Just 400 miles south of our last stop at Kunming in China, the Fiesta World Tour restarted its Asian leg in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It was impossible to export our Chinese-made Fiestas so we picked up two Thai-made ones to continue south. This is frontier territory. Chiang Mai is on the edge of the Golden …   Read full blog

The words have been attributed to Napoleon, but no historian is truly sure who once said, “When China wakes, it will shake the world.” At the end of an exhausting but immensely enjoyable and eye-opening China leg of the Fiesta World Tour, we can certainly confirm that China’s waking process is well underway. What we …   Read full blog

Anecdotes of the new Chevy Volt’s fuel sipping acumen keep coming, as General Motors winds down its two-week intro drive for auto journalists. The European press are in now, just following my drive. MT Tech Guru Frank Markus was assigned the deep dive into the car, and several of our other editors have had a …   Read full blog

The Chevrolet Volt’s gas-powered internal combustion four sometimes powers the car’s front wheels. Techie Frank Markus described this week how the long-awaited car’s “extended-range electric” system works. Since then, some of General Motors’ many critics have pointed to his description, and that of a few of our competitors, as proof why the new Chevy should be called a plug-in hybrid, not an EV.

By now, the brass occupying the top floors of GM’s Renaissance Center HQ are asking apiece other, “why do they hate us so much?” Chris Paine painted GM as the guilty party in his 2006 documentary, “Who Killed the Electric Car?” Even after GM unveiled the Chevy Volt at the 2007 Detroit show, Paine went to Nissan as it was developing the Leaf for his upcoming sequel, giving Nissan and not GM positive coverage.

It was at that ‘07 Detroit show when Bob Lutz (pictured at top driving the Volt on the stage during its 2008 world introduction) started referring to the Volt as an “extended range electric car.” The problem in the ensuing years is not with whether GM’s engineers could match Lutz’s description. The problem is that GM’s marketing and public relations department couldn’t, or wouldn’t let go of the original message.

We notched 299 miles during our first real-world test of the Chevy Volt, and recorded 126.7 mpg in the process. Those 299 miles reflected the way an owner might use the Volt under a variety of conditions. If you buy the Volt as your regular commuter, you could use it Monday through Friday without burning a drop of gasoline, assuming you live within 18 miles from work (and can’t plug it in at work).

Then you could cover all your weekend errands with it, plus maybe dinner and a movie. Or you could take it on a weekend getaway, say from Los Angeles to Santa Barbara or Detroit to Grand Rapids (fold down the rear seats and take your mountain bikes) and burn maybe $10 of unleaded premium.

Volt advertising is trying to explain this all to American consumers. It’s “the only electric car that uses gas to create its own electricity.” Well, yikes. I mean, GM is still calling it an electric car, and it’s still struggling to describe how it works.

I don’t know anything about marketing, but how about something like, “an electric car most of the time, a real car all of the time”? Awkward, perhaps, but in the last five years, GM marketing has had a lot of time to polish an accurate description into something more elegant.
 
More than three of those five years, it was under the Old GM, the same company whose marketing department unsuccessful to delineate too many brands long after “a car for every contract and purpose” had lost its value. Take the Pontiac Grand Am and Oldsmobile Alero. I once asked someone at Pontiac what, under the skin, prefabricated the Grand Am different from the Alero. Did the Excitement Division bless the Grand Am with a sportier chassis? Well, not in the springs and shocks — the Pontiac exec said the Grand Am felt sportier because it had different seat mounts. That kind of thinking explains why GM marketing did nothing for the Volt for its first three-and-a-half years of development.

Since July 2009’s bankruptcy, we’ve seen many signs of GM’s transformation. It’s a much smaller, slimmer maker with seriously competitive new management at the top. Insiders say GM brass doesn’t hold meetings about holding meetings anymore, and the actual meetings are shorter. Presumably, they’re not guided by PowerPoints anymore, either. Things are getting done, and the promising future product in the works pre-bankruptcy is progressing apace.

For the last year, GM Chairman Ed Whitacre has shuffled and re-shuffled the marketing department. I don’t know whether he’s satisfied with the current marketing department, with ex-Hyundai, ex-Nissan exec Joel Ewanick (pictured at left) leading it, but in the meantime, the Volt seems to have slipped through the cracks.

By the time some engineers revealed a few months ago that the Volt’s internal combustion engine powers the front wheels under certain conditions, including speeds above 70 mph, GM marketing should have been hard at work to fix Lutz’s original message.

