Green cars: Show me the money – er, manufacturing capability

When looking at all the cool new technological advances that appear to have the capability of revolutionizing automobiles for the 21^st century, it’s easy forget that there’s a huge gap between concept and production.

The NY Times has an article [via GM-Volt] asking how real the Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) could be without a production facility for the batteries. The article quotes Walter S. McManus, an auto industry economist at the University of Michigan, who says he is convinced GM needs to pursue lithium ion batteries for automobile use, but he has reservations.”“The problem,” he added, “is the battery technology is still not ready. I would say, when they break ground on a plant to make batteries, two years later the Volt will come out.””

Behind all the hoopla, manufacturing facilities can serve as an indicator of how serious, or at least how far along, a company is. At this week’s Tokyo Motor Show Toyota showed a hybrid concept car with a body made of carbon-fiber-reinforced plastic. It weighed 925 lbs, or about a third the weight of a Prius. Toray Industries announced earlier this month it would invest $170 million dollars to set up a research and production center  for carbon fiber material near the Toyota headquarters in Nagoya by 2010. So going by McManus’s rule-of-thumb, Toyota will be able to use the new material right around 2010. If GM really intends to start producing and selling the Volt anytime soon, we should very soon see an announcement by A123 or one of GM’s battery partners about a shiny new production facility large enough to support a GM model line.

Update, via GM-Volt: A123 Systems co-founder Ric Fulop responds, “I would be surprised if the expert has ever seen a Lithium Ion factory. If you started from scratch and you know what you are doing you’d need less than 2 years, however, we are not starting from scratch and already have very large Lithium Ion factories in Asia (+300,000sf of mfg space)." Compact Power, Inc, another GM battery partner, made a similar comment.