At Witz' End: GM EV1 - The Real Story, Part IV
NOTE: If you missed them, please start by reading parts one, two and three in Gary's EV1 series.What was learned, and is being applied today
"As has been stated in comments [to the] previous two posts by Mr. Witzenburg, there are several things which just don't add up, and make him look like a half-wit." – ABG reader Virgil.
Despite your gratuitous insult, Virgil, you raise a couple good points in your comment ... and one not so good. You wrote:
"First, aerodynamics. Anyone who's ever been in a canoe knows that a 17-ft canoe is faster than a 14-ft canoe. They're the same width, same frontal area, but the longer boat allows a more shallow angle of attack and tail-off, so is more hydrodynamic. Making a longer EV1 would improve aerodynamic performance, not decrease."
Really? Based on intuition, without data, I would tend to agree. But vehicle aerodynamic behavior on a solid surface is not always intuitive. Our body engineers said their aero analysis showed a meaningful increase in drag from a longer (and flatter) four-seat body vs. a shorter, teardrop-shaped two-passenger one. I'm no expert, but given that no other practical production vehicle has come close to EV1's astounding 0.19 Cd, I have no reason to disbelieve them.
Read more after the break.
"Second, adding two passengers does not increase weight that much. Especially since the back-seats (like most coupes) would be small and probably only suitable for children or small adults. So, let's say 200lbs extra - that's not much on a car that already weighs 3000lbs."
Really? Based on what data? The two extra seats are minor compared to the added body and structure, the required bigger brakes, beefier suspension, higher-output HVAC, etc. that make four-seaters substantially heavier than shorter two-seaters. Analysis showed roughly 25 percent lower range (vs. the PbA EV1's 50-70 miles) for a four-seat EV1 due to the combination of added weight and higher aero drag. Later tests on four-seat prototypes confirmed that."Third, don't try and tell me that 3000 lbs is a lightweight car! The 1st gen Miata weighed in at 2100 lbs, and that's including the acknowledged fact that convertibles weigh more due to all the gubbins associated with the roof mechanism. Even the current one is only 2400 lbs and that's including 18 years of increased mandated crash equipment. 3000 lbs isn't even trying."
Really? How much would that Miata weigh if it were toting a 1,175-lb. battery pack (and where would we put it)? The EV1's total weight was 2,970 lb., including the pack. Do the math.
Next time, I'll try to answer some of the reasonable and intelligent questions that ABG readers have left in my series about the EV1. I've got no time for ridiculous "GM is evil" or conspiracy theory comments, though.
What was learned
Most folks view GM's $1 billion-plus EV1 effort as a costly and unfortunate failure. Some technology and business-ignorant cynics even believe that it was intended to fail to demonstrate that it couldn't be done. Nothing could be further from the truth, and the rich body of learning from that effort is paying off big-time today, including in mainstream vehicles.
Gallery: 2011 Chevy Volt
"People don't realize how much was accomplished and how much we're getting out of it, both technically and commercially," insists former ATV Executive Director Bob Purcell, now a GM Powertrain vice president leading that organization's New-Business Development Group. "There was tremendous learning that is fundamental to what we're doing today with hybrid and fuel-cell systems. For example, we designed the Gen II controllers and power electronics for battery EV and hybrid applications and Gen III for all three classes of electric vehicles -- battery, hybrid and fuel cell."
In fact, Purcell says, the first Allison hybrid bus, the forerunner of GM's advanced 2-mode hybrid system, began with EV1 components. "We're licensing hybrid systems and technology to other automakers that desperately need them. They come to us because they recognize us as a leader, and the dollars we generate on these deals are significant."
...and is being applied today
Andrew Farah, who was ATV group manager for propulsion software and controls (and later battery and charging systems), is now Vehicle Chief Engineer on the Chevy Volt program. He confirms that a lot of talented technical people who worked on EV1 are working on GM's plug-in EVs, hybrids and other programs today. "They have made it much easier to crank up the programs for 2-Mode hybrids and extended-range electric vehicles," he says.
