The battery pack for the Volt is possibly the most important part of the car.  It’s the most expensive component, and if it malfunctions the car loses almost all of it’s appeal (assuming it doesn’t cause a fire in which case the car loses all of its appeal).

LG Chem is going to be the supplier for the lithium ion batteries used in the Volt, but GM is going to be the assembler of the actual battery pack.  I don’t blame them either, from a quality control standpoint and a liability standpoint GM wants to be in charge there.  It would be a PR nightmare to tell the owner of a Volt that they have to talk to a third party about their car.  So the batteries will be shipped to a plant in Michigan where the ‘T’ shaped battery pack will be assembled under GM supervision and control.

General Motors Corp., anxiously awaiting a government loan so it can continue operations into 2009 said Wednesday it will halt one of its most important projects to save money should a Washington bailout fall through.

The cash-strapped automaker is putting the breaks on the construction of a factory in Flint, Mich. set to make 1.4 liter engines for the Chevrolet Cruze and Chevy Volt plug-in electric car.

Source: msnbc

While a lot of the legwork was done for them by Lotus, we still have to give Chrysler a little credit for getting an electric vehicle prototype on the road so quickly. When we first saw the Dodge EV a couple of months ago, it looked like it was ready to roll, with a Tesla-like blend of Lotus platform and electric powerpack. Soon after we heard that the car was likely to make it to production, with a delivery date that would challenge the Chevrolet Volt. While it had appeared that Chrysler was way behind its domestic rivals in developing an electric car, we know that through their GEM subsidiary, Chrysler has actually accumulated a lot of EV expertise and become the nation’s leading electric car seller in the process.

The Dodge EV is essentially a Lotus Europa, but uses lithium batteries and a 268 hp electric motor in place of the standard 2.0L four cylinder engine and transmission. It promises a range of 150-200 miles and a 0-60 time of under 5 seconds. It’s a full-blown, plug-in EV, just like the Tesla Roadster, and should require a 4-hour recharge from a 220V outlet or 8 hours on a 110. To help launch Chrysler’s new ENVI electric car division, the Dodge EV has been traveling the show circuit, but today we spotted it at one of our favorite local cruise-ins.

chrysler ev

A while back we reported that the Dodge EV had a good chance of being the vehicle that Chrysler puts into production in 2010.  Eventually all three will be in production, but only one of them will get there in 2010, the others will be a bit further off.  We’re now seeing reports that the minivan could be the first EV into production.  And the more we think about it the more it makes perfect sense.

“We’ve certainly got the possibility of electrifying our vehicles now,” said Reid Bigland, president of Chrysler Canada Inc. “It’s not pie-in-the-sky.”

The only competition for the minivan ev would be the Chevy Volt, a four seater car.  If the Chrysler EV can get the same 40 miles without using any gas, and if it will get decent mileage while using gas (Chevy claims that the Volt will get 50 on gas), the minivan could steal a few customers of the Volt and a few that were waiting for a bigger vehicle. 

There are plenty of people that would like to get something like the Volt but they either have too big a family or they need to haul too much stuff around on a regular basis for the Volt to be practical for them.  The Chrysler EV is the perfect solution for them.  They get 40 miles of gas free driving and pretty good (great for a minivan) mileage after that. 

The other reason for the Chrysler EV to be the first is the simplicity of it.  The Chrysler Town and Country already has a lot of storage in the middle of the vehicle for the stow and go seating.  If the owner opts for swivel and go instead of the stow and go that storage space isn’t used for the seats (since the swivel and go can’t fold into the floor), it’s just storage.  The batteries needed to make the Chrysler EV will go there, so the owner will get the swivel and go seats but they lose the storage capacity.  A small price to pay for the ability to use no gas.

“We didn’t have to do much tear-up,” Quigley says of the conversion process: engineers simply filled the second-row seat tubs with batteries intead of foldaway seats, and put Swivel ‘N Go seats in the van instead.

The location of the storage is optimal for the batteries.  It’s low to the ground and in the middle of the vehicle.  Nothing needs to be done to tune the suspension for handling with the extra 400ish pounds of weight.  Since it’s under the body of the vehicle is should also be easier to keep the batteries cool.

Once you put the batteries in all you have to do is hook up an electric motor to them, provide a small 4 cylinder engine to power it when the batteries are low and you have yourself and EV.  Of course it’s not that simple, some of the components in the EV need to be redesigned, extensive testing needs to be done to make sure that the EV is safe and reliable.  But it’s a lot easier and quicker to do the minivan than it would be to do the Wrangler or the Dodge EV.

When Chrysler reveiled their three ENVI vehicles a few weeks ago we found that one of them was an all electric sports car for Dodge.  Likely a replacement for the Viper (Chrysler is looking to sell the Viper name for some cash, the new CAFE standards preclude Chrysler from making the Viper in a few years).  The Dodge EV with it’s batteries would have a range of over 150 miles, but that’s not very practical for every day buyers.  Then again, a Viper isn’t that practical either.

