A great read about GM’s new gamble on electric cars
If you have any interest in electric vehicles, GM, battery technology – or simply enjoy excellent non-fiction writing like “The Soul of a New Machine,”, then make sure you read “Electro-Shock Therapy” in this month’s Atlantic Monthly. You’ll come away with an excellent understanding of the challenges and pitfalls involved in the design of the Chevy Volt extended range electric car, and what this car means to the future of GM and perhaps cars in general.
GM is taking a stomach-churning risk by betting such a high-profile, high-dollar program on the unproven technology of lithium ion batteries, and the article does a great job of explaining the technology, its potential, and its downsides. And aside from the technology itself, what about the uncertainty of gas prices, which will drive any shift in Amercan driving habits? Here’s an excerpt:
“Many in the industry will tell you there’s a good reason car companies don’t do things this way. Toyota, which is proceeding much more cautiously with its own plug-in car, has made no secret of its belief that neither GM nor anyone else can keep the Volt’s promises. When I called Menahem Anderman, a prominent battery consultant in California, he said the lithium-ion battery will be expensive—far too expensive to make sense as a business proposition as long as gas is $3 or $4 a gallon. (“At $10 a gallon we can have a different discussion.”) Its life is unproven, and unprovable in the short time GM has allotted. To deliver tens of thousands of vehicles in 2010, Anderman said, “they should have had hundreds of them already driving around for two or three years. Hundreds. Not everybody can say it publicly, but everybody in the high-volume industry is saying, ‘What are they thinking about?’” An executive with a GM competitor, after making some of the same points, offered forthrightness in exchange for anonymity: “They’re making a huge mistake.””
But GM doesn’t think so, and the article does a masterful job of introducing the engineers and gearheads at GM who are betting their careers on the Volt’s success, and explaining why they are so sure they’ll succeed. Quien sabe? But it’s an epic engineering adventure, and a fine article.
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