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Jan 13, 2009 | 1
At first, of course, someone else is going to have to manufacture the batteries the the Volt (and whatever other E-REV options the automaker comes up with.) But after the first couple of years, the automotive giant will be making its own batteries at a facility (hopefully) in Michigan.
The announcement, of course, drew a huge round of applause here in Detroit. The lithium-ion cells themselves will be made by LG in Korea, but they are combing the cells into the Volt's battery here in the U.S..
GM also announced that they would be building “America’s largest automotive battery lab” which sounds more impressive than it is, since I can’t think of another one of any size in the U.S.. I did find out from Tony Posawatz, though, that this lab will be available to test anyone's battery technology. So if you make a new sort of battery, GM will gladly test it for you, determining the lifetime of the battery, charge times and capacity. And then, I imagine, they'll try and buy the technology from you.
Jan 12, 2009
As we just noted in our rather last, rather sobering post, there isn't going to be a lot of gravy at this year's North American International Auto Show...but that doesn't mean there won't be a lot of high quality meat, especially for the greens.
In fact, I don't think I've been this excited about an auto show since I started blogging. What will we be seeing? Well, I can't say for certain, but we can start by skimming the surface of what we know already.
BYD will be showing off the world's first production plug-in vehicle, and while it won't be available in the U.S. until 2011, it's pretty impressive that China managed to beat both the U.S. and Japan to the punch on plug-in hybrids.
Fisker, will be unveiling it's production plug-in Karma. The car, which made a huge splash last year in concept form, is like a cheaper, more practical, more beautiful Telsa Roadster.
Jan 12, 2009
Part one of a tour of the Detroit Auto Show. Tomorrow we'll be hitting up Toyota and Honda, and then in parts three and four you'll see news from Ford, Chrysler, BYD, Fisker, Tesla, VW, Mercedes and more!
This blog first appeared at EcoGeek: "Detroit Tour, Part 1"
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