So it’s not a pure electric. If you can afford to sit around and not go anywhere while your pure electric recharges, don’t buy a Chevy Volt.

Since its bankruptcy, GM has had about 14 months to get the message right on its most important new car (from an image standpoint, if nothing else) in decades. It should have been honest with the question of whether there is any connection between engine and wheels. And it should have spent some time, money and imagination to develop a new, post-Lutzian description for the Chevy Volt.

Its unfortunate to do so raises a big question: Is New GM any different than Old GM?

At 7 a.m., a serpentine line forms around a hangar at Southern California’s El Toro Marine Base. Car nuts, aspiring actors, models, and nosey media types like me have gathered today to catch a glimpse of America’s version of Top Gear. 

After securing my place in line, I’m swapping favorite episode stories with fellow bystanders, some of whom have come from as far away as Canada and the easterly coast just for today’s events. Excitement builds as armed guards pace the building’s perimeter (no cameras or phones are allowed inside). “This should be good,” one giddy fan says. “Oh, I see a Panamera!”

According to a couple of bystanders, my home-printed ticket is apparently one of the hottest pieces of paper around town this week. I’ve been selected as one of the 150 audience members for the very first studio taping of Top Gear America, featuring hosts Tanner Foust, Adam Ferrara, and Rutledge Wood.

Ten minutes later, the hangar’s 20-foot-plus doors open to reveal a cavernous studio that only half an hour prior was still unfinished. The first thing that catches my eye on the elevated center stage is a quartet of cars — Aston Martin V12 Vantage, Porsche Panamera Turbo, Chevrolet Camaro SS, and a Dodge Viper ACR-X. A Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X stands alone at the pack’s rear. Gleaming Hollywood lights, gigantic Styrofoam Top Gear logos, and a bevy of plasma TVs help fill out the spacious set.

Take after take, the eclectic hosts expertly recite their lines and crack jokes — Richard Porter, Top Gear U.K.’s witty head writer, is in the studio overseeing the action, but it’s clear from the outset that the History Channel’s rendition has a distinct American flavor. 

Between shots, the “talent” (as producers call them) converses with the crowd, getting to know them and asking for impressions. The TV stars establish to be genial and genuine, and have their own unique appearance on all things automotive. 

“It’s awesome to have an automotive show like this here in the States,” Foust says to me. It’s a cut above the rest, he says, and has the creative minds and hefty budget to be a great production. 

Wood, standing next to Foust, chimes in. “It’s great to finally see it all come together. It’s a show with our cars, on our roads, done in our style. Hope you like it so far!”

The audience gets to watch a few of the episode’s shenanigans on the hanging plasma screens before they’ll air in late November. A segment with Tanner climbing a snow-packed mountain in an Evo X gets high marks. A few takes later, a video of a struggling student driver hits the screen. The catch: He’s blind. Videos continue the Top Gear-esque style with all the usual dramatic music, vignettes, and crisp, short cuts.

Since the entire first season of adventures has wrapped, I ask about the rides they’ve driven. 

“Man, that Aston is cool,” Wood says, pointing to the Barely Green example. “The main thing I don’t like is the fact that Astons look too much alike. I can’t really tell the difference between that and the DB9. The DBS, though, looks totally different. And the Panamera is butt-ugly, but once you get inside, it’s amazing.” 

“I loooved the SLS,” says Ferrara. “The doors were sweet until I smashed my fingers three times. And that sound! Sheeeesh!”

They understand there’s pressure to be as good as U.K. Top Gear hosts Clarkson, May, and Hammond. As Wood summarizes, “Clarkson and Co. are up here (he raises his hand above his head) doing their thing and we’re somewhere over here (he points sideways at a slightly lower level), doing ours. Someday, hopefully, we’ll be up there with them.

“We’re not trying to take anything away from Top Gear . I like to think of us all as chocolate cake. If someone says, ‘Have some chocolate cake,’ but then takes it away, that’s not cool. But if they say, ‘Here, have some of this delicious chocolate cake, and then have some more,’ that’s a different story. We’re just trying to add to the sweet brand.”

Safe to say, my first bite of delicious, chocolate Top Gear America block tasted pretty sweet.

