Volt

South Korea’s LG Chem plans to start production at its US car battery factory in the second half of this year, two executives told Automotive News.

The Holland, Michigan manufacturing plant drew some unpleasant publicity in February, when a DOE investigation found that the production line at the plant was idle, but workers were being paid anyway. LG Chem received a $150-million federal grant, as well as a package of tax incentives, to build the plant, but so far, it has produced only a few test cells. The company has since reimbursed the government for its share of the dubious labor costs, and released an apologetic statement.

Now LG Chem says the facility will soon be turning out batteries for the Chevy Volt and Ford Focus Electric - the goal is to produce enough battery cells annually to equip 60,000 EVs.

“We will start preparations for the plant’s operation from the second half. It will soon commence operation,” said LG Chem CFO Cho Suk-jeh. Kim Jong-hyun, head of LG’s battery division, said that the company plans to start trial production in July or August.

However, demand is still lower than was envisioned when the plant was planned, and Cho Suk-jeh doesn’t expect the company to be profitable in the near term. “We don’t think we will be able to make profit on car battery business (this year). We are trying to minimize losses on car batteries,” he said.

Image: LGEPR (flickr)
Sources: Automotive News, Detroit Free Press

It’s no surprise that the media has been having a field day with the story of Fisker Automotive’s apparently terminal troubles. “Pissing away taxpayer money on useless boondoggles” was one of the more charitable descriptions of the situation to be found over on the rightward side of the dial.

Even more neutral observers noted the political damage. “Politically it’s obviously not a good thing,” said Jeremy Anwyl of auto consultant Edmunds.com. “This is going to be another Solyndra, a poster child for perhaps a lack of due diligence on the part of the federal government when it’s investing funds.”

Some support electrification, but are suspicious of government support for individual companies. Rebecca Lindland, an industry analyst who serves on a DOE committee that’s preparing a report on ways to encourage EV adoption, told Bloomberg that the government should promote high-tech vehicles without propping up the companies manufacturing them. “It reminds me of the role of government in sports. Often you will hear that the government will relax taxation when it comes to stadiums, but they’re not providing the payroll.”

DOE spokeswoman Aoife McCarthy responded to the criticism. “Despite Fisker’s difficulties, our overall loan portfolio of more than 30 projects continues to perform very well, and more than 90 percent of the $10 billion loan loss reserve that Congress set aside for these programs remains intact. Sales of electric vehicles tripled last year, and we just can’t afford to sit on the sidelines in the global race to capture this rapidly expanding market.”

Dan Becker of the Safe Climate Campaign put things more colorfully: “I don’t think that companies that bring us the Hummer…are going to bring us clean vehicles without any major government involvement. If we want to buy all of our electric cars in the future from China, then absolutely we should stop helping the electric vehicle industry in the US.”

Politician-turned-pundit Sarah Palin got a lot of press for a Facebook post in which she said:

Once again, the American public lost when the Obama administration attempted to pick “winners and losers” in the free market. Today the electric car company Fisker Automotive, which received nearly $200 million in taxpayer money, is laying off three-fourths of its US workers.

The Anaheim, CA-based startup has failed at pretty much every level - especially when it comes to the company’s ultra-expensive luxury electric hybrid, the Karma (what a name!), which is assembled in Finland and received a green-energy loan to transition the assembly to the US, something that never happened.

This losing tax-subsidized venture joins other past losers like the Obama-subsidized Volt that gets 40 miles per battery charge, or like the Obama-subsidized Tesla that turns into a “brick” when the battery completely discharges and then costs $40,000 to repair.

Ms Palin’s comments on Fisker are a legitimate statement of opinion, but it’s ludicrous to try to tar the Chevrolet Volt and Tesla with the same oily brush.

The Volt’s electric range (actually 38 miles for the 2013 model) is one of the longest offered by a production plug-in hybrid - only someone who doesn’t understand how PHEVs work could consider it a defect.

Tesla’s “bricking” problem was an issue only with the Roadster, which is no longer in production. According to the company, the Model S cannot be “bricked,” no matter how hard an auto reviewer may try, and if such a thing did happen, it would be covered under warranty.

Furthermore, anyone who could refer to a vehicle that will introduce its fourth model year in May (the Volt), and a company that has just announced that it will be fully profitable this quarter, and repay its DOE loan ahead of schedule (Tesla), as “past losers” must simply not have been reading the newspapers lately. And we in the EV media have long been puzzled by the relentless identification of President Obama with a car, and a loan program, that both began their lives under the Bush administration.

Worst of all, poor, sensitive Elon Musk got his feelings hurt. “Sarah Palin calls Tesla a loser,” Musk tweeted. “Am deeply wounded. BTW, Model S warranty does cover bricking.”

Image: sskennel (flickr)
Sources: Autoblog Green, InsideEVs, Bloomberg

Volt owners have logged over 150 million electric-powered miles, and are consistently achieving or exceeding the EPA-estimated fuel economy of 98 MPGe, according to a recent press release from GM. “The typical Volt owner who regularly charges the vehicle is going 900 miles between fill-ups of the gasoline engine that powers the Volt’s on-board generator. That avoids about $1,300 a year at the pump.”

The Volt’s all-electric range of 38 miles is longer than that of most plug-in hybrids, and Chevy proudly points out that many drivers are able to run on electricity alone much of the time, using the gas engine as a “range extender” only when needed for a longer trip.

“I have driven more than 23,500 miles in my Volt in 21 months, and have been to a gas station twice,” said Brent Waldrep of Auburn Hills, Michigan. “I go about 9,000-10,000 miles between fill ups.”

“It’s been more than 5,000 miles and I’ve only filled up once not including the dealer fill,” said Larry Read of Canyon Lake, Texas.

Paul Friday of San Jose, California, says he gets about 7,000 miles between fill-ups and adds about three gallons of gas to his Volt every three months.

Source: GM

The good news: 2012 plug-in vehicle sales may turn out to be triple the 2011 figure. The bad news: November’s total is down a little from October, and sales of the former front-runner, the Chevy Volt, took a big hit.