Jon Bereisa, ATV propulsion chief engineer in the EV1 days, is now director of advanced engineering for fuel cell propulsion systems and a member of GM's Volt/E-Flex leadership team. He adds that not just technical but also customer learnings are being applied to Volt and other future electrics: "Two big things came out after we launched the car and started talking to people," he says. "We had to solve range anxiety - the 'what if' in the backs of peoples' minds - and we had to provide exciting driving.
"On EV1, we had software limitations on acceleration and top speed to protect range, because all the energy we had on board was in the battery. Basically, the Volt is all about taking the knowledge that we got on EV1 and making sure to remove those impediments - hence the range extender, more [four-seat] utility and dramatic, contemporary styling. And it will be absolutely a blast to drive."
Bottom line
"I don't know of anything that will compete with a tank of gas from an energy density standpoint," Purcell sums up. "That is the physics. Did a battery materialize in that time frame that would overcome range anxiety for most people at an affordable cost? No. But did we get [the learnings] out of it that we wanted? The answer is yes."
It is also worth noting that, while no battery-only EV has found marketplace success since the early 1900s, GM's EV1 has been the only purpose-built attempt to reinvent the battery electric automobile and fully optimize its efficiency. All other mainsteam automaker efforts have been low-efficiency conversions of conventional cars.
In my opinion, if road-going battery-only EVs will ever succeed in sustainable numbers, they will need safe, reliable and affordable on-board energy at least close to equivalent to a tank of gas. No amount of wishful thinking or well-intentioned legislation will alter that reality.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
MattKelly 1:07PM (9/15/2008)
Thank you for writing and publishing this information. It's great to hear your account of this visionary vehicle.
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steve 1:20PM (9/15/2008)
I am willing to accept that what you say is true, that the conspiracy theories are wrong, and that people who spout "GM is evil" without argument to support it are making noise.
What I cannot fathom, however, is how all three auto manufacturers fell into the big car trap. This happened before in the 1970's - fuel prices went up and the US automakers were left with an obsolete product line. Fast forward to $4.00 a gallon gas, and it appears that once again, there is no backup plan. With all the work you obviously put into the EV1 program, can you say that GM was prepared for the market shift?
When the Saturn Aura Hybrid gets 26 MPG in the city, and the Pontiac G6 non-hybrids gets 25 with the same gasoline engine, it sure doesn't look like the first generation of the BAS system was evne close to ready from prime time.
Please don't get me wrong, I understand that technology from the EV1 program is probably in use in many cars today. My point is that while Honda and Toyota were able to produce viably hybird cars, and in Toyota's case in massive quantities, the Hybrids from the likes of GM can't compete because there aren't enough of them, and in the case of the first generation systems they don't make financial sense. Even the flagship SUV hybrids are only being produced in limited numbers during their first years, according to press reports.
I don't give 2 cents that the EV1 was not a commercial success, new ideas don't always catch instant fire. What I see is an auto industry that sold SUV's to a willing audience for years, an industry that did not re-invest in pilot projects during profitable years to be ready to profit from the demand shift. This lesson should have been learned 30 years ago. It's the reason I can't buy an American designed and manufactured car that gets over 40mpg - in the city - today.
The commercials that GM runs about the number of cars in their fleet that get over 30 mpg (highway) is insulting - I live in town, and while I'm sure over 50% of the MILES on my car are highway, over 90% of my DRIVING is in town.
I hope that GM, at least, has learned that it can't abandon large swaths of the market. I want to see GM continue to invest in large vehicles and small. The market may shift again, and all the US auto industry should be ready to not only lead, but to lead profitably.