The Chevrolet Volt’s gas-powered internal combustion four sometimes powers the car’s front wheels. Techie Frank Markus described this week how the long-awaited car’s “extended-range electric” system works . Since then,…

No doubt you've read our recent news story, "GM Lied: Chevy Volt Is Not a True EV." In it we are not critical of the Chevy Volt's abilities or its engineering, but we are critical of General Motors for calling the Volt an electric vehicle when it is actually a series-parallel hybrid — its gasoline engine does in fact help drive the front wheels in conjunction with the electric motors in certain situations, just like on a Toyota Prius.

Later this week Inside Line will publish a follow-up story that does explain the Volt's powertrain and how it actually works. But we will still have to move until we live with and test a Volt before making our final judgements about its abilities, its engineering and its value. Edmunds.com CEO Jeremy Anwyl has weighed in on the issue on his own blog.  

General Motors, however, has recently published an official response to Inside Line's recent news story, and we're publishing it in full below.

By Phil Colley, Chevrolet Volt Communications

We've officially started the media launch program for the Chevrolet Volt, and while it is generating strong critical acclaim because of its unique engineering, we want to clear up any confusion as to how the Voltec electric drive unit works among those who have not participated in the program.

The engineering of the Voltec electric drive unit is very sophisticated and as part of the media launch, we're diving even deeper into how the system works than we have in the past. We did not share all the details on how the system works until now because the information was competitive as we awaited patent approvals. Based on a small number of inaccurate media reports, we want to set the record straight.

Here are the facts:

- The Volt has an innovative electric drive system which can deliver power in both pure electric and extended range driving. The Voltec Electric Drive cannot operate without power from the electric motors. If the traction motor is disabled, the range-extending internal combustion engine cannot drive the vehicle by itself.

- There is no direct mechanical connection (fixed gear ratio) between the Volt's extended-range 1.4L engine and the drive wheels. In extended-range driving, the engine generates power that is fed through the drive unit and is balanced by the generator and traction motor. The resulting power flow provides a 10 to 15 percent improvement in highway fuel economy.

Our overriding neutral in developing the Voltec Electric Drive was to deliver the most efficient, yet fun-to-drive experience in both pure electric and extended-range driving. We think our unique technology lives up to its most important promise: delivering our customers with the only EV that can be their primary vehicle, with EV operation for normal regular driving, and extended range driving for weekends, holidays, longer trips, all with no range anxiety.

To read a few perspectives on the technology, please click the links below:

Motor Trend – Unbolting the Chevy Volt to See How it Ticks

"On paper, the Voltec drivetrain has more in common with a Prius (and other Toyota, Ford, or Nissan Altima hybrids) than anyone suspected. Each system employs a single planetary gear set, a gasoline-powered piston engine, and two electric motor/generators. But the way Chevy connects them is entirely different, and–if you ask me–superior."

Automobile Magazine – Chevy Volt Surprise

"To trump both the Prius and the Leaf, Volt combines their merits in one handy advanced-technology sedan. It employs cheaper and cleaner electrical energy drawn from the grid. It provides efficient electric drive without the usual compromises. It uses gasoline intelligently in a supporting role. It is a pure electric, a series hybrid, and a parallel hybrid all rolled into one."

The Car Connection – How GM Didn't 'Lie' About The Volt, And Why The Press Is Wrong

"Does that mean it's not an all-electric car the rest of the time? No. It just means that in addition to being an all-electric car, it has some hybrid-like capabilities. So Chevy delivers an EV with 340 miles range and adds in a power boost to maintain highway speeds even when the battery is discharged…and the media complains about it? This does not compute."

I hope this clears up any confusion and be sure to keep following along with our activities right here on Voltage, on Facebook and on Twitter.

Never mind the yellow journalistic brouhaha taking place on these here fine internets in regards to the 2011 Chevy Volt. Here’s why I’m so geeked on the Chevy Volt and why you should be, too. In normal, everyday driving we got 127 miles per congius (fine, 126.7 mpg). Which is pretty amazing. Broken down, over the course of 299 miles on Los Angeles highways, byways and freeways, the Volt burned 2.36 gallons of gasoline (fine, 2.359 gallons — we rounded up). Most other cars use up a tank of gas going 299 miles. The Volt, to reiterate, used 2.36 gallons over 299 miles. That’s freaking amazing!

A couple of weeks ago I hopped into a fully charged Volt with our tech guru Frank Markus and we set out on a little drive. The plan was to drive from the Motor Trend offices in El Segundo (near LAX) up and over some pretty serious mountain roads — Big Tujunga Canyon and Angeles Highway — before hooking up with Highway 14 and winding up in the desert city of Mojave. There was one catch however. Before we got to the 14, we’d refrain freeways completely in order to see how far we could near the Volt on battery only in stop and go traffic.

