Billions of Dollars Of Research and Development Money Expended By GM And Other Majors Is Now At Risk

Implications: It will only take one public lithium battery operating failure or, worse, one fire to wipe out all of the green goodwill so far generated by the hype machine on behalf of the plug-in hybrid idea.

Analysis: GM's Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid program upon which the company and now Bob Lutz have bet their reputations is, along with every other plug-in hybrid in development by a mass producer, in dire peril from a small group of upstarts who can't wait and have created packages to 'retrofit' existing vehicles, mainly mass market hybrids such as the Prius and the Ford Escape with lithium batteries and electronic controllers to covert them into plug-in hybrids.

Some of the conversions feature lead-acid batteries, and if successful these relatively cheap conversions may make the mass producers look even more foolish for failing to also modernize and use immediately this traditional plug-in electric vehicle technology.

The makers of the conversion kits are getting 'experimental' batteries that are expensive and hand made. The fear of the mass producers who have all worked with a two tier system, a combination of a battery developer and an experienced mass producer, is that a careless or reckless small manufacturer will not do the necessary testing or will cut corners and deliver batteries that fail or run away thermally or both.

A public failure of a lithium powered plug-in hybrid could easily negate the billions of dollars of research already poured into such vehicles in particular by GM. This would be a public relations and marketing nightmare.

The clock is now ticking.