The first seem entirtely plausable, but probably don’t contribue significantly to the bottom line. Redoing the interior can be done in such a way that it does cut costs – replacing the capacitive touch interior with buttons like every normal car out there, shrink the center stack display (keep the width but switch it to 16:10 widescreen instead of 4:3), looking for off-the-shelf parts and adapting designs to them instead of having to order any semi-custom or custom parts (re-using parts from other cars). But I would estimate they probably couldn’t save more than a thousand dollars this way. Moving some of the more expensive features to options (like the Bose audio system) helps too, but its rearranging the deck chairs, its not fundamentally making the technology any cheaper. Moving to mass production helps – when you factor in overhead and capital costs (the machines, training, supervisors, QA, etc), mass production does help spread those costs out over more vehicles, reducing per-unit costs.

That last option – cutting the battery in half – might seem like killing the main purpose behind the vehicle, but it seems a lot more plausible when you consider the use of plug-in stations at people’s offices. Even in the summer, energy usage in the morning hours (before 10A) are still considered off-peak, so you could recharge the entire, smaller, battery before on-peak charges started. Going to a smaller battery would mean that GM would need to alter the characteristics of the battery – more power and less energy storage per kg of battery material. There are two main issues with shrinking the battery pack in this way – the power output of the battery pack and the cycle life. Power output is governed by the rating of the individual cells as well as the number of cells in the pack. The cycle life would have to compensate for the batteries being recharged twice or even three times per day instead of once at night.

Reducing the battery pack would also reduce the federal rebate – from $7,500 to $4,600 ($2500 + $417 for each kWh above 4kWh). If you’re cutting the price by total vehicle price by $10,000 but losing $2,900 of the rebate, your effective cost reduction is only $7,100. However, this would still push the after-rebate price down from $33,500 to $26,400, or the price of a nicely equipped Toyota Prius. The 2012 plug-in Prius is expected to have a price in that rage, but it is unknown if that included the $3,000 rebate or not (its likely it did – I’d estimate the full price of a Prius plug-in at around $30,000).

The sticking point appears to be the battery. GM would need a batter that is more capable that what is available today, but only by a little. By the end of 2012 or sometime in 2013, such batteries will be available and probably have markedly decreased cost over batteries of today (mostly due to the large quantities in which they will be produced – Toyota will likely be using a similar type of battery, but with less stringent requirements since batteries only provide partial power in the plug-in Prius – up to 62mph and normal acceleration).

The success of a 20-mile range model is highly dependent on building a charging infrastructure outside of people’s garages. Offices and shopping centers will need to build the necessary infrastructure to handle vehicle charging, as well as utilities monitoring and managing the charging using the smart grid. But if the infrastructure materializes, why not use it to it’s fullest while accelerating the use of electric vehicles and reducing oil consumption until batteries are cheap and plentiful.

And it’s definitely better than filling up once a week at $4/gal!

* MSRP is only a suggestion – some dealers have tacked on $5,000 or more onto Volt sticker prices because of their limited quantity and uniqueness

WLC, in a recent press release, also stated that their target for their stage I lens production is 27,700 metric tonnes per year of Lithium Carbonate (LCE, or chemically Li2CO3). The math to turn that into the number of EVs is easy – 27,700 metric tonnes is 27,700,000 kg of LCE. In 1kWh of a Lithium-Ion battery there is 0.6kg 0.9kg of LCE (figures in this article have been updated). This means that 27.7M kg of LCE per year is about 30.8M kWh of batteries that can be produced. They have an expected 18 years at this rate of supply to mine (approximately 500,000 metric tonnes LCE total).

In a pure EV (like the Nissan Leaf) the battery is 24kWh, so from 27,700 tonnes of LCE comes 1.28M Nissan Leaf battery packs per year. In a EREV like the Chevy Volt, its battery pack is 16kWh, so 1.9M battery packs would be able to be manufactured for the Volt.

To put these numbers in perspective, in 2009 there were a total of 10.4M cars sold in the US, and in 2008 approximately 13M cars sold. So this single lithium mine could power up to 15% of all the US EVs and EREVs sold, if the automakers could build and sell that many (which they wont, at least initially).