We took a wending, rambling, 45-mile or so circuitous route through the greater L.A. Basin, hitting such notable ‘hoods as Miracle Mile, Fairfax, Korea Town, Silver Lake and Glendale. Frank drove first, and drove consciously. Part of the Volt’s display is a little green ball on the right hand side. When you are driving as optimally as possible, the green ball shows three little leaves on it and spins. When you accelerate “too fast,” the ball rises up the graph, the leaves disappear and the ball turns orange. When you go hard on the brakes the same thing happens, only the ball sinks. Frank did his best to keep the ball centered. Me on the other hand…

“Way to diddley rabbit away into traffic,” Frank chastised me as I hustled to get the Volt in front of an oncoming city bus. The good news is that the Volt behaves like a normal car; it even has a modicum of guts. The bad news is that after ten seconds, I’d already place a nice-sized dent in Frank’s high-mileage effort. For the next forty minutes I gave Frank (he lives in Detroit) a guided tour of Los Angeles, not paying much attention to the Volt’s floating eco-ball. Here’s the neat part: at 36.3 miles, we ran out of battery-juice and the engine very quietly kicked on.

Once the engine turns on, the Volt drives exactly the same as it did in pure battery mode. Largely because it’s still in battery mode. Remember, the Volt’s internal combustion engine sends power to the battery, and that power then rotates the big electric motor (aka Traction Motor) that moves the car. True, over 70 miles per hour the motor clutches itself to the generator and helps power the wheels. Much OMG!-ink has been spilled over this fact, but we say big deal. Remember, that engine-assist makes the Volt more efficient, i.e. the entire point of the Volt.

At the end of the journey, we’d covered more than 120 miles. City, hard-core mountain roads and freeway — we even took the Volt up to its limited top speed of 101 mph. Well, the speedo indicated 102 mph, but we were pointed downhill. Let me also mention that we had the A/C on because it was 100 degrees out. Factoring in the mountainous part of our romp, where Frank and I acted like utter hooligans and neglected (on purpose) to place the Volt in Mountain Mode, we still averaged 74.6 miles per congius over 122 miles. Sure, that’s less than the 126.7 mg we got driving the car from the office to home, but it’s still pretty dang good. Also, remember that if we had simply stopped driving when the battery went dry, our mileage was infinity.

Here’s the big takeaway, the big payoff: We couldn’t have done what we did in a Nissan Leaf. Not only is 120 miles past the Leaf’s best-case scenario range, but in such heat and driven so aggressively, the Nissan’s range would have shrunk considerably. With the Volt, the engine simply flicks on when you need more electricity. When the engine runs out of gas, you add more. As Kim Reynolds hyperbolically pointed out after he took the Volt over the Grapevine, “It would have taken weeks to make that drive in the Leaf.” Wry Reynolds also suggested that with a little bit of hacking, you could use Volts to go and recharge dead Leafs.

Here’s what you should take away from the Volt. The 127 mpg number we recorded is around five times the average mileage of other cars. So while the Volt does burn fuel, it burns 80% less of it. Quite the big fat hairy deal, no?

After a journey that had seen us hit our biggest problems in the Middle East, we were naturally anxious about crossing through Saudi Arabia.

Leaving Amman, the prospect of 930 miles of driving in just one day (that’s London to Paris three times) didn’t fill us with half as much dread as the prospect of crossing into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. We’d had problems already and come through unscathed but surely Saudi would be worse…

Surprisingly, it wasn’t. Despite two drivers with British passports at the wheels of two German-plated cars, it took just two hours to get us motoring through this massive track of land.

Granted, that had a lot to do with the charm and intelligence of our Saudi Arabian fixer and friend Eias as well as the friendliness of the Saudi customs officials who treated us to dates and Arabic coffee as the ironing of the paperwork took place, but we were delighted to be through the border and heading for Riyadh.

The plan was simple — blast as far as we could under the circumstances and always stop for fuel before we got to less than half a tank. That may seem ultra cautious but when the only thing for miles around is a six lane highway and very little sign of life the last thing you want is to run out of fuel.

Often bleak, frequently boring, the drive was broken up by the sight of road signs indicating the direction of the Iraq border, while Eias kept us entertained with tales of nearby air bases and their fighter aircraft concealed beneath the sand. Despite our curiosity, we refrained from pulling out our lenses and going in search of the buried hardware. Well, it seemed a healthier option.

