Until now, the Chevy Volt prototype has used various combinations of electric and gas energy, but now Chevrolet has demonstrated that it can power the Volt using the latest battery technology. That’s a landmark win because the battery technology behind EV1, GM’s first electric car, was a major factor in its failure.

Bob Lutz told the Detroit News in an interview that “we’ve got the first car running (with lithium-ion batteries) … and what the guys get on ’sightings’ is a picture of an old Malibu with black wheels and a very long extension cord.”

Here’s an image of the 2005 Malibu for reference:

It’s obvious Chevy is learning from some of its past mistakes and doing some things right with the Volt. Lutz emphasized that when he said “the only things that were wrong with the EV1 was that it was way too expensive to make; it was only a two-passenger; and the battery technology was not ready. It was a noble effort, but it was a technological force job and at a time when nobody cared. We could not find more than 800 buyers for that thing no matter how hard we tried or no matter how much we dropped the price. Finally we had to lease them out.”

It’s encouraging to see Chevy making strides forward in meeting expectations from customers, now if the Volt earns gold stars in its reliability I’ll be even happier.

“We have gasoline and 350 to 400 volts (of electricity) in the same vehicle and we have to be careful about it,” Lutz said.

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Related:

The Chevy Volt is making some big promises, will its battery match the hype?

Chevy Volt prototype making good its promise to go 40 miles without gas

Chevy Volt price gauge hovering below $40k

Toyota laughs while Chevy Volt battery power is ripped in half

EV1 vs. Chevy Volt, a feature mashup

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Entry was posted on Friday, April 25th, 2008 at 9:29 pm under Science and technology, Technology.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Matt Jansen.