So the question is, how many tonnes of LCE would it take to make every car sold in America a plug-in? From a small two-mode system that would allow for 8-12kWh batteries for 10-15 miles at speeds below 60MPH, all the way up to pure EVs with 50kWh batteries. If we assume that 70% of cars sold are two-mode at 10kW, 20% are EREV (18kWh) and the last 10% are pure EVs (35kWh avg), the total kWh for a year of 14M cars is 197.4M kWh, or 177.3M kg of LCE. So in order to produce enough LCE, we would need to produce about 180,000 metric tonnes of LCE, or about 6.5x the amount of stage I.

The stage II lens has approximately 1.365M tonnes of LCE, and at 180,000 metric tonnes per year, it would be exhausted after 7.5 years, assuming the production rate could be sustained.

Seven and a half years might not be a long time, however there are still several other stages to this mine area (stages three and four), plus there are other lithium mines in the Nevada and the US. It appears that Lithium supplies wont be a blockade on the road to electric cars. While Li-Ion batteries can also contain other precious metals that might be scarce, Lithium shouldn’t be an issue.

[Update 5/27 - updated Lithium math based on Leaf's use of 0.9kg/kWh]

A Japanese firm called Eamex has announced (Japanese translation via Google) that they have developed a new Li-Ion battery that is capable of withstanding 10,000 cycles and 10,000W/kg power. A huge achivement – considering most laptop batteries today can only hold up for 300 cycles, even the high-end batteries in the Apple MacBooks are only 1,000 cycles. Could this be the technology to finally lay to rest the issues of battery life in cars?

While I’m always skeptical of people touting new battery improvements due to the very high lead time between development, sampling, manufacturability and entrance to the market, these batteries could dramatically change the EV/E-REV world, as well as the power storage/back-up world.

The battery cycle life is a dramatic improvement. At 10,000 cycles, a plug-in vehicle could recharge twice a day for over 13 years. The battery not only eliminates the worry about having to replace it during the 10 year warranty. This also allows people not to worry about taking advantage of Vehicle-to-Grid technologies without excess wear on their battery; V2G during the summer months could take a tiny bit out of the battery at peak times and recharge it later.

The second improvement is the 10,000W/kg specific power. This is far and above what most Li-Ion batteries can provide today. Combined with the increased cycle life, you can build EVs and E-REVs with smaller battery packs; closer to the actual amount of energy that would be needed instead of having a limit on the depth of discharge like the Volt. This effectively reduces the cost of the battery by requiring less kWh of storage – batteries that might be $500/kWh to provide a 16kWh battery can be downsized to 10kWh and still provide the exact same performance in a smaller package (100kg instead of 160kg pack weight) while delivering more power than the engine will need. Hybrids will stand to gain from this as well, since a 2kWh battery could easily power the car entirely (200kW, or 266 HP) for a few miles.

From a grid-backup standpoint, the batteries could finally make practical and affordable to capturing cheap energy and selling it at peak demand times. The high cycle life will keep maintenance and replacement costs down, which is necessary when the difference between daytime and night time prices is only 10-15c/kWh.

There are still many questions left to ask – how does the power output of the battery vary with the depth of discharge, how is the charge and discharge and cycle life affected by temperature. They expect to start producing this battery at the end of the year, but who knows in what quantities and if it will live up to the performance above.

via Electronista

Batteries and the electric grid are still lacking in terms of quick-charge capacity – medium sized car EVs are capabile of driving for 240 highway miles (65-75mph) in half the size of the initial Chevy Volt battery. But charging them still poses a problem – how do you put 90kWh of energy into the battery. Because the batteries are still somewhat sizable and heavy – 5 cubic feet, 200 lbs – they aren’t easily changeable since they’re still considered a key structural piece of the car that needs to be protected by a space frame just like the human occupants.

Putting 90kWh of energy into the car in under five minutes would require over 1MW of power. Thats not safe for someone to handle, and there are many other complex issues like conductor size, safety and short-circuit protection that would need to be addressed. Suffice to say you wouldn’t want to be anywhere near the car while it was charging in case something went catastrophically wrong.

So the need for a range extender will still need to be required. Hydrogen seems like the most likely candidate – fuel cells will start commercial introduction in 2015, and by 2030 should be cheap enough (see superatoms for replacing expensive materials like platinum with tungsten carbide) for mass production, with only small (10-15%) cost over a standard internal combustion engine, plus the benefit of much fewer moving parts.

