In Their Staged Hurry To Beat Toyota And Bring The Chevrolet Volt To Market 'By 2010' GM Technical Managers Have Neglected To Tell Their Top Management That Simulation Testing Of The Battery Systems Is A Huge Mistake

Implications: GM's requirement that only those who say yes to Rick Wagoner and Bob Lutz may advance to management has left it without any managers or engineers who have the moral strength to say that the company's program to bring the Chevrolet Volt to market by 2010 would have been better done, with a much higher chance of success, with a lead-acid/nickel metal hydride battery system, since both of those systems have been proven in actual, not simulated testing, over real, not virtual time. In addition it is clear that GM is building a smaller and lighter Volt than they were showing so as to get the maximum range and performance out of lithium batteries that are not living up to expectations.

Analysis: Lithium ion batteries have built in time clocks once they completed and are put into operation. If, after start up, they are not managed so as to never allow them to be discharged below 40% of capacity, or drained in too short a time, or allowed to become too hot or too cold they will fail then or shortly thereafter to take a charge and be rendered unrecoverable very expensive paperweights.

This outcome can only be avoided by testing the batteries under load in real time and under real time conditions of driving, but since GM has foolishly decided to pick 10 years as a warranty length, 2 years longer than the Toyota Prius' nickel metal hydride battery pack, and to compound the mistake by warranting the battery for 150,000 miles as against the Prius 100,000 miles, they are stuck with going to market with an actually untested battery system using a technology which has never before been shown to have such a service life or anything like it.

By arbitrarily setting the battery warranty life at 10 years GM's current managers do not have to even think about a plan to dispose of the batteries or recycle them. That's good, because they have no technology to do either.

GM must realize that the very first failure of such a poorly tested battery system either by shut-down and failure to take a charge or by destruction by overheating or failure will make GM the laughing stock of the global OEM automotive industry

I have said before that GM has abandoned its links to nickel metal hydride batteries and seems to be betting the green farm on an untested lithium ion system.

Perhaps GM needs new management, because the present group doesn't seem capable of rational long term planning.