So far we’ve heard a lot of promises about the Volt, but today Chevy confirmed that its prototype ran for 40 miles just using electrical power. That makes Chevy’s 2010 goal to debut the Volt more tangible by lending some credibility to its claims.

GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said “today is the first day it is running on the street on battery power,” according to Edmunds. A mule car performed the successful test run and was equipped with an “advanced lithium-ion battery and a small gasoline engine . . .”

Lutz revealed a few more points of pride, “it is reliably meeting its objectives. Even with a rough calibration, even with the wrong drive unit, the wrong body, etc. etc., it has been hitting its 40 miles on electric power.”

GM is taking on significant risk by investing so heavily in new lithium-ion battery technology, but Nissan and Renault are following suit by announcing they’ll also be developing a set of electric cars due out by 2010 for fleet drivers.

With the battery technology largely working, Chevy is putting some focus on other engineering riddles with the Volt. Lutz says most of the other problems require “. . . reams and reams and reams of software. Our task would be simplified if we didn’t have the range extending gasoline engine and the only question would be how fast can we productionize it. Then we could devote all of our time to optimizing the battery. But then we wouldn’t have an extended range vehicle.”

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 9:11 pm under Science and technology, Technology.

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