Steve Leibson, longtime industry editor and engineer, got a chance this summer to tool around in the Silicon Valley in a Chevy Volt.  It's always good to get a different perspective, but Leibson's over three days tracks ours over 12 months.  He writes: "Quite simply, it drives like a smooth, well-bred car and it’s clear that GM engineers worked really

It's sometimes difficult to restrain oneself, much less one's company. Every innovation is born of a huge measure of optimism and confidence that this is the solution for the market. When the Drive for Innovation rolled into Boston in the fall of 2011, we hadn't heard of XL Hybrids. Today, we did, as the company announced a supplier deal with

7/19/12 By Charles Murray, Senior Technical Editor, Design News In the midst of the Tesla Model S rollout at the company's California manufacturing plant recently, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made a startling prediction: "In 20 years more than half of new cars manufactured will be fully electric," he said, according to a Reuters article. "I actually feel quite safe in

Here's a presentation compiled by Al Steier of Munro & Associates and John Scott-Thomas of TechInsights that walks you through what they found during their analysis of the Chevy Volt's charge/powertrain system:

By John Scott-Thomas, TechInsights The Chevrolet Volt is GM’s atonement for the cancellation of its first modern electric vehicle, the EV1, and a potent attempt to create a bold new technical future. The Volt’s control systems are among the most elaborate ever created. Close to 100 microprocessors are in the car, and over 10 million lines of software are used; a Boeing

Here are select components used in the design of the Chevrolet Volt 360V battery pack: LG Chem Battery Management ASSP, by STMicro in proprietary BCD Technology. The L9763 is a full ASIC with intellectual property shared by LG. Freescale microcontroller: MPC5516 Freescale microcontroller: S9S08DZ32 (Click here for related parts) Spansion, MirrorBit Flash: GL512N11FFA02. Spansion engineering innovations include the company’s award-winning

Here's a presentation compiled by Al Steier of Munro & Associates and John Scott-Thomas of TechInsights that walks you through what they found during their analysis of the Chevy Volt's battery pack:  

TROY, Mich. — Ever seen a car come apart really fast? Check out our time-lapse video of the Chevy Volt teardown we did several weeks ago here. More design resources It took three days, but the video shortens it to a few crazy minutes and makes Munro & Associates Al Steier look like he's working on barrels of coffee! I

What’s more fun than driving a Chevy Volt? Tearing one apart! That’s what we’re going to do next week in Michigan as we build toward another new phase of the Drive for Innovation: analyzing the Volt’s inside down to the pc-board level. (Here's a link to the YouTube page where we're posting outtakes from the teardown). We’re gathering in Troy,