Volt Birth Watch 18: Happy Birthday Volt?
You have to admire Bob Lutz' chutzpah. After his boss publicly backpedaled on when we might finally see an operational Chevy Volt electric – gas hybrid vehicle in the showrooms, he goes on the GM FastLane blog wishing the Volt a happy first birthday. How something that has yet to be birthed can have a birthday is beyond me. Maximum Bob brags about everything done since they announced their intent to build something with batteries to sell someday:
– Shuffled around 600 scientists and engineers
And in spite of media reports of him having said otherwise, he insists "we are holding tight to our 2010 deadline." Ahhhh, the optomism and hope that comes with the start of a new year. Or the miscellaneous ramblings of a madman. We report. You decide.
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"Well I took up smoking and then quit" "Great job Bart! You know quitting smoking is one of the hardest things to do" "But Dad, he didn't even do anything" "Didn't he Lisa, Didn't he"
How insulting to Homer to compare him to Bob Lutz! There’s no way we can predict how these batteries will perform over 10 years based on only two months of testing, but I can assure you, there will be a point in time when we have the full confidence that our solution will reach this goal. When this happens, you’ll be the first to know. I love that line from Lutz. You'll be the first to know because you will be hoping version number 2 does last 10 years after beta testing version number one for $40,000 to find out it only lasted 5 years.
Accelerated life testing is standard in product development. Maximum (Minimum?) Bob should know that since he is the product guru. There is a whole science around reliability testing and predicting (within confidence bounds) what your product life will be based on accelerated tests. If there wasn't, product development would be extremely lengthy as validation testing proceeded at real world rates. Oh, wait a minute, this is GM we are talking about. Nevermind.
Lutz & Co. are trying to create PR mystique around their upcoming (or pie in the sky, we won't know until 2011) products. The problem is, we've heard this from him before (RWD Impala? Yes? No? Perhaps?). My money is on a watered-down plug-in hybrid with the name Volt, IF and only if GM survives to produce it by '10.