Much Needed Infrastructure Before Chevy Volt Goes National

While we keep hearing about all the functionality of the Volt, Chevrolet’s first plug-in hybrid electric car, there’s still a way to go before it hit’s the road in mass production.

The Volt is designed to drive up to 40 miles on a single electric charge without the use of gasoline. “When the driver of a Volt needs to go farther, the car’s engine-generator kicks in to produce enough electricity to power it for another 300 miles” before needing to refuel or stop to recharge the battery, explained Robert A. Lutz, General Motors vice chairman of global product development, at last week’s Los Angles Auto Show.

Where work still needs to be done is in the area of real-world battery charging infrastructure. The Volt has been designed with the idea that it can recharge anywhere, so GM is partnering with a number of utilities to install over 500 Pacific Coast charging stations for public use.

The installations will “probably” begin this summer, according to Dave Darovitz, Volt communications manager, who added that “no specific timing” has been set yet.

At the auto show, Mr. Lutz announced new partnerships with three California utilities – Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District – in addition to EPRI, the Electric Power Research Institute, an independent non-profit research organization.

“Together, these four organizations will participate in a vast new program led by GM, with a matching grant of over $30 million from the U.S. Department of Energy, to advance the electrification of the automobile.

“As part of the program, GM will deliver more than 100 Chevrolet Volts to the program participants to use in their fleets for two years, starting in early 2011. This extended, real-world study will help us make electric vehicles as good as they can be for our electric vehicle customers. We’ll collect vehicle performance data through our OnStar system, gather driver feedback, and report our findings to the DOE,” said Mr. Lutz.

The Volt will go into limited-volume production in late 2010, becoming first available to the public in California, with the company stressing that it’s “working with key utiltiies across North America to prepare each regional market in advance of the retail market deployment.”

Mr. Darovitz added that, “Full market deployment is going to be slow, so we will announce other markets to follow in 2010. We will ramp up over time, and again it’s a strategic roll out, so we haven’t announced all of the strategy yet.”

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