I’ve outlined where I think the sweet spot of the market will be below. There are a few assumptions, one is that hydrogen refueling infrastructure is available, and that the grid can handle the cars (which I think it will anyways, we just need smart grid technology to keep the cars from charging at the wrong times).

Battery – 30-32 mile AER ($170/kWh)

• Small car: 10kWh ($1070)
• Mid-size car: 13kWh ($2200)
• Large sedan: 15kWh ($2550)
• Small/Mid SUV: 16.5kWh ($2850)
• Mid-sized SUV: 18kWh ($3060)
• Full-sized SUV: 21.5kWh ($3655)

Battery characteristics for sedans:

• 450 Wh/kg, 600W/L
• 6000 W/kg
• Sufficient cycle life to last 10 years or 150,000 miles at 70% DoD

Battery characteristics for trucks and SUVs: (trading power per kg for higher energy per kg and L for less weight and volume)

• 500 Wh/kg, 650W/L
• 5000 W/kg
• Sufficient cycle life to last 10 years or 150,000 miles at 70% DoD

Additional Fuel Source – Hydrogen Fuel Cell

• $3500 for 95W (small cars)
• $5500 for 220W (Mid/large SUV)

Hydrogen Fuel Cell characteristics:

• Last 80,000 road miles (because charging every night means the battery does 80-90% of the driving, endurance can be tuned out of the FC to reduce cost)
• 360 mile range (total vehicle range: 400 mi from full charge)

Fuel cost per mile (in 2010 $)

• 2.7c/mi on electricity
• 4.5c/mi on H2 (assuming cost of H2 is $3.00/gallon gasoline equivalent)
• For reference, a 30MPG sedan has a fuel cost per mile of 10c/mi at $3.00/gal, at 12,000 miles per year vs an 80/20 mix of elec./H2, this is a savings of $828/yr

The price quoted is $350/kWh. This means the Volt’s battery is $5,600 for the battery cells only. All the electronics, battery casing, cooling/heating, etc, are extra and on top of that figure. The $8,000 estimate for the entire battery pack  seems to be plausible, if not right on the money. At the finished pack level, this is a cost of $1,000 per usable kWh. Its hopeful the usable kWh price for electric vehicles reaches $500 by 2015 and $250 by 2020. These price targets would be achieved through a combination of increased cycle life and depth of discharge, as well as advanced manufacturing technologies that decrease the time it takes to build a cell, module and pack and allow for higher throughput.

This doesn’t immediately impact the Volt’s MSRP however, because there is still the unknown of battery life. I did see a chart in a presentation (pg. 27) from MIT that depicted depth of discharge versus cycle life – while it was for NiMH and not Li-Ion, it is known that Li-Ion exhibits a similar pattern. It showed the number of cycles increasing logarithmically with depth of discharge; to 75% original capacity, it was about 1,000 cycles for 100% DoD, about 1,600 cycles for 80% DoD, and 2,750 cycles for 50% DoD. You can see that the increase is not linear – you get a 60% boost by reducing DoD from 100% to 80%, and a 175% boost from reducing DoD form 100% to 50%. The issue with automotive batteries is how they’ll be affected by temperature and how that impacts their cycle life.

The Volt would need about 3,800 cycles to 75% to meet its targets based on what GM has said up to this point. The goal appears to get to the 10 year/150,000 mile mark with 75% degradation in the battery pack, leaving a 12kWh pack, still enough to source 8.8kWh and leave margins on the edges (though this is a 73% DoD, as DoD rises it will accelerate the reduction of battery capacity). It appears that they’ll probably fall about 1,000 cycles short of what they would need, however that is the worst-case scenario – the 55% DoD is a upper bound and many times drivers may just being going out for a short drive and it would be to their benefit to recharge it when they return, since reducing their average DoD will prolong battery life and performance.

A life of 2,750 cycles at 40 miles per cycle would mean 110,000 miles – 40,000 mile short of the 150,000 mile warranty. This would require someone to drive exactly 40 miles per charge, and then charge it up, then drive 40 miles again, never using the gasoline engine. This isn’t too practical in the real world – either owners will always drive on electricity (reducing the average depth of discharge and increasing the battery cycle life) or they’ll be driving some miles on gasoline and not affecting the battery but still ticking miles off the warranty.