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dwarg 11:55PM (9/15/2008)
Thanks for bringing up the market imbalance Steve. It's not like the shift in gas prices or environmental awareness happened over night. About 5 or 6 years ago my father and my best-friend were looking at buying hybrid cars--most likely a Prius. They test drove them and liked them. But they couldn't buy them. Why? Because at the time there was a THREE YEAR WAITING LIST!!! I didn't really care about hybrid cars much back then but any idiot could see that there was a business opportunity there. And when people asked the American auto makers why they didn't have any hybrid cars there response was consistently, "Americans don't want fuel efficient cars they want SUVs." Why are American companies so risk averse and unable to look ahead--or for that matter learn from there mistakes. High gas prices and fuel efficient imports have bitten them in the ass before.
meme 1:38PM (9/15/2008)
Yet another post, and yet another lack of an answer about the point that I raised that has been seconded several times by other posters. So, to post it *again*:
You have insisted that everything possible was done to reduce costs to make this vehicle be a financial success. Then why is it that it shared almost nothing in common, production-wise, with any other GM vehicles? I.e., why wasn't it just a more aerodynamic shell for an existing vehicle? Yes, I understand that this would have meant having to make a degree of compromises on weight or drag, and thus would somewhat affect range or pack size**, but to make a new, low volume vehicle the way you did is to essentially *guarantee* that it won't be profitable. And then GM turned around and used that lack of profitability as their main argument to kill the EV-1. Now, there's nothing wrong with making a car that you don't plan on turning a profit on -- to advance technology, to promote the company, etc. What *is* wrong, however, is to act like a vehicle that was never designed to make a profit was somehow a failure because it didn't make a profit.
** Given that the pack was lead-acid, it's not like a small increase in pack size to retain range would have been a tragedy beyond words in terms of price. If your CdA had gone up 25%, that would have been a tradeoff of a thousand extra in batteries for the benefit of significantly reduced production costs.
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john 2:34PM (9/15/2008)
meme,
you really, reaaaalllllly don't understand anything about engineering, do you. before you hate on, let me first clarify that i am liberal and all for saving the environment, but as an engineer, i can actually think with some sort of reason.
and to be blunt, you are a complete and total dumb ass.
so lets address your argument. you wanted to pull parts from other current production cars in order to make a cheaper one, right? well how will that work?
an electric car shares virtually NOTHING in common with a internal combustion (IC) car. lets start with the basics:
Engine: nope, absolutely nothing similar there.
Transmission: A normal car transmission loses 15-30% of power through the drivetrain alone. When you are looking at such low range numbers, you can't afford any unnecessary loss. Furthermore, you can't even simply transfer an IC transmission. Between completely different gearings and set ups, it would more likely be far more effective to design a purpose built trans rather than take an old one and slap on a bunch of extraneous shit to make it work. Bottom line: if you were to take an existing one, the reduced efficiency and added weight to even make it work (if that was even possible, i don't know enough about the EV's setup) would cut the range enough that it wouldn't be even worth selling.
Frame: You have got to be kidding me, right? Your call for adding a more aerodynamic shell on top of an existing frame is a horrible idea. A standard steel frame unbelievably heavy. Adding to that the battery, and well, how the hell are you going to get any sort of decent mileage? Going the route of the Lotus Elise and all high end sports cars, crafting a frame out of lightweight materials was the only option to get decent range.
Body: well, that's a given. It has to be aerodynamic (btw .19 Cd is amazing), so you really can't look for much improvement on that end. transferring from any other car would destroy that, and aero drag is one of the biggest factors limiting range.
Bottom line: you can't transfer parts because they simply weigh too much, are too inefficient, or simply wont work. With any EV, you are savaging every little bit of efficiency out, as batteries are currently a poor way to store energy.
There is a reason you don't make/design cars for a living. You are not an automotive engineer, you don't know anything about it, so please don't pretend like you have half the brain needed to comment on it.
