Chevy Volt Design Details Slowly Emerge

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.hybridcars.com/news/chevy-volt-design-details-slowly-emerge-0814.html

Chevy Volt Design Details Slowly Emerge

Published August 14, 2008

Traverse City, Michigan - Continuing to tease the public and the media with details on the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, the car’s designer today showed a handful of slides that revealed further details of the car’s design. The entire car won’t be revealed until the Los Angeles Auto Show in November.

Bob Boniface, director of design for the Volt, showed side-by-side comparisons between the concept and the production vehicle. The front corners are now much more rounded, to keep the airflow attached to the sides of the car as much as possible, minimizing energy-sapping turbulence. The side mirrors are now on posts, rather than so-called patch mountings, and the shape of the rear spoiler has been modified significantly.

Perhaps most interesting, the Volt’s mesh “grille” is actually no more than a pattern screened onto plastic. The cooling for the vehicle’s heat-generating elements—the battery pack, the electric drive motor, the power electronics, and so forth—is distributed so differently from that in a conventional car that all frontal airflow can be directed around to the sides of the car.

Overall, Boniface said, airflow improvements have taken out 120 “counts” of aerodynamic drag, each count imposing a range penalty of roughly 0.025 miles in the city and 0.055 miles on the highway. In other words, those improvements have added 6 to 7 miles to the production car’s all-electric range. He did not, however quote a coefficient of drag.

…

[NMDemDist2]

1. i want one!!!! n/t

[CRF450]

2. I only hope they keep the price down to a resonable level

Otherwise its looking good!

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. Now, we need to define "reasonable"

Will it be "reasonable" as defined by how much I want to pay? Or will it be reasonable as defined by how much it costs to produce? Or will it be reasonable based on GM clearing a "reasonable" profit? Or...

(* Sigh *)

[ElectricGrid]

4. I would milk the environmentalists for a premium the first few years

as I was proving out the tech and gearing up.

[wtmusic]

6. GM doesn't have the luxury of a few years

They've milked the gas hog morons for a decade - and just found out it was a dead end.

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. If you had the luxury of time, money and reputation to waste

(which GM doesn't)

I expect GM will http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSN0218857820080402">sell them at a loss for the first bit (much as Toyota did with the Prius.)

[wtmusic]

5. Full side view:

It's starting to look a bit familiar! :D

Back to the future...at least they're moving in the right direction.

[OKIsItJustMe]

8. Video presentation on design changes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daec5BwoQ3M