can do this with the engine just short of lugging - which should be easy since the current being monitored in MG1 is a direct analog of the engine's torque - then you have an efficient system despite the churning losses of the electromechanical system that I described. Very cunning these japanese. This is the system that the VOLT has to beat. And the VOLT doesn't have the benefit of Toyota's HSD of providing that mechanical link back to the engine and 'closing the loop' so to speak. What we need is a way to replace the churning of mechanical power between two electrical machines connected back to back. In essence, irrespective of the vehicle's actual power demand, we need a way to encourage a heavy current flow from the VOLT's MG1 at all times. Could that trick be done with an electronic converter instead ? Hmmm.....

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