(Second Teardown article in a series.) By John Scott-Thomas, TechInsights The Chevrolet Volt, GM’s entry in the electric car market, is one of the most complex vehicles on the road, using almost 100 microprocessors that are controlled by about 10 million lines of code. By comparison, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner gets by with only 6.5 million lines. One of the real

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:

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,

PHILADELPHIA–College is so different these days. Can you imagine having the chance, back in the day, to build an electric dragster? That’s what engineering students at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) have done in the past six years. In an earlier segment, we talked to them about the origins of the design, which emerged from a long-popular solar car design

By John Donovan, Low-Power Design, for Drive for Innovation When you step on the gas in an ordinary car, most of us have a pretty good idea what happens, having driven them since we were teenagers. But what happens when you depress the accelerator in a Volt? A lot more than you might expect. The Volt has three power sources:

By John Donovan, Low-Power Design, for Drive For Innovation Last week we took a high-level look at the Chevy Volt’s drivetrain, which turned out to be one area where engineering and marketing weren’t quite in sync. This time let’s take a deeper dive into just how the motor and engine actually do sync up. The Volt is based on GM’s

(Odometer: 587 miles) VIRDEN, Ill.–Kevin Smith, in our earlier video and post, walked us through the Illuminati 7′s interior and exterior design, and then we got to roar out onto the highway. We also had him give us a tour of the vehicle’s engine, a beautiful creation with Frankensteinian accents (parts from a Fiero, a Geo Metro and so on).

By Charles J. Murray, Senior Technical Editor, Electronics, Design News 11/16/10 While driving a rental car over Eisenhower Pass in the Rocky Mountains a few weeks ago, Pamela Fletcher made a surprising discovery: By comparison to the soon-to-be-released Chevy Volt, conventional gasoline-burning vehicles just don't seem as good anymore. Fletcher should know. As chief engineer for the Chevy Volt's powertrain, she