The great electric car race

The great electric car race

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April 14, 2009: 10:10 AM ET

(Fortune Magazine) -- Did a battery bring down General Motors?

Not by itself, but it helped. For several years GM has been touting the battery-powered Chevy Volt as a sign of the company's vitality and proof of its drive to become a technology leader. Former CEO Rick Wagoner drove one in Washington, D.C., last December when he went hunting for federal aid. Despite the car's limited range (40 miles between charges) and stiff price (estimated at $40,000) GM (GM, Fortune 500) had made the Volt its standard-bearer and touted it as an antidote to climate change and oil imports.

Earlier this year a GM executive declared, "We think a plug-in offering

40 miles of gas- and emissions-free driving like the Volt is the sweet spot for the majority of customers." (For those who want to go farther, a small gasoline engine acts as a range extender.)

The Treasury Department doesn't share that view. Its auto task force has cited the Volt as one reason it doesn't consider GM a viable company. As usual, the department noted, GM has been paying little attention to competitors like Toyota (TM). The 2010 Prius hybrid, which comes on the market 18 months before the Volt, can go 50 miles or more on a gallon of gas and may sell for as little as $21,000 - a lot less money for a big environmental boost.

Treasury's task force was scathing in its appraisal: "GM is at least one generation behind Toyota on advanced, 'green' powertrain development," it said. "While the Volt holds promise, it is projected to be much more expensive than its gasoline-fueled peers and will likely need substantial reductions in manufacturing cost in order to become commercially viable."

It's just that kind of wrong-footedness that has led GM to the brink of bankruptcy. GM has no commercially successful gas-electric hybrids; it put its long-standing fuel cell efforts on the back burner; and now its big push behind the battery-electric Volt looks misguided, even foolhardy. GM has failed as badly when it comes to planning for the future as it has in coping with today's market.

It wasn't always that way. GM was the company that introduced the electric self-starter at the dawn of the automotive age, making the arm-breaking engine crank obsolete, and it developed the catalytic converter to treat tailpipe emissions. But for the past two decades it, along with other U.S. manufacturers, has been slaking America's thirst for horsepower with big V-8s while Toyota, Honda (HMC), and other Asian manufacturers have developed gas-electric hybrids that keep getting more efficient and economical. Now the Chinese are on the verge of introducing their own battery-powered cars, leaving Detroit further behind the curve.

After driving the automobile for a century, the internal-combustion engine is giving way to electric motors powered by batteries - which burn no petroleum and produce no emissions (though the electric plants that charge them may do both). Early efforts to develop battery power have focused on exotic cars with names like Tesla and Fisker made in boutique quantities, but prices are coming down and potential volumes are growing.

The U.S. has a lot of catching up to do. But just when GM, Ford (F, Fortune 500), and Chrysler need to transform their industry, they have fewer resources than ever to do so. GM, for instance, just asked the government for $2.6 billion to develop three variations of the Volt. The winnowing of brands at all three companies has been accompanied by a decline in revenue and market share as familiar names disappear and dealers vanish. Vehicles and engines will get smaller too, and automakers will have to scramble to recover the profits they used to make with larger ones. The Midwest manufacturing base will also shrink.

The process won't be pretty. The company that Walter Chrysler founded and Lee Iacocca rescued will probably see such iconic cars as the hemi-powered Chrysler 300C disappear, along with the company's private equity owner, Cerberus, whose 81% stake has been rendered worthless. GM is in the process of downsizing or dumping four of its brands, including Pontiac, which it introduced in 1926. Ford, at 106 the oldest American car company, is the healthiest, though it appears so only in comparison with its neighbors. Even it is going through resizing as it sloughs off Volvo and extinguishes Mercury through benign neglect.

Battery power has been around longer than any of these companies; it is as old as the automobile itself. In 1896 an electric car beat five gasoline-powered vehicles in the first motor race held on American soil. By 1900 there were a dozen manufacturers of electric cars; they produced

28% of the 4,192 autos built in the U.S. that year. Powered by lead-acid batteries, electric cars were silent, clean, and simple to operate. Their normal cruising range was 25 to 40 miles at speeds approaching 20 miles an hour - fast enough for the primitive roads of the time.

But battery technology was slow to advance. Electrics were ill-suited to long-distance driving as new highways were built. Henry Ford introduced the economical, easy-to-repair Model T in 1908 and would eventually sell

15 million. Gasoline engines, at first noisy, smelly, and unreliable, became more refined. Sales of electric cars peaked in 1912 and gradually dwindled to a small group of customers, mainly wealthy women and doctors. The last production models disappeared by the end of the 1920s.

For several decades battery development moved haltingly. There was no Moore's law positing a doubling of battery capability every 18 months. The chemistry is complex, and demand was slight. Then, as concerns grew about climate change and imported oil, interest was rekindled. In the

1970s electric-powered delivery trucks, small vans, and rudimentary passenger cars like the Sebring-Vanguard CitiCar appeared. Best suited for retirement communities, the plastic-bodied CitiCar had a top speed of 44 miles per hour, a range of 50 to 60 miles, and a ride like a farm wagon.

