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2011 Chevrolet Volt To Be Sold In China, But As A Buick

 
5,072 views May 29, 2010
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2011 Chevrolet Volt

2011 Chevrolet Volt

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General Motors may be trying to spread Chevrolet through Europe and Asia, but it won't put the Chevy bowtie on its Volt extended-range electric vehicle when that car goes on sale in China next year.

Instead, the car that hits U.S. dealerships this November as the 2011 Chevrolet Volt will be sold in China as a Buick.

Chinese patent filing showing Buick version of Opel Ampera (Chevrolet Volt) extended-range EV

Chinese patent filing showing Buick version of Opel Ampera (Chevrolet Volt) extended-range EV

Enlarge Photo

Opel Ampera Prototype

Opel Ampera Prototype

Enlarge Photo

Why? Because, in the words of GM-Volt.com, Buick is a "has a lot of cache [sic] in China, and is the flagship of General Motors in that country (despite Cadillac being present...since 2004)." More than twice as many Buicks are sold each year in China as in the U.S.

To make it even more complicated, the Chinese Buick version will use the front-end styling of the Opel Ampera--essentially a Volt with a new nose that will be sold as a 2012 model in European markets, where the Opel brand is more prestigious than downmarket Chevrolet.

The Volt, in fact, will be sold globally under no fewer than five brands and two model names:

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt (North America)
  • 2012 Buick Ampera (China)
  • 2012 Opel Ampera (Europe)
  • 2012 Vauxhall Ampera (U.K., with Vauxhall being the British brand now used on RHD versions of most Opel models)
  • 2013 Holden Ampera (Australia, with Holden being that country's traditional home brand since 1931)

All the variations, by the way, will be exported from the Volt manufacturing line in the Detroit-Hamtramck factory, where the first pre-production model was built on March 31.

Might there be more? Perhaps the Volt could be sold in Korea as a Daewoo, since GM now controls that brand and uses it on the Cruze compact sedan sold elsewhere as a Chevrolet. With the Buick news, however, the Volt clearly won't be sold as a Wuling in China.

At least we know there won't be Volts sold by Pontiac, Saab, Saturn, or HUMMER, since those brands were shut down or sold off following GM's bankruptcy.

[TheTycho via GM-Volt]





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Comments (8)

  1. By Chris O Posted: 5/29/2010 9:58am PDT

    Too bad the Volt isn't a pure electric vehicle. The Chinese government will offer maximum subsidies of $7,300 for plug-in hybrids but $8,800 for fully-electric vehicles. This will increase the price gap between the Volt and the Nissan Leaf by another $1500,-. Maybe it's time for GM to admit defeat and add an all electric version to the range? A lot cheaper to build ánd more subsidies...
     
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  2. john_v avatar John Voelcker Posted: 5/29/2010 12:08pm PDT

    @Chris O: Thanks for the information on Chinese subsidies, which I hadn't been aware of. I suspect that the cost of adding an extra 8 kWh to the Volt battery would raise the price of the Volt far more than the $1,500 subsidy gain (the current figure is assumed to be ~ $750/kWh) though not sure how much would be saved by deleting the engine/genset.
    More than that, the Volt pack is very carefully engineered to fit where it does. Not sure where the extra pack size would go, perhaps under the hood. One further note:
    http://www.allcarselectric.com/blog/1043378_gm-planning-engineless-all-electric-cars-to-follow-the-volt
     
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  3. By Chris O Posted: 5/30/2010 12:48am PDT

    @ John Voelcker: I guess it all depends on where batteries really are in terms of cost. LiFePo4 can be bought retail at $350/KWH, Nissan recently suggested $380/KWH for it's lithium manganese chemistry. We are conditioned to believe that batteries are expensive because everybody says so, but it's not clear why this would have to be the case. A battery pack consists of a very large number of identical parts making it IMO the ideal candidate for economics of scale to do their cost slashing thing. Unlike an ICE for instance which consists of a very large number of mostly very different precision engineered parts, yet everybody accepts they can be produced at very low cost and batteries can't. My idea: bet big on batteries and they will be more economical than an ICE range extender.
    Case in point: the Leaf vs Volt case. Nissan expects to make money on a $33K Leaf; GM expects to lose money on a $40K Volt, indicating that PHEV's are very expensive to produce. This makes sense because a range extender is basically a full fledged ICE drivetrain minus the transmission but plus a generator and all the components needed to make it work in tandem with the electric drivetrain. On top of this a full electric drivetrain minus part of the battery pack needs to be installed. All this results in a Volt pack that's only 30% smaller than the Leaf pack. Problem for the Volt: a lot more parts = a lot more costs.
     
