By Nicholas Brown via CleanTechnica

I have been following the electrification of vehicles closely since about 2008.

I kept wishing that researchers would develop improved battery technology for electric vehicles, and I’ve seen it happen many times. The development of lithium-ion battery technology really is on a roll. There is now a major discovery multiple times per year.

What has kept bothering me is having to wait for these advancements to make it to commercialization — many of the technologies still have not been commercialized.

But some advancements have crept their way into the commercial products, and simply scaling up of production is helping to reduce costs.

General Motors (GM) CEO Dan Akerson’s wishful thinking once again has me hopeful that the EV industry will make another stride soon (in addition to other developments).

Following previous EV price cuts, Akerson said that he has plans in mind to achieve the $7000–$10,000 cost reductions mentioned above, and that the car will be profitable at that point.

The plans include a weight reduction of the 3,700-pound car and a switch to a dedicated platform, rather than the use of the gasoline-powered Cruze platform.

Gasoline-powered car platforms are optimized for gasoline-powered cars, and are not ideal for electric cars.

Electric cars are best when designed from the ground up so that their entire bodies are optimized to achieve the lowest possible cost and the best characteristics of electric cars overall.

For example, gasoline-powered cars use firewalls, gas tanks, and of course gasoline engines, which the car has to be designed around.

Even weight distribution could be improved by designing the car from the ground up, spreading out the batteries more ideally along the floor (just an example of what could be done).

The next generation of the Chevy Volt will be released in 2015 as a 2016 model. So, while the $7000–$10000 cut sounds good, it looks like we still need to wait awhile.

– Nicholas Brown. Reprinted with permission from CleanTechnica

General Motors had a record-breaking year for fuel-efficient autos in 2012.

The company became the first American auto manufacturer to sell more than one million vehicles with a 30-mpg fuel rating. And due to a surge in demand from Califorina, GM tripled sales of its electric model, the Chevy Volt.

Motor Trend reported on the year end sales figures:

Chevrolet posted the biggest sales gains of any GM brand last year, with total volume up 4.3 percent year-over-year. Several models made enormous leaps in sales volume: the Sonic compact, for instance, finished December up just 4.3 percent, but a strong year helped push the car to a 415-percent overall gain compared to its first year on sale. The Chevrolet Volt, too, saw sales leap 206 percent from just 7671 units in its difficult first year on the market to a respectable 23,461 cars in 2012. Despite a significant drop to just 1293 sales last month, the Colorado small pickup posted an 18.7 percent annual sales gain. And the Equinox crossover enjoyed a 7.5-percent boost to 19,551 December sales and ended the year up 13.1 percent.

The surge in demand for the Volt capped a tumultuous 2012 for electric vehicles. In 2011, manufacturers fell well short of their sales targets. And as criticisms mounted last year, it seemed like automakers had to spend more time defending electric vehicles than actually making them.

As one of the most prominent automakers getting into the electric vehicle market, GM took a lot of heat from conservative politicians, bloggers, and Fox News pundits about its Chevy Volt. The car was called “crappy” and labeled an “exploding Obamamobile” by commentators looking for an opportunity to attack President Obama’s investments in clean technologies.

Tired of the barrage of attacks, former GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz — a Republican who once called climate change “a crock of shit” — lashed out at his fellow conservatives for spreading fear and cracking jokes about the car: “This is an unfortunate, knee-jerk reaction…Folks, it’s pure fiction. Please get it out of your heads,” Lutz said.

Although GM is still below its sales targets for the Volt, the company is promoting its latest sales figures as proof that more Americans want fuel efficient and electric cars.

The average price of gasoline in the U.S. last year was the highest ever recorded, boosting consumer interest in fuel-sipping automobiles. With more fuel-efficient models available from automakers, sales increased substantially — up 13 percent over 2011 sales.

“The U.S. light vehicle sales market continues to be a bright spot in the tremulous global environment,” said Jeff Schuster, senior vice president of LMC Automotive, an industry analysis firm, to the Associated Press.

Earlier this year, the Obama Administration finalized new standards that will increase the average fuel efficiency of America’s cars and trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The Natural Resources Defense Council says those fuel standards could save consumers $68 billion in fuel costs each year after 2030, when the mileage targets have been met.

GM's Bob Lutz

by KC Golden, via the GRIP blog

I own a 1976 Chevy pickup truck.

It’s okay; I don’t drive it.  I leave it parked on the street.  It stands there – its iconic logo all shiny and golden on the grill and hubcaps – as testimony to my faith in American democracy.

I bought my Chevy in the fall of 2009, after I heard NBC political analyst Chuck Todd say the future of American democracy depended on whether GM emerged from bankruptcy and stayed afloat after the bailout.   It was a Redd Foxx moment for me.

GM’s management had just driven the share price from over $100 to under a buck.  Now Todd says the only hope for restoring faith in democratic institutions is the success of this basket case, this staggering Hummosaurus? GM fought tooth and nail against vehicle emission standards.  Their lawyers ran amok while their engineers went AWOL, raising questions as to whether it was a case of commercial suicide.  GM Vice-President Bob Lutz called global warming “a crock of shit.”  And now we had to save them in order to save ourselves?