Federal regulators stepped in to give the technology a boost. The passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970 and its subsequent amendments were designed to improve air quality by reducing exhaust emissions. They got the attention of GM chairman and CEO Roger Smith, who had a fondness for great leaps in technology. In 1990, Smith drove a battery-powered concept car called the Impact at the Los Angeles auto show and announced four months later that GM would put it into production as a demonstration of its concern for the environment. Smith retired later that year, but his successors pushed ahead with the plan, despite doubts about its feasibility. Nearly seven years later the car, renamed EV1, went on the market at select dealerships in Southern California and Arizona, available for lease at $640 a month. The lozenge-shaped two-seater was quiet and powerful. But despite more than 1,000 pounds of lead-acid batteries, early models could travel only 55 to 75 miles per charge, thus creating "range anxiety." Recharging took eight hours.

GM upgraded the EV1 with nickel-metal hydride batteries and extended its range, but with gasoline prices low, interest was scant. California regulators read the tea leaves and dialed back on a requirement that automakers produce zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs). Losing thousands of dollars on each car, GM discontinued production of the EV1 in 1999, thereby earning the enmity of environmentalists. In 2003, GM recalled all the cars to get them off the street, thereby inciting conspiracy rumors and creating a story line for the popular documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" GM later claimed that the EV1 taught it about software and electric motors, but that hardly justified the cost of the program, estimated at $1 billion. Rubber hits the road

With climate change now a popular topic and memories of last year's gas price spike still fresh, nearly all the major car manufacturers have declared plans to put electric cars on the road by 2012. China has let it be known that it wants to become one of the leading producers of all-electric cars in as little as three years. China's BYD, already one of the fastest-growing battery makers, is using an investment by Warren Buffett in an effort to become the world leader in cars and batteries.

In the U.S. a company called Ener1, run by a former investment banker, is trying to establish itself as an American presence in batteries. Former Intel CEO Andy Grove believes that the U.S. needs to invest more in what he calls a critical technology and argues for a government-led consortium in battery research. Eyes will be on Obama's climate czar, Carol Browner, this summer as she coordinates the administration's effort to push a comprehensive energy bill through Congress.

New lithium-ion batteries - lighter, denser, and rechargeable more times

- have improved the cost-benefit equation of electric cars. "The day you have a mass-marketed zero-emission vehicle, how are conventional cars going to look?" Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Renault-Nissan, asks Fortune. "I'm going ahead with the lithium-ion battery." The battery's biggest weakness is a tendency to become unstable under stress. In 2006, Sony recalled several million laptop batteries because of a manufacturing defect that caused some to burst into flames.

The first lithium-ion-powered cars should start appearing next year. BMW is testing an experimental Mini Cooper with batteries in the back seat that has a range of 150 miles, while Toyota is developing a city car that can go 40 miles on a charge. Spurred once more by regulation, American manufacturers are coming to the party too. Batteries are the only suitable technology to meet California's 2014 ZEV standard. Ford will introduce a new small car powered by a lithium-ion battery in 2011. Chrysler has shown an electric minivan and an electric Jeep at auto shows and says it will introduce an unidentified electric car in 2010.

It will be at least a decade before electric cars make a significant impact on the overall market. Battery-powered cars are still handicapped by their limited range and the length of time they must remain at the plug for recharging. Their adoption will have to first gain traction in metropolitan areas where driving distances are short, and expand from there.

Gasoline, diesel, or some other high-density fuel will continue to be required to cover vast distances or to scale mountain passes. In a recent report, Roland Berger strategy consultants wrote, "We do not see battery electric vehicles having the same driving range as internal-combustion engine cars, thereby limiting their use mainly to city driving." Cost also remains a big issue. "I don't see battery electric vehicles selling in significant numbers within the next five years," says powertrain forecaster Michael Omotoso of J.D. Power & Associates. "Gas prices would have to go to $8 a gallon before the average buyer sees an electric vehicle as a sensible option."

Long before then, it will be clear how GM's investment in the Volt paid off. Projections call for the production of 10,000 cars during its first year, 60,000 in the second. By comparison, GM sold 1.8 million Chevrolets of all kinds last year.

GM says that as the Volt's sales volume increases, its cost will come down, but it isn't expecting to make a profit until the car has been redesigned at least twice. "First-generation technology is expensive, but you can't have a second generation without a first generation," said GM vice chairman Bob Lutz, in one of his last statements before retiring. "Volt will survive and prosper."

He didn't say anything about GM's doing the same.

Reply to
Jim Higgins
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The Volt will be GMs only product in a few weeks time. It will be interesting how many people will be needed.

I guess around 100 worker bees and 10.000 managers.

The taxpayers will of course continue paying bonuses for effort.

Reply to
Björn

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