-john
Bill 2:37PM (9/15/2008)
I think your question is "why was the EV1 designed as a 2 instead of 4-seat car?" since you're talking about production vehicles.
meme 3:41PM (9/15/2008)
John,
I'm so happy to see that our American educational system has paid off, as is clearly evidenced by your thoughtful, well-worded, insightful post.
Even Body Frame Integral design series share a common chassis design, which represents the overwhelming majority of non-drivetrain engineering issues and production challenges; let's not even get into Body-On-Frame designs where you're literally just bolting a new top onto a mass produced chassis. It's such a "horrible idea" (your words) that *it's what everyone does*. It's *how you keep costs down*. You may not like this, but it's the reality of the industry. Deal with it. The Chevy Volt, for example, is a direct descendant of the Chevy Malibu (that's why the mules have been made from Malibus). It's a vehicle that they *actually are planning on succeeding*, so they're *actually basing it on an existing line*. Oh, wait, according to you, that's ridiculous, and nobody would ever do it!
Get over yourself. There's a reason why essentially every other EV built to meet the CARB ZEV requirements was based on an existing model, and it wasn't just for the heck of it.
meme 3:46PM (9/15/2008)
Oh, and John? FYI, but the darling of the modern EV industry, the Tesla Roadster, is a direct descendant of the very vehicle that you named -- the Elise. Imagine that -- an EV company designing their EV around an existing vehicle to keep costs down! That would never work, right?
john 4:00PM (9/15/2008)
maybe you didn't understand what i was saying. clearly the lotus elise is a great car to convert to an EV. Why? Cause it has been designed, from the ground up, to be a super-lightweight minimalist vehicle. The whole purpose of that car is to be bare bones. kinda like the EV1. notice the Lotus uses an all-aluminum frame, making it suitable for conversion.
now, name one car in GM's 1990's inventory that was purpose built, from the ground up, to have a super lightweight all aluminum frame suitable for converting into an economically viable EV. cause i can't think of anything...
I am not saying that borrowing frames is a bad idea. I am aware of the fact that the vast majority of cars these days do. And i AGREE that it is normally a great idea. it works perfectly when you don't have to worry about every single ounce.
But we are comparing apples to oranges here. How the hell can you take a heavy steel frame and make it super-lightweight? you can't. there isn't a single frame in the 1990's lineup suitable for conversion to an electric car.
if you were to use the same type of frame in the EV1 that was used in other GM cars, you would end up with at 4000 lb monster with horrible range. while the idea itself may have been sound, the fact remains there wasn't any other frame suitable. and your ignorance can't change that.
clearly you need to go back for some more education.
meme 6:25PM (9/15/2008)
Hello, Chevy Volt, Chevy Malibu... they're *doing it this time* because they actually *want to succeed*. You're trying to claim that something that they are *doing right now* is impossible. It's an idiotic line of argument.
You do *not* have to have some sort of superlight chassis to make something into an EV. It's certainly a *superior* option, but it is *not* a requirement. Did you completely skip over that *almost all of the other ZEV mandate EVs were just simple conversions of existing vehicles*? The RAV4EV is beloved by its owners, and yet for the most part, all they did was put an EV drivetrain in a RAV4 chassis. Yet that was hardly an optimal vehicle choice. Ideal back then would have been to take a low-end sports car or econobox chassis and sacrifice the trunk or part of the rear seating area for batteries, optionally replacing the panelling for a lower Cd at the expense of interior volume (something that's far easier to do than to have to reengineer everything from the suspension on up; as mentioned, in body-on-frame construction, which is how they build pickups and SUVs, you literally just attach on a different top and you have a different vehicle).
Big companies only start from scratch when they *don't* plan on a vehicle being profitable, and either want either its descendants to be profitable or want to showcase their technological expertise.
gorr 1:41PM (9/15/2008)
If they didn't crush each and all ev1 battery cars then they could have done durability tests of all sort with regular driver-customers. All this compagny say is mainly good looking public
relation and on the other hand they helped institutionalize the ownership of every cars by bankers where cars where only available for renting or some other sort of cheap trick like 0.8% interest rate for 4 years. They even don't tell the price on their printed ads. It's a high-financial corporation that brouth regular car compagnies named chevrolet-pontiac-oldsmobile-buick, etc.