In the worse case scenario, I would expect that even at two charges per weekday (which would be exceedingly rare) and one per weekend day, the amount of time to get to 110,000 miles would be four and a half years (25,000 miles per year). By 2015, batteries should be somewhat cheaper ($500 per usable kWh, rather than $700, with a total pack price of $5,500), and the replacement batteries should last sufficiently long as to not need replacement before the original warranty period is up since the warranty doesn’t reset, rather the batteries will just need to get through the remaining 40,000 miles on the warranty.

If the Volt shell, engine and generator cost $25,000 (the cost of a high end Civic), the battery being another $8,000, the total vehicle cost is only $33,000. These numbers however, don’t include the additional labor since the vehicle isn’t being mass produced initially – only 10,000 units (maybe) for the first year, and battery packs will be assembled mostly by hand (see the 2nd to last paragraph) and more automation will be added to ramp production. It also doesn’t include any warranty, dealer markup, delivery, etc. If GM has to provide a second battery to 20-30% of Volt owners before the warranty is up, that could add another $1,500 to the cost of each car. It also doesn’t include any money to pay off the many years of research and development that have gone into the car, the battery testing lab, etc.

The performance of the batteries and the modular design have attracted attention. The 1.5kWh pack weighs 8kg (17.6lbs) and has a volume of 7L, or about 187Wh/kg and 214Wh/L. These figures are both extremely high considering most other batteries have energy-to-weight and energy-to-volume figures below 140Wh/unit. No information in the press release announced a release window for these battery packs.

The raw figures indicate excellent performance characteristics. Attempting to research the cycle life characteristics of the Lithium Nickel Oxide batteries yielded an paper from 1995 (abstract available) had shown a LiNoO2 cathode to withstand more than 1000 cycles with extremely strong performance characteristics almost 15 years ago. The reason that it had not been used previously is safety problems, which Panasonic indicates they have solved by using a metal oxide layer in the battery that will prevent the anode and cathode from shorting out and causing thermal runaway (heat and possibly fire). If the batteries can be proven to be safe, it would be a significant step in improving battery technology.

As far as applications in cars go, the modules are a perfect fit for EVs and E-REVs because they are significantly ahead of other battery technology to date. This would reduce a 16kWh battery from 160kg (100Wh/kg) to about 90kg, and reducing the volume from approximately 140L (114Wh/L) to 74L (almost half the volume). Specific power is said to be comparable to Lithium Cobalt-based cells, however it is unknown whether or not the values scale up commensurately with the increases in Wh/kg and Wh/L – since the battery pack would have about half of the mass and volume, it would need twice the specific power (W/kg or W/L) to maintain the same power output for a given battery weight or volume. This means it would need about 1,200 W/kg (1,500W/L) to provide 110kW of power with 16kWh (90kg/74L) of batteries. If the batteries aren’t able to produce that kind of power, they’ll be relegated to pure EVs, where you could have a large 25kWh pack (80% DoD)  at 135kg/117L and need only 820W/kg and 940W/L. A research study (PDF, mostly in Japanese, but the abstract and charts are readable) on Panasonic Lithium Nickel Oxide batteries from Japan showed specific power between 4,400W/kg and 1,000W/kg (chart, page 4), however those figures quoted a very low specific energy (94Wh/kg), and assuming that specific power would decrease as specific energy increases, it could be estimated that for a SoC between 85% and 30%, the battery with twice the specific energy would have half the specific power, or roughly between 1,200W/kg and 2,200W/kg. This would be suitable for both E-REVs and EVs, however the restrictions on depth of discharge would remain (no expanding of the Volt’s D0D).

As batteries grow in energy density, they’ll become more practical for larger vehicles. Vehicles like the H3E E-REV demo model produced by Raser Technologies would be able to carry fewer battery packs, reducing the weight of electrification – what was probably 30kWh of batteries weighing 300kg could be reduced to about the size and weight of the current Volt battery pack (160kg/140L), which would be easy to “hide” on an H3 or any full sized truck.

Again, since there is no word on the release date and any numbers for how many cells they would produce per year, its still a bit up in the air – definitely not vaporware, but in that gray area between we’ve made demo models and mass production. Even if these batteries don’t arrive for another 3 years, that’s still far ahead of the 5-7% average annual performance increase we’ve had for Li-Ion batteries the past 10 years or so, batteries with this level of performance would not otherwise be expected until 2017.

The battery technology is lithium-manganese-cobalt, and based on their performance characteristics the cells look to line up pretty good with the performance needs for all sorts of applications.