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  4. john_v avatar John Voelcker Posted: 5/30/2010 4:40am PDT

    @Chris O: Are the costs you cite for the CELLS or for the completed PACK? Most discussions I've had with EV engineers suggest that the per-kWh cost of a pack is roughly twice the per-kWh cost of the cells inside it. And packs are far from simple, given the sensors and software required to monitor what each cell or module is doing and its electrical characteristics.
     
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  5. By  Chris O Posted: 5/30/2010 8:20am PDT

    @ John Voelcker: good point. Obviously retail LiFePo is not at pack but at battery level:different battery sizes (clusters of cells) are available. Mind you $350/KWH is retail, meaning production cost is actually much lower than that. It's hard to believe that wiring them together and adding a battery management system would actually double the cost. I put that down to all the anti plug-in FUD out there that is forever repeating that same mantra: batteries are expensive. Yet until now nobody ever tried to produce automotive grade batteries at large scale. Reality has to be different though: Nissan would never have bet on batteries on the scale they did if they weren't confident that mass production would get them at a good price point. Nissan's $375/KWH battery cost is based on an article on Timesonline (link) putting the Leaf’s battery costs (logically at the pack level) at £6,000 to produce. Nissan is hardly going to corroborate that officially I suppose, but it sounds about right considering the relatively low price of the Leaf.
     
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  6. john_v avatar John Voelcker Posted: 5/30/2010 4:28pm PDT

    @Chris O: I'm somewhat skeptical of that $375/kWh cost if it applies to the Leaf's pack. One additional Q: How long does Nissan warrant its pack for? GM is required under EPA requirements to warranty all components of the powertrain for either 8 yrs/100K miles or 10 yrs/150K miles, depending if it's a CARB/non-CARB state. Nissan, however, because the car has no emissions--hence EPA has no jurisdiction--is not required to do the same. I'll be curious to see how long their pack warranty is.
     
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  7. By  Chris O Posted: 5/31/2010 1:22am PDT

    @ John Voelcker: Good point again, it seems Nissan has yet to announce what the terms of the warranty will be. Nissan has put out a paper though containing lots of data about the Leaf (link; very interesting!) that claims is will last longer than even NiMH which as any Toyota RAV4 EV owner will tell is already very durable. It also claims it will still be at 70-80% after ten years. The lower 70% if you fast charge a lot. Of course this brings us to a major weakness of the Leaf: it's battery is basically too small. Not only does a 100miles from 24KWH seem not very realistic in the real world (compared to other manufacturer's claims), but there just is no margin build in to allow for a 20-30% degradation and still have a half decent range left. On the other hand, if Nissan makes good on it's promise to come up with a new chemistry double range battery pack by 2015 you will want to upgrade anyway I suppose. But apart from that I do believe Nissan's durability claims based on the interest they showed in leasing the battery apart from the vehicle. That's only commercially attractive if you know something everybody else doesn't namely that it will last a very long time. Anyway if you analyze the Leaf program it's very clear that Nissan has thought this through to the smallest detail and I think it's safe to say that they wouldn't have bet on batteries on the scale they did if there was serious doubt about the durability of the battery.
     
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  8. By ColtsChiefsTitans Posted: 6/1/2010 2:11pm PDT

    @ Chris O:
    Wondering about your 'efficiencies of scale/volume' arguement regarding battery cells & packs... You argue that manufacturing alot of the same thing will cut the per unit cost. I'm wondering if you have any idea about the proportion of raw materials vs. manufactured components in battery cells & packs? In other words, how much of battery cost is the chemistry (commodities which will INCREASE in cost as demand grows, just like gold, oil or copper) and how much is the electronics and packaging which should go down in cost as you make more & more. I think that's where Nissan or anyone will hit a brick wall in bringing down the cost... you can't manufacture the chemicals/minerals which power the battery.
     
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