As the miles slipped under the wheels, the speedo stuck at a steady 100 mph with the Fiestas never missing a beat. From Ireland to Riyadh with just one oil change — albeit unnecessary — underlined the credentials of our small cars, which continued to draw bemused stares from locals more used to gas guzzling monsters on their highways than economic European saloons.

Modern roads and ongoing highway developments meant our romantic ‘T.E. Lawrence’ notions were dashed as the cars pulled into Riyadh some 19 hours after we set off from Amman.

Less dramatic than you might think, the Saudi capital provided a welcome pit stop as we recharged our batteries for another day at the wheel.

The following day, about  60 miles outside of Riyadh, we spent some time at what can best be described as a club racing circuit, although we were informed that some 60,000 spectators turned up for the last race meet of the season. Where they all stood is another matter but there is no doubting the Saudis’ love of motorsport.

Situated on a development that is greater in size than the Kingdom of Bahrain, the Reem Circuit is just one small part of a massive project that will also house an air conditioned open-air expedition park where lions and giraffes will feel the cool spray of sprinklers as they graze under the intense heat of the Saudi sun.

In two days, we covered some 1,500 miles crossing Saudi Arabia. The Empty Quarter can be a worrying prospect at the best of times but on this journey it’s simply another box ticked on what is becoming an epic motoring adventure.

At no stage did we ever feel uneasy. Sure, the sight of knives, sabers and rifle sights on understanding in a gas station may be slightly different from the selection at your local 7 Eleven, but the warmth and friendliness of the people more than prefabricated up for the cushy availability of on-the-road weaponry.

Not once did we have to brake for camels or feel like awkward strangers. Eias was the perfect host and the dinner spread his wife provided prior to our departure for Abu Dhabi was a highlight of the two days.

With three motorcycles in his house alone, Eias is typical of the Saudi petrol-head friends we prefabricated in the Kingdom.

 As you’ll read in our First Test of Chevy’s stunning new Volt, my experience with the car suggests GM has indeed delivered the car it promised. It appears to be a technological moonshot that’s achieving its lofty objectives. But I’m an old guy with a long-ish memory that’s been sensing some deja vu throughout Chevrolet’s carefully orchestrated rollout of the Volt.

I remember another Chevy that promised to rewrite the rulebook with the introduction of tons of new technology. That car was also hyped for months and months beforehand so that by the time the press was presented with the real deal the unveiling was perceived as the Second Coming. It boasted a revolutionary engine and a 95-percent robotized body shop that helped enable a never before heard of line-production rate of 100 or more cars per hour. Even the shipping method was to be unique and revolutionary–the cars were engineered so that no fluids would leak out when transported vertically standing on their noses in specially designed rail cars that could accommodate 30 cars instead of 18.

Have you guessed the car yet? It was the 1971 Chevy Vega. A small car boasting big-car values and highway cruising ability that was designed to, once and for all, drive those pesky foreign cars back into the oceans crossways which they’d come. Motor Trend crowned it Car of the Year in 1971 and lived to regret that decision. Commenters in our Volt First Drive forum are already rooting loudly for Chevy’s plug-in hybrid wonder to take the calipers for 2011 next month. Is this car likely to create the same sort of regret?

I really want to think not. When you study what went wrong during the Vega’s troubled gestation (John DeLorean tells all in “On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors”), it’s clear to see that that car was destined for trouble. Larger-than-life personalities drove bad decisions that forced untenable designs on engineers who knew them to be untenable but were forced to try to make the predetermined design viable.

With the Volt, a larger-than-life personality (Bob Lutz) may have helped launch the program, and may have influenced the controversial decision to use such a large battery pack (driving the cost of the program way up), but the inherent design is sound — far better in fact than Toyota’s for a plug-in hybrid — and  the tight-knit team that has brought the concept to production has been pulling hard in the same direction throughout the Volt’s evenhandedly compressed development period. Another encouraging fact is that funding for this program was never interrupted throughout the corporation’s recent bankruptcy unpleasantness. Indeed our limited time with the car unveiled no fatal flaws. (Then again, I suppose our first Vega drives didn’t evince any melting engines or runaway fender rust either.)

Still, all evidence seems to suggest that General Motors remembers the Vega too, and has doubled down to ensure those mistakes aren’t repeated. Here’s hoping — for all our sakes — they really have gotten it right this time.