The first chart from that link above shows the chart of the battery capacity at various discharge rates. The 5A is the rate that I look at for how it would behave in an electric vehicle. If you look at the Ragone plot and the cycle life chart, you can start to reverse engineer the variables that matter when it comes to electric cars.  The numbers work out fairly well for an electric car assuming they can keep these same figures as they scale the cell size upwards for electric car configurations.

We’ll start with those three parameters. The Ragone chart indicates that you can get 120Wh/kg and about 850W/kg. For a E-REV this allows for 120kW of battery power, 120kg battery, and 16.8kWh of energy storage. So for 8.8kWh energy usage, that’s a depth of discharge (D0D) of 52%. So what does that look like for CARB warranties? Assuming that their cycle life is about 2,000 cycles at 50% (their 100% D0D is about 700 cycles, cycle count is logarithmic based on D0D, so you can expect 2-3 times better cycle count, per Motorola). That should be enough to satisfy the necessary requirements for the CARB 150,000 mile warranty (which wouldn’t surprise me if they get decreased between now and then actually – maybe 10 year/130,000 mi).

Likewise the numbers are good for pure EVs as well – turning down the power and increasing the energy density to 140Wh/kg can provide 33kW in 240kg of batteries at 120kW.

So while they’re manufacturing capability might be small now, at least they’re producing cells on what is otherwise standard battery manufacturing equipment. Hopefully they can pull off not only large cells for larger applications like vehicles but mass production as well.

[from Green Car Congress]

Green

GM’s Volt test driver speaks out: I’ll save you the trouble of reading it – no hard performance data included, just “everything is in line with what we expect” and “we’re pleased” wiggle words (wiggle statements?). The skeptical person I am wants to believe that things are going great but I want hard numbers (or to get my hands on it).

Mercedes-Benz to build Volt-ish Vehicle: MB has revealed more information about their Volt competitor, the BlueZero E-Cell Plus. Its somewhat similar to the Volt, however their battery pack is larger (100km/62 miles all-electric range) plus a small 1.0L three cylinder turbo engine to generate power after the battery is depleted. Its an interesting trade-off; 62 miles is a long way to drive in one day, Argonne national labs estimates that about 83% of all drivers drive less than 60 miles per day (its “only” about 70% for 40 miles). Its a small four door car like the Volt, though since it carries the MB name I’d expect it to be far more expensive that the already premium-priced Volt. Limited production is scheduled for 2010.

Garbage to Ethanol: A company called Fulcrum BioEnergy based out of California is planning to build a plant east of Reno, NV to process 81,646 metric tons of garbage into almost 40M liters (10.5M gallons) of ethanol per year by 2011. They had a successful pilot run, and are now ready for the big time (well, as big as these things get right now). They expect to be able to produce ethanol at $1/gal and not worry about competing with food-based ethanol. 10.5M gallons of ethanol is enough to replace about half a day’s worth of gasoline but looking towards the future, dramatically reducing consumption and non-traditional sources of fuel are required.

Tech

Ryan isn’t too happy with Newegg: The Intel G2 SSDs that were announced last month (and were then immediately put on hold because of a serious firmware issue) haven’t been in stock lately. Newegg, who has had stock of the drives, raised the price of the $239 80GB SSD up to $499, then later that day pulled it off the website. Ryan points the finger towards Newegg, but I’m not entirely ready to jump to that conclusion. Remember that between Intel and Newegg like Distributors, and to quote a famous movie, “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy“. I remember back to the Intel launch of the Q9x50 Penryn chips. Intel had a bit of a hard time pushing the chips out the door in quantity, so what happened? Distributors jacked up the prices and e-tailers like Newegg and Tank Guys (where I ended up purchasing my chip from) had to raise their selling prices so they didn’t have to sell the chips for a loss, and I cant blame them.

Ars Technica reviews OSX 10.6 – Snow Leopard: A superb 23-page review. I cant really sum it up other than to say set some time aside, and go over it, even if its only a few pages a time. It took me three separate sessions of sitting down to read it to finish it all (then I got to the end and saw 9 pages of comments and said “that’s enough!”).

