By Troy Clarke
Electric vehicles are a topic of great importance to the future of GM … and to the future of our country for that matter..

Over the last day and half, you’ve heard a number of interesting perspectives about how to address energy independence and climate change … and there are some great vehicles on display here that contribute to the solution to those issues.

I’d like to talk about General Motors’ vision … and why we are also inspired to help solve what we perceive to be the very real, very challenging environmental matters facing our country and our industry.

These issues are, by their very nature, global in scope. So, let’s begin with an assessment of the global auto industry. Despite the current challenges of the auto industry in the United States … globally, our industry is in the midst of tremendous growth.

There are about 820 million vehicles in the world today; roughly 12 percent of the world’s population enjoys the benefits of automobile ownership and driving. Automobile ownership and use is a rough indicator of what some call middle class economic status. With rapid growth in many regions of the world, there are more people achieving this status than at any time in history, and the personal freedom that autos provide is highly valued.

As such, we expect that at least 15 percent of the world’s population will own a vehicle by 2020 – that’s a billion vehicles. This expansion is being fueled by growth in emerging markets like China and India.

As you’ve already discussed, this growth has created serious concerns about the automobile’s almost exclusive dependence on petroleum. This increasingly creates issues with supply and availability, sustainable growth, climate change, and even national security.

As we look at this picture today and consider the future of the automobile, one fact stands out above all others… going forward, we can no longer rely primarily on oil to supply the world’s automotive energy requirements. GM believes that the long-term solution involves a march toward the electrification of the automobile. The debate has shifted from “if” this would happen to “when.” We believe there are a number of steps along the way, and I’d like to share some of our thoughts with you.

Around the globe, there are many very promising solutions to the energy and environmental challenges we face. General Motors is working hard on most of them… things like improved diesel technology, advanced biofuels, and broad-scale application of hybrid technology.

Parallel hybrid automotive powertrains are an important step on the journey. They are a natural extension of our current mechanical-electrical propulsion paradigm. They are, in fact, limited range electrical powertrains that replaces or help a conventional internal combustion engine at certain parts of the driving cycle. They contribute most fuel savings during low speed city driving conditions.

GM has five hybrid vehicles on the road today, and will offer eight hybrid models by the end of this year. And by 2012, we will have more than 20 hybrid vehicles available for consumers, in cars, crossovers, pickup trucks and SUVs.

A year ago, I would have presented this data in anticipation of a lot of ooooh’s and ahhhhh’s. Today, I think we recognize hybrid technology not as an end to our technical journey, but as a beginning … albeit, an important beginning. The electric powertrain allows us to develop technology like batteries and power controls. Hybrids allow us to develop standards, engineering methods and tools, and real world validation models.

Last but not least, they allow us to develop marketing, sales and service capabilities to assure adequate levels of customer satisfaction. Most importantly, we can recalibrate our engineering human resources from a world of mechanical motion to a world of electrical motion. Think of the tens of thousands of engineering and technical people at GM who grew up and learned their trade on the internal combustion engine. They are now enthused to participate in a once in a lifetime transition of our industry.

Our hybrid efforts began in earnest when we started producing hybrid systems for electric buses. City transit buses were the exact right place to start. Think about it from our perspective. City driving cycles.

Thousands of stops and starts per day. High up time and reliability requirements. And the space to package first generation components. This was a great opportunity to demonstrate big fuel savings potential … and that we did. Over the past five years, we’ve helped save three million gallons of fuel, and 30,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions.

We’ve applied the lessons learned from the two-mode hybrid system used in the transit buses, and scaled it down for use in full-size utilities and pickups. In fact, we’ve already introduced the Chevy Tahoe Hybrid and the GMC Yukon Hybrid, and will soon launch a hybrid version of the Cadillac Escalade. Those are vehicles that get the city fuel economy of a four-cylinder Toyota Camry, but in a full-size SUV package.

And, in the future, we intend to produce the Saturn VUE Plug-In Hybrid. It will feature an advanced lithium-ion battery, and potentially twice the fuel economy of any SUV on the road today. In fact, I am very pleased that the DOE just announced this compact SUV is being considered for a funding opportunity. We truly appreciate it.

