A Volt outside GM's headquarters in Detroit. Credit: Flickr / Landlessness.

Electric vehicle enthusiasts (and critics) are keeping a close eye on sales of GM’s Volt this year to get a sense of whether electric vehicles will really finally catch on. GM has said that it hopes to sell 30,000 Volts in 2012, which would mean selling, on average 2,500 a month. It’s far short of that pace for January having sold just 603.

The January figure markedly down from December, when GM delivered 1,520. But sales were actually up substantially from the same time last year, when GM sold 321 of the cars—however, at that time, the Volt was only available in a few states. 

GM didn’t meet its goal of selling 10,000 Volts during 2011, for a number of reasons. In fact, it’s still short of 10,000, with total deliveries of 8,600 vehicles since sales began at the end of 2010.

So, do slow sales in January mean GM won't reach its goal?

There are a number of factors that could explain the slow January sales. Customers hoping to get the Federal tax credit for the car for the 2011 tax year may have rushed to buy in December. Also, at the beginning of January, GM announced a retrofit that will make the car safer. The cars on the lots in January (about 4,400 were there at the beginning of the month) were not retrofitted yet, and the parts needed to do the retrofits weren't widely available. So anyone buying a car in January would have to take it back in a month or two to have the changes made. GM also announced in January that cars built later this year would have low enough emissions to qualify for driving in California’s HOV lanes, an attractive perk.

All in all, potential customers had a lot of reasons to wait until later this year to buy a Volt. It’s too early to call whether the company could sell 30,000 this year. It’s also too early to say how important sales of the Volt are, at least in terms of the overall prospects for electric vehicles. But I’d be interested to hear what readers think. How much is riding on the success of the Volt this year?

GM's MyLink. Credit: GM

A key problem with adding computer-like functionality to your car's dashboard is that, because of the long, multiyear lead times for developing cars, interfaces and functionality tend to be outdated as soon as the car rolls of the production line, and will be hopelessly clunky by the time you've had the car for five years.

Ford partially addressed this with its Sync system, which uses Bluetooth to connect the driver's smart phone to the car's speakers, and which uses voice activation to make calls. GM recently announced a similar system, called MyLink. At CES this week GM announced that My Link will be available on its 2013 Sonic and its 2013 Spark EV. Such systems are as up to date as the driver's phones, in theory.

But with both systems you're still stuck with the built-in touch screen. Key characteristics—the responsiveness, multitouch ability, and the clarity, resolution, and brightness of the screen—will always lag behind the latest offerings from smart phone manufacturers and devices such as the iPad. And you've got to learn how to navigate the car's system and go through the process of pairing your devices. Similarly, if the system relies on the car's built-in microprocessors for voice recognition, this is bound to seem slow compared to the latest Siri-like applications on personal devices.

Why not just provide a versatile mounting station for whatever device a person owns to replace the car's touch screen? If a driver doesn't own one, throw one in with the financing of the car—it would be a relatively cheap add-on. Of course, it would be challenging to design this so that it doesn't look ugly—a station big enough to hold an iPad could look strange holding an iPhone. But it's worth the effort to make a drivers' expensive cars feel as up to date as the relatively cheap device in their pockets.

The automaker's know that consumers want this: "Customers all over the world told us they've set up their smart phones exactly how they want them, and the ideal car radio should extend the capabilities of their smartphone rather than try to duplicate them," said Sara LeBlanc, GM global infotainment program manager, in a press release this week. LeBlanc said GM has answered this desire with MyLink, but that's only a partial solution.

MyLink and Sync are about allowing drivers to access some of their smart phones' functions. The next step is allowing devices to make use of information from the car's internal network, such as steering wheel angle, GPS information, and vehicle speed, or even engine data and controls. For more on that, see, "Ford Bets on the Digital Car."

Credit: GM

Today GM announced that it will introduce changes to the Chevrolet Volt to guard against fires like the ones that occurred after crash tests last year.

New Volts will incorporate the changes, including steel reinforcements, starting this month. The approximately 12,000 cars that have already been built (about 8,000 have been sold so far) can also be retrofitted at dealerships starting in February. The retrofits will be part of a voluntary program, not an official product recall.

GM has also confirmed what caused a handful of Volt battery fires in testing last year. A side-impact test caused part of the Volt's structure to break into the battery casing, and a small coolant leak was exacerbated when, as part of the test procedure, the battery was slowly turned over. When the battery pack was upside down, the coolant leaked onto a circuit board, which caused a short, and then the fully charged battery caught fire.

The fires could likely have been avoided if the batteries had simply been drained of charge after the test—much as a conventional vehicle would have its gas tank drained. The fires didn't start right after the crash tests, so there would be plenty of time to do this. But the changes to the Volt are meant to prevent coolant leaks as the result of a side-impact collision.

Much has been made of the fact that the Volt battery pack isn't encased in metal, while the pack for the Nissan Leaf electric car is. But the Volt pack is, in fact, well protected by a steel tunnel built into the floor of the car.

Battery Reinforcements: Engineers add steel brackets to the undercarriage of the Chevrolet Volt. Credit: GM

GM is adding extra steel braces to the steel tunnel to further protect the battery. The company says tests show this will prevent coolant leaks. GM is also adding coolant level sensors and a special tamper proof cover meant to prevent overfilling of the coolant.

Mary Barra, GM's senior vice president of global product development, said today that the fires were not the result of a problem the battery cells inside the battery pack. She also said no changes will be made to the manufacture of the battery pack itself. And she expressed confidence in the safety of the lithium-ion chemistry GM is using, saying that the cells had been subjected to rigorous tests, including driving nails through them.

Despite all of those tests, apparently the cells—at least when fully charged—are still not robust enough to keep from catching fire after a short caused by a coolant leak.

It's not clear whether a more stable battery chemistry, such as the lithium-iron phosphate materials used by companies such as A123 Systems, could have prevented the fires.