This week, AutoblogGreen reported on the evolution of GM’s fuel cell cars. The new fifth generation fuel cell stack is much smaller than the previous fourth generation stack. Reading the features of the new FC seem to indicate that GM is trying to “turn the corner” on fuel cells – this unit is designed for manufacturing, as well as dramatically reducing the amount of platinum catalyst used by 62.5%, from 80g to 30g (1.06oz) at the same output power level (93kW/120HP). Thats about $1350 in platinum for the fuel cell. The goal is to eventually get the platinum content down to 10g, less than $500, and to manufacture about 10,000 per year by the middle of the 2010-decade.

Technology is still progressing in terms of making fuel cells affordable and small enough to put into a car. But there are still a number of other pieces to get a hydrogen infrastructure in place.

Hydrogen isn’t naturally found: There is no hydrogen mine, or hydrogen reserves. There are a few ways to “make” hydrogen – electrolysis of water (50% efficient) or steam-based reformation of natural gas into hydrogen. Compared to just plugging in a car and charging batteries for an electric vehicle these are less efficient, however there is currently a limit on how many batteries you can put in a vehicle before you start sacrificing passenger room and cargo space. Pure EVs might only have a range of 100-200 miles.

Vehicle Range: Strides are also being made in this arena as well – Toyota recently announced that their FCHV-adv Highlander SUV that got an extrapolated 431 miles per tank (they drove about 300 miles and extrapolated based on the fuel left in the tank). Previously, the range on fuel cell vehicles had been between 200-300 miles per tank.

Hydrogen Fueling Stations: While there are plenty of gas stations, and you have electrical outlets in your home that would allow you to recharge an EV, there aren’t a whole lot of hydrogen refueling stations, let one ones open to the public. California might have 46 retail locations by 2014, but many are private ones that are built for small capacity refueling of fleet test vehicles or OHVs/golf carts.

Fuel Cell Stack Lifetime: The fuel cells at the turn of the century would last for about 35,000 miles. The fourth generation fuel cell as it is now can get 80,000 miles before it needs to be replaced. The new fifth generation will get a little more than 120,000 miles per GM. This is still low compared to a traditional gasoline engine which can last a very long time if the owner takes good care of it.

There is one shining opportunity for fuel cells though. Its to team up with E-REVs and become the alternate generator, replacing the gasoline engine. The two fit together quite well – you don’t need too big of a tank because you only need 300 miles combined (40 on electric, the remainder on FC), turning on and off the FC doesn’t make noise or vibrate, unlike traditional gasoline engines, and they’ll have much lower duty cycles – 120,000 miles for the FC would be enough to outlast the batteries by a large margin. And hydrogen stations wont need much storage capacity because you’ll probably only be filling up every 6-8 weeks (they see a lower visits per FC vehicle), which means their storage infrastructure doesn’t need to bee too large – instead of lots of equipment to extract hydrogen from water or natural gas and the storage to sell thousands of kg of hydrogen per day, they only need the equipment to generate and store a fraction of that.

The year 2015 has been talked about for the production of fuel cell vehicles. Thats about the time I would expect the Voltec power train to start appearing in other vehicles. It would seem to be a great opportunity to allow a few vehicles to be sold – probably geographically limited to start, since the hydrogen infrastructure will still be sparse. As production ramps to 100,000 in 2020 and 1,000,000 in 2025, they can not only displace the electric generator int he Volt and other future E-REV cars, but also the engine in standard plug-in hybrids.

If GM is targeting 100MPG or more, and the EPA remains firm on the 45H/55C split, they’ll need to manage about 60MPG on the highway by my calculations (which is higher than the rumored 50MPG, which would mean combined 88MPG).

The figure is very impressive, and rest assured that once the promotional campaign kicks into high gear, GM will have a large amount of work explaining to people they need to plug it in every night in order to get that 230MPG figure. GM should build some sort of mapping app, where you can type in various destinations, put them in order and it would use Google Maps or something to calculate your daily and weekly MPG numbers. From there, they could give you your personal Volt MPG – a figure that would include things like listening to the radio, A/C, etc. Judging on my daily commute and various other activities, my personal Volt MPG is probably somewhere around 275-300MPG (fill up once every 8 weeks and drive 200 miles a week).

The main issue is that, at least with the Volt and other mixed-fuel vehicles is explaining to people not only how they operate but how to get the optimum fuel economy. Hopefully, GM would put in some sort of notification system if the user gets out of the habit of charging the vehicle nightly, along with other user behavior reminders/modification. I’d love it if I parked it in my garage and it would text me to remind me to plug it in if I haven’t.

(via: GM Fastlane Blog )