GM Opens a Battery Research Lab for the Volt

While I am pleased that GM is opening a research facility on battery technology, it seems like a late start in the business cycle for the electric car! Tesla has a $50,000 price point on their 2012 400 mile range sedan.

I have, perhaps a naive, question: what makes people think that GM's competitors won't do something similar?

It is being repeated ad nauseam that GM's future now depends on electric cars. They have to make the Volt a sales success, or there won't be any second chances for GM.

What makes people think that GM will get some kind of competitive break?...Toyota and Honda are very advanced in their hybrid technologies, which implies that they know how to deal with batteries too. There is just an incremental step going from a regular hybrid to a plug-in hybrid. And you can bet that they will come to market with plug-in hybrids.

The competitive pressure will not ease for GM, and I doubt that they will leapfrog the rest of the carmakers. Just because GM makes some progress does not mean that the other guys are sitting on their laurels.

GM has been losing for decades against Toyota and Honda, and most likely this trend will continue.

All battery pack makers have to make it so these batteries can be easily removed,  and new ones replaced.   Go to betterplace.org (or com) - because it's possible that GM can have a Bettery Exchange contract with a motorist, and "charging station".  Then, it's possible to drive across country,  pull into participating "stations".  Yank out the discharged battery, replace it with a freshly charged one,  then place the dead battery on a solar and wind powered charging system for the next motorist to come in needing a freshly charged battery.  The motorist who buys the electric car wouldn't actually OWN the battery,  but instead lease it from GM on some fair and affordable yearly fee,  perhaps included in their insurance payments.  So GM needs to come up with a kind of "docking" system....  making it easy to replace bateries.   Car users can pay for a "replacement" charge (hopefully less then the cost of a fillup).   The Charging stations would have a kind of contract with GM as an Authorized Battery replacement service.   Of course for this to work,   GM has to make an easy to replace batteries with a STANDARD system,   then sign up "Charging stations" along the major hiways,  or even at rest stops.   Of course the rest stops would have Charging outlets...  perhaps coin or credit card operated...    at street parking in cities,  company parking lots...  and hopefully the charging fee would be reasonable,  like $3 / hour plus parking fees.   We can do it you guys,   this idea has to be propagated.

Of course this takes cooperation from everyone,  and this means JOBS, and More Jobs...   Like we need to have enterprising Gas stations,  now taking on the responsibility of being Charging stations,  and battery replacement stations for cross country drivers.  Someone needs to make these Coin operated charging stations...  plug then into the grid,  wind mills,  solar systems,  or whatever and let these cute little "money machines" start making money for them.   There IS hope for a renewable Energy economy... it's just going to have to take some Phat cats to open up their wallets and invest in some enterprising individual willing to build them.   From an engineering point,  they are easy to build.

John 

And in the mean time Mitsubishi are releasing their all-electric MiEV to corporate and government customers in Japan in July. And they stated will begin selling it to customers in April 2010.

.

despite the new superbatteries are THE DEATH of MY idea of a swappable battery "cellphoneCAR" [  http://ow.ly/dOIK  ] I'm VERY HAPPY to read about it (and also the IBM interest in this research) since they will help the electric cars to (finally!) become (soon!) a COMMERCIAL REALITY allowing the cars industry to produce millions electric cars with half sized and half priced battery packs but 500-1000 miles of autonomy!

.