Quote of The Day: 100% of 50% is Still 50% Edition

Robert Farago
by Robert Farago

“This is really just the beginning of all the final tuning. We are at the 50 percent point. Fundamentally, we’ve got everything directionally correct, but now we’ve got all the tuning yet to do.” Andrew Farah, Chief Engineer, Chevrolet Volt. [thanks to Justin Berkowitz for the link]

Robert Farago
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  • Lokkii Lokkii on Jul 08, 2009
    We are at the 50 percent point Fifteen posts in and I'm the first guy in this crowd to thow in Xeno's paradox?
  • Charly Charly on Jul 08, 2009

    If you're a bankrupt company and not investing for the future while trying to get out of bankruptcy you will end up bankrupt again. The first generation Volt won't make any money, just like the Prius, but the second generation will.

  • Stewart Dean Stewart Dean on Jul 08, 2009

    Lokkii:Fifteen posts in and I’m the first guy in this crowd to throw in Xeno’s paradox? Oh yeah, that was the paradox of why the ancient Greeks could never do a successful crash test with their war chariots....see over any given period, the chariot went a distance, then it went half the remaining distance, then half of that, and so on, so they never actually hit the marble abutments. Besides, it was really hard to get a horse to run into a wall......

  • KixStart KixStart on Jul 08, 2009

    wmba, Not quite. The electric drive motor only doubles as a generator during braking. However, since the ICE is not mechanically connected to the electric motor (unless that has changed), there's an actual generator on board connected to the ICE crank that supplies power to the electric drive motor and the battery as necessary. Lyle Dennis, of GM-Volt, reports that the drive motor and the generator are housed, for no reason I can fathom, together. If they're not connected... why are they in the same housin? And then there's just one driveshaft out, so I suppose there's a differential involved, too... but I digress... The ICE only makes 80 or so hp and the vehicle weight 3400 lbs, so the vehicle is going to be terribly slow if the electric drive motor can only call on the output of the ICE and generator after the vehicle reaches the minimum battery depletion point. So, as you then do correctly point out, the devil is in the details. What GM is going to do about vehicle operation after the battery reaches the depletion limit is a matter of much speculation and "tuning." A straight BEV would be much simpler. It seems to me that what GM's doing requires algorithms that understand what the car will be called upon to do in the next twenty minutes but that's a very interesting problem, to say the least.

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