So I was desperate.  Only irony could save me.   Instead of having the heart attack, I bought the truck.

Well, we’ve come a long way since 2009.  Last week, the Obama Administration finalized new clean car standards that will double the fuel economy of the passenger vehicle fleet by 2025.  The Democrats held their convention and proved that Chuck Todd was very, very right:  The revival of the auto industry is the centerpiece of the President’s case for re-election – Exhibit 1 for the renewal of trust in American institutions.  (Ahem, it’s the fuel economy standards, more than the bailout, that are saving Detroit.)  And Bob Lutz – climate denier and father of the Chevy Volt! – came to Seattle for the Beyond Oil conference.

I spoke at Beyond Oil just before Lutz.  What an opportunity to bury the hatchet!  Having pioneered the Volt – such a promising and important climate solution – might he reconsider his views on the climate problem?

Cleverly, I offered him a deal:  I would go to the Chevy dealer, trade in my pickup, and buy a new Volt, if he would admit the truth about climate disruption. Having been mortal foes, we would move forward together to a better future.  I would meet him more than half way:  We would drive to this better future in a Volt!

No dice.  He got up there and said “I won’t respond to Mr. Golden,” and then spent about 10 minutes crooning denier standards, like “Some Scientists Say This, and Some Say That,” and “CO2 is A Plant’s Best Friend.”  He didn’t quite say “crock of shit,” but he came about as close as he safely could in front of a Seattle audience.

No Volt for me.

But I’m not giving up. At this same conference, Amory Lovins wisely said that while we may not share the same motives, we can all arrive together at a post-fossil fuel result (Reinventing Fire).   This is an efficient and gracious way to avoid getting wrapped around the axle of denial and drive the discussion back toward solutions.  We’ve all used this maneuver, and Amory’s the master.

Trouble is, it lets the denial stand.  I know, I know, any rational strategist would say:  “Don’t waste your time trying to move hard-core deniers.  Focus on the base and the middle.”  But I can’t take it any more.   I can’t just sit there while accomplished, well-respected, intelligent public figures repeat these insane lies, fertilizing the ecosystem of denial as the climate crisis unfolds before our very eyes.

And particularly when one of the pioneers of a key climate solution stands up on a public stage in Seattle Center – our house – in 2012 and says we don’t have a problem, I refuse to remain all cool and rational and Amory about it.

I’m not done with you Lutz….

KC Golden is the Policy Director of Climate Solutions, a Northwest-based nonprofit. This piece was originally published at the GRIP blog and was reprinted with permission.

Bob Lutz doesn't like what he hears from GOP pundits about the Volt

GM’s Former Vice Chairman, Bob Lutz, slammed GOP media pundits yesterday for spreading “pure fiction” about the Chevy Volt and other electric vehicles.

Conservative commentators — led by Rush Limbaugh and Fox News — have taken every opportunity to tear down the Chevy Volt, calling it “crappy,” a “Fred Flinstone car,” and an “exploding Obamamobile.” They’ve even called Volt drivers “dorks.”

The attacks have gotten so intense, hardcore Republicans are now slamming the onslaught of ludicrous comments. Lutz, a Republican who once called climate change a “total crock of shit,” has become increasingly critical of fellow conservatives who have undertaken a vicious media campaign against the Volt.

Speaking yesterday at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think thank, Lutz called out the “knee-jerk” pundits who have tried to turn the Volt into a political joke. E&E News reported on his comments:

“The unfortunate thing is that because electric cars are very associated with the left-wing environmental green movement to combat global warming and reduce [carbon dioxide], the idea of vehicle electrification triggers this visceral reaction on the part of conservatives — which is, if it’s electric it must be a product of the left-wing, Democratic enviro-political machine, therefore we hate it,” said Lutz, a self-described conservative.

“This is an unfortunate, knee-jerk reaction because what the Volt and other vehicles like it are about is … shifting portions of the American mobile sector onto a more efficient and domestically produced power source,” he said.

“No electric vehicle has ever caught fire [in use], and yet the right is constantly talking about the flammability, overheating, fire hazard of the electric vehicle,” he told the conservative audience. “Folks, it’s pure fiction. Please get it out of your heads.”

Last month, Lutz wrote a column in Forbes lamenting that “all the icons of conservatism are (shock, horror!) deliberately not telling the truth” about the Volt.

Lutz called Charles Krauthammer — his former “hero-figure on the Right” — a member of the “the list of right-wing pundits I no longer take seriously” for claiming that the Volt was an example of Obama’s “interventionist policies.”

In fact, the Volt has been in development since 2006 — two years before Obama was even elected.

Lutz isn’t the only conservative who is roiled by the GOP punditocracy’s campaign against electric vehicles. Last month, Lee Speckerman, another self-professed lover of Fox News, went on the network’s morning show to bash its commentators’ “fetish for demonizing the Volt.” Speckerman argued the Volt was “the iPhone of the American automobile industry.”

Despite the continued attacks and a cycle of very sluggish sales, March was GM’s best sales month ever for the Volt.

Related Post:

• Fox News Argued Getting Off Of OPEC Oil With Alternative Fuels and Electric Cars Was ‘A National Security Issue’. Then Obama Won.