COVERITLIVE.COM

4:02	Rob Peterson - Welcome everyone. Frank Weber and Doug Parks will be joining shortly. As many of you already now Frank is moving back to Europe to join the Opel/Vauxhall senior leadership team and Doug is taking over the reigns for the Chevrolet Volt team effective December 2.

4:02	[Comment From Unni ] Are you also bailing out because volt is not that great as expected ?

4:06

Frank Weber - Welcome everyone. Glad to be here with you all. It is certainly not connected to the Volt. There 80 preproduction vehicles on the road currently and the program is well under way. I am just coming back to the office after a weekend of pure electric driving in the Volt. I can ensure one thing that driving the Volt will blow you away.

4:06	Doug Parks - Hello everyone. I'm glad to be on the team. I've been working on our new global compact vehicles for the last four years (Astra, Cruze) and now moving up to the Volt. It's a natural move and a great place to be.

4:06	[Comment From Dos ] What is the charging efficiency of the volt on 120?

4:08	Frank Weber - It doesn't make a real difference in the efficiency whether you are charging with 120 or 240 volt. Time to complete the charge is the big difference. 2.5 vs. 7.5 hours.

4:09

[Comment From Lyle Dennis, GM-Volt.com ]
Mr Parks, now that you are taking over I assume you will be involved in 2nd and 3rd generation Volt development. What is the timeline to production for each of those and what areas will you be focusing on? Also does GM plan to develop a partnership or JV with a battery production company?

4:10	Doug Parks - Our primary focus is on making this Volt the best it can be for the start of production late next year. We're already applying learnings into Gen 2, but stay tuned on timing announcements.

4:11	[Comment From ViVAPartnership ] What would you say are the biggest barriers to trial and adoption on a mass scale?

4:12

Frank Weber - The biggest success factors for electric vehicles are robust and low cost solutions for advanced batteries, electric motors, power electronics and thermal systems. The evolution can be compared to cell phones where you were initially carrying suitcases and today you have mobile computers at one-tenth of the initial price.

Page 1 Next >