They followed the laws from the starvation guys that mandate food-fuel.
Me it's simple, i want to buy from them or any other manufacturer a car that cost between 10 000$ to 16 000$ constructed of lightweight materials of 200 h.p that cost next to nothing to fuel.
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EVan 2:28PM (9/15/2008)
This post is meaningless.
Aside from that, it seems many people missed Gary's point in his last post about car crushing. The reason for crushing the EV-1's has to do with laws requiring automakers to maintain a full inventory of parts and provide and train technicians for any production vehicle for decades.
Clearly Gary has a passion for the electric vehicle and the future of automotive technology. It seems as though many of commenters here would rather regurgitate old and tired criticisms rather than accept that the United States' has a major automaker truly tackling a tough engineering challenge.
mbarnes 3:09PM (9/15/2008)
Gorr,
As an engineer I believe I can propose to you the only really viable means of getting the vehicle you want. Ask Santa for it.
A 200 HP golf cart would cost more than 16K.
jeffzekas 1:59PM (9/15/2008)
Hmm... The EV-1 inspires such passion, because it was a dream, crushed in its infancy... and folks don't like having their dreams crushed... this explains the vehement reactions by some of the posters. If GM had just sold-off the EV-1's-- much like the US Government sold off its old electric vans-- there would not be such a cult surrounding this nice, but rather mediocre vehicle... I mean, how many folks are crying: "Save the GM Turbine Car!!!"? Most of these experiments come and go, with little fanfare. Creating a "conspiracy", however, DOES make for good press... However, it is wonderful that GM is building the Volt... too bad the engineers can't build a flashy, "Tesla" sports car version, along with the plain-jane sedan, using the same platform... time will tell.
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john 2:14PM (9/15/2008)
Gary,
as an engineer student, i cannot understand how upset you must be with all this bullshit being thrown around how the EV1 was designed to fail, not to mention the idiotic physics "facts" that untrained people claim to know. Engineering an economically and technically feasible EV is damn hard, and doing it 15 years ago must have been much harder. I just want to say i have a lot of respect for what you guys have done, and thank you for writing up theses posts.
- John
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Mike!!ekiM 4:20PM (9/15/2008)
As hard as it was GM did it.
That's the point. The only thing missing was the "mass production" part, and the improvement in batteries. Has has been pointed out countless times in this blog the Toyota RAV 4 Hybrid's are still running to this day.
Maybe, they should have been Cadillac EV1's first to be more profitable as has also been posted to this web site. But, the car worked. Had it been built to be sold nation wide, and not trashed in the car magazine industry, it could have been a great success.
EVan 2:35PM (9/15/2008)
@steve "The commercials that GM runs about the number of cars in their fleet that get over 30 mpg (highway) is insulting"
As insulting as you may find it, GM does in fact have the largest fleet of vehicles topping 30 mpg highway.
Are you also insulted that Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai, Volkswagen, Ford, Chrysler and all of the others offer fewer vehicles that top the 30 mpg highway number?
Furthermore, don't kid yourself. A vehicle getting better highway fuel economy than another car will almost always get better city mileage as well.
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Chris M 3:27AM (9/16/2008)
Ah, but if you raised that to "gets better than 38 mpg" the results are far different, as GM has nothing, but Toyota and Honda does.
Mark 2:43PM (9/15/2008)
I wonder if anybody has seen this video about battery rights controlled by TEXACO preventing such use.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDRBRuvct54&feature=PlayList&p=DB5C8A15D842D0C4&index=0
and this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Waqep7f59ho&feature=related
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Serge 6:47PM (9/15/2008)
Chevron via its subsidiary Cobasys, not Texaco.