The other two EVs are extended range electric vehicles (that’s GMs term for it).  They use batteries for the first 40 miles to power an electric motor that drives the wheels and then a gas engine switches on to extend the range.  The Chevy Volt does the exact same with it’s engine and motor.  The question has been, does the gas engine bypass the batteries like the Volt does, or does it run a generator that recharges the batteries so that the batteries will always power the electric motor.

“The gas engine recharges the battery a little bit,” said Cole Quinnell, a Chrysler spokesman. “But that’s just excess and overflow, not the central intent. It’s more efficient for the gas motor to drive the wheels, not recharge the batteries. The cost to recharge the battery by running the generator is eight times the cost of taking it home and plugging it in.”

Along with the actual dollar cost of using gas to recharge the batteries the longevity of the battery pack is a consideration for this decision.  Rechargeable batteries have a lifespan of only so many charges.  Having the gas engine constantly recharge the battery pack would shorten the life of the batteries significantly.

The senate passed a bill that will likely total over $600 billion in spending measures on tuesday. Of that $25 billion is for backed loans to the auto industry.  The house of representatives will likely vote on the bill today.

The inclusion of the low-interest loan guarantees is a victory for struggling U.S. manufacturers General Motors Corp, Ford Motor Co, and Chrysler LLC, which is controlled by private equity firm Cerebus Capital Management LLC.  All three automakers have been lobbying congress for flexible low interest loans.  They claim that the current loans are too rigid with how they spend their money.  The Detroit three need more capital to fund research and technology like Chrysler’s ENVI products and the Chevy Volt.

“I’m not a fan of the American auto industry and I’m not a fan of this provision. But Congress authorized it and we’re providing the funding for it,” said Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat.

Included in the package is a tax rebate for people tha buy plugin hybrid vehicles. The credit starts at $2500 and goes up to $7500 based on the type of vehicle bought. The credit doesn’t phase out until the automaker has sold 250 thousand plugin hybrids.

Source: Reuters

It’s no coincidence that both Chrysler extended range vehicles (Town and Country and Wrangler) announced boast the same 40 mile electric only range that the Chevy Volt does.  According to studies 80% of americans drive 40 miles or less per day.  That means that the 40 miles of battery power allows most people that buy an extended range electric vehicle to not use gas on a daily basis.  However, GM has worked hard and made some compromises with the aerodynamics of the Volt to achieve the 40 mile range of the vehicle.  Both of Chrysler’s vehicles are not nearly as aerodynamic.

The answer is all in the batteries.  Battery storage capacity is measured in watt-hours, more or less the total amount of energy used over time.  A kilowatt-hour (kWh) is simply a thousand watt-hours and this is what’s used to measure big batteries, the kind used in modern hybrids.  The Chevy Volt uses a 16 kWh battery and only really functions within a range of 50-80% charge in order to extend battery life.

The Chrysler EV uses a 22 kWh lithium-ion battery which operates at 200 kW and up to 410 volts, it’s paired with an electric motor that produces 268 HP with a whopping 480 lb-ft of torque.  Together you get 40 miles of battery powered driving.

The Jeep EV uses a 27 kWh battery pack.  It has to be big since the Wrangler isn’t aerodynamic at all (brick) and it has to power all 4 wheels.  Interestingly it’s paired with the same motor as the Chrysler EV, which maintains the 268 HP but drops the torque down to 295.  The lower torque number is probably there to extend the range, though I’d like to see the crazy 480 lb-ft of torque that’s found in the Chrysler EV.

In both cases it comes down to larger battery packs.  Since the Volt is small it doesn’t have much space to store the batteries.  The Chrysler EV and the Jeep EV are considerably larger allowing for bigger batteries.  Allowing all three vehicles to achieve 40 miles on battery power.

Source: Jalopnik

A123, Watertown, Mass., is a seven-year-old company vying to break into the nascent market for lithium-ion battery packs for automobiles. A123 is in the running to supply batteries for the Chevrolet Volt, the electric car General Motors Corp. is developing.

A deal to supply Chrysler would give a boost to A123’s business ahead of a planned initial public stock offering. It registered for the offering in August.

A spokeswoman for Chrysler said the company “has nothing to announce at this time” about suppliers for its electric car. An A123 spokesman declined to comment, noting the company is in a quiet period because of its registration for an IPO.

Chrysler has been keeping its work on electric cars under tight wraps. But in recent weeks, as GM’s Volt drew heavy media attention, Chrysler management became concerned that the company was being left out of the increasing buzz about electric vehicles, people familiar with the matter said.

Source: WSJ