But, again, I remind you these are fuel-powered vehicles that get a helping hand from an electric propulsion system.

The technology that we are here to talk about today… and one that GM is working very hard to bring to market… is electrically driven vehicles. Despite movie titles to the contrary, I can say with absolute certainty the electric car is not dead at GM. In fact, we are building on our capabilities to significantly expand our commitment to electrically-driven vehicles … and are now in the midst of a radical transformation.

We’re moving from a company that, for 100 years, has been based on mechanically driven automobiles, to one that will eventually be based on electricity. This is a big deal for us and for consumers around the world.

This next step represents the transition to a true electrically driven vehicle … one that we’re working hard to bring to market. Our efforts in this area have received a good deal of attention and I think are of significant interest to you here today… particularly our Chevrolet Volt.

The Volt concept, which is on display out in front of the hotel, is the first demonstration of our new family of electrically driven propulsion systems that we call E-Flex.
The “E” in E-Flex stands for “electric,” because all E-Flex vehicles will be driven by electricity… and E-Flex is “flexible,” because it is easily reconfigured to produce electricity from different sources.

When running off the battery… which customers can plug into a standard electrical outlet… the Volt operates as a traditional battery-electric vehicle, with a driving range of about 40 miles.

And when you consider that three-quarters of American drivers travel less than 40 miles in their daily commute … clearly, a fleets of Volts can have a huge impact on America’s petroleum dependence.

And if the driver of a Volt needs to go beyond 40 miles, the engine kicks in to supply the electricity to recharge the battery and keep the vehicle moving. This allows the vehicle to drive as much as 400 additional miles, while getting significantly better fuel economy than any other car on the market today.

It’s easy to see why we are so excited about this technology – a vehicle with the electric range of the Volt would have quite an impact on both petroleum use and tailpipe emissions.

And the best part is … an extended range EV like the Volt can do this while saving its owner a lot of money in operating expenses.

A conventional vehicle that gets around 30 miles per gallon costs about 13 cents per mile to operate. But, when you do the math to convert a kilowatt hour to cost per mile, an extended range electric vehicle like the Volt will cost about 2 cents a mile for electricity from the grid. So, it’s not going to be difficult for customers to see the advantage in their pocketbooks.

The key to getting the Volt on the road is advanced lithium-ion battery technology.
For all the potential that lithium-ion batteries offer, there is a tremendous amount of confusion associated with them. One of the most prevalent misconceptions is that all lithium-ion batteries, and all battery chemistries, are alike.

In fact, lithium-ion is a family of over 25 chemistries – all with different capabilities and performance features. The power and energy requirements for an automotive battery application differ significantly from that of the batteries used for consumer electronics such as computers, cell phones and Blackberrys.

In addition, our performance and durability requirements – 10 years of life, 150,000 miles in a very rugged and hostile environment – are unique to automotive applications and considerably more stringent than those applied to consumer goods.

Our internal tests have shown that individual lithium ion cells, scaled-up to a large pack level, will deliver the required power and range.

We’ve run prototype packs through numerous tests since last fall… including some pretty severe ones… and the results to date are quite encouraging. We’ve successfully driven test mules with the lithium-ion battery on our tests tracks, and we’ll get even more rigorous with testing this summer.

It’s important to note that the vehicle side of the Volt program is being engineered in parallel with battery development.

Typically, we develop new technology – like the battery and propulsion systems – well before we kick-off a production-vehicle program. To be honest, because of this parallel path, this product program presents a great deal of risk for us. But, with risk comes potential reward. We believe our E-Flex system can greatly reduce oil consumption and CO2 emissions, so we’re developing the Volt with all the urgency we can muster.

Just last week, the GM Board of Directors approved production funding for the Chevy Volt. What this means is that the GM management and Board believe the technical goals of the Volt are not only achievable, but achievable by 2010, which is the goal date we had set for get the Volt into the Chevrolet showrooms.

Again, the concept version of the Volt is on display here at the conference … so I hope you can take time to check it out. I would, however, be remiss if I didn’t point out that the appearance of the production model will change somewhat. That’s mainly due to the fact that our designers and engineers have been working to optimize the aerodynamics of the Volt as part of the quest to make this breakthrough concept car a production reality.
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