Thursday September 04, 2008

Over 33000 buyers sign up for GM Chevrolet Volt PHEV plug-in hybrid car

news.yahoo.com :

In a bid to show the demand for the upcoming 2010 Chevrolet Volt PHEV plug-in hybrid car, a proponent of the car has released details of an unofficial waiting list for the vehicle with over 33,000 prospective buyers. Lyle Dennis, a New York neurologist, has been assembling the list for over a year through his website GM-Volt.com. GM is designing the Volt to run for 40 miles on a lithium-ion battery pack that can be recharged at a standard outlet. The Volt will also capture energy from braking, like a traditional hybrid, and feature an on-board engine to charge the battery on longer trips. GM is racing Toyota to bring the first mass-market, plug-in car to the marketplace.

- There has been so much hype around the Chevrolet Volt PHEV, but the only way we can tell for sure about the execution is when the rubber hits the road. That's still about a couple of years away, and the last we've heard so far, as of 4 Sep 2008, GM is still in the process of choosing between the 2 competing suppliers of the crucial lithium-ion battery packs, LG Chem and A123Systems.

Will GM be able to complete integration testing? Will the chosen battery supplier be able to ramp up production in time? Compared to various other consortiums such as Toyota/Matsushita, Nissan/NEC, VW/Sanyo and also Bosch, who have committed over $2 billion combined in lithium-ion battery manufacturing facilities, we haven't heard anything nearly as substantial from either of these two.

(2008-09-04 23:27:02 SGT) [Energy] Permalink

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