Q: When the next [seventh-generation] Corvette is released, will it finally be made in right-hand drive?
A: Corvette C7, if and when we do it, will be ambidextrous [left- and right-hand drive]. But we’ve had to delay the program because we’re going to have to do so much stuff for fuel economy.
Q: Tell us about the Volt. Has the design been finalised?
A: The design is now frozen, other than a few graphic details. The back end still looks a lot like the show car [shown at the 2006 Detroit show], while the front end and cabin are looking quite a bit different, unfortunately. The show car, while it was a very interesting design, from an aerodynamic standpoint it was a complete train wreck. So, we had to fundamentally start over and what we did was we reshaped the vehicle for aerodynamic efficiency and then made sure that the Volt graphics, like the grille and headlamps, that that was still there and the belt outline around the side was still there. I still think it’s going to be a very attractive car, I just think it will be a slight shock for people who are expecting it to look exactly like the show car.
Q: The lithium-ion batteries have been a technical headache to develop, but you seem confident the technology will be ready for the Volt’s 2010 launch?
A: [We’ve got] a safe, stable lithium-ion battery technology. Of our two suppliers the one in Korea, I think, is using lithium manganese and the other supplier is in the US. Those guys are using lithium nano-phosphate. People hear the word ‘lithium’ and think it’s all the same, but you can combine lithium with just about every other compound on the periodic table. Some of them store energy better, or have better ‘charge acceptance’. The batteries that have been made popular in laptops and so on are Lithium Cobalt Oxide. And thermal problems; if it’s going to happen in any battery, it will happen in [that type]. Which is why we rejected Lithium Cobalt Oxide as a battery source, but we think that with either of the other sources we’ll be fine.
Q: What other technological hurdles are facing the Volt?
A: I don’t think the individual cells [batteries] are going to be a problem, the engineering problems come in when we have to organise all these several hundred individual cells into a big T-shaped battery pack. Then the big T-shaped battery pack has to be interrupted in the middle because of the cross-car beam that is necessary for side impacts. The battery begins where the shifter would normally be and then is interrupted by that beam, and then continues and then it goes out into a T under the rear seats. And getting all that hooked up in series and in parallel and making sure that the cooling tubes all go to the right places and then that the coolant actually flows through the critical parts of the battery, around the cells. It doesn’t require science or invention, it’s just engineering. But having said that, it’s gonna be a great car to drive. It’s gonna be fun, very agile. It’s got a great chassis.
Q: What kind of production numbers are you expecting?
A: Initially production is going to be fairly low. As we ramp up we have to make sure the battery suppliers can follow us with the volume etc but at a very early stage we want to get to 60,000 a year, and then it’s you name it.
Q: Will it be sold in Australia?
A: It’s being engineered in left-hand drive, right-hand drive and it’s being developed to meet all safety standards and pedestrian requirements, in other words world-wide requirements have been taken into accounts. In other words it will be sold, I’m sure, in Australia as well.
Q: When will right-hand drive variants hit the streets?
A: The right-hand drive version will be a matter of months after the left-hand drive version. What we’re gonna do first is fill up critical states like California where we have these electric vehicle mandates and everything, so places like California get precedent. Then we’ll probably go to Washington for political reasons. Then we’ll probably do the Southern United States like Florida, where nobody buys American cars anymore. We’re gonna use [the Volt] to re-conquest our won market, so I would hope that by calendar year 2011 we would start shipping the first right-hand drives, but I would say 2012 would be the year when you really start to see them move.
Q: What’s the highlight of your career?
A: If we pull the Volt off, it’ll definitely be the Chevrolet Volt.
Q: When Toyota first launched the Prius, you were openly sceptical about it and even called it a ‘PR stunt’. Now, you’ve been quoted as saying you were wrong to dismiss it. What’s your response to that?
A: I took the blame for the whole company. What we said was: ‘it makes no sense economically [he has said it was a PR stunt -- SP]. In a greater sense at today’s fuel cost and availability all hybrids are [financially unviable], because if you run the numbers of what the additional costs are versus the fuel savings they still don’t make any sense’. Having said that, it proved once again that the automobile business is not about hard facts and rational decisions, it’s mainly about emotions and we ran the numbers on the hybrid we could have had out at the same time as the Toyota Prius and we said ‘why would anybody want to do this?’ Why would you spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a project where you can’t recover the cost of the system and we’re going to lose money on it? Who’s going to go to the board of directors and say, hmm, we’d like to spend 300 or 400 million dollars doing a hybrid vehicle which we’re going to sell below cost and it’s going to cost the shareholders 250-300 million dollars a year. We have been tasked with increasing shareholder value, not destroying it and you have to think twice before you go to the board with something like that, and frankly Rick Wagoner, our CEO, was very reluctant. Now that we’re smarter, if we could rewind the tape we’d go to the board and we’d say ‘this is not a profitable proposition, in fact it’s probably break even at best, in fact it’s probably going to lose us money, but it’s something we have to do because it’s something our number one competitor is going to do and if they do it and we don’t we are going to be seen as environmental laggards and technological laggards and therefore we urge you to say yes to this project even though we know it’s going to lose money and the board probably would have said, ‘that makes sense – try not to lose too much [money] but don’t let those guys get ahead of us’.
If you consider hybrids to be a borderline technology from a financial and environmental viewpoint, what about the bio-engineered bacteria GM is jointly developing with Coskarta [it consumes the waste products (including from used food crops, rubbish and even old tyres) and excretes ethanol]. Is this a technology with genuine merit?
A: That we’re totally in favour of it. Because all these fuel economy mandates that are focussed on continuing to use oil, but try to use a little bit less of it, I don’t think make a whole let of sense, because it’s gonna result in a lot of vehicles that the global public, the public that have large distances to cover and large open spaces and like to haul stuff and have a family – like Australia with the utes and everything – they’re not gonna like the result of everything being scaled down with itty-bitty four-cylinder engines. It’s not what people want, yet with this fuel economy legislation that’s what we’re going to have to do. Now, you could avoid all that trauma for $120 a car, which is what it takes to convert a fuel system to flex-fuel (ethanol) and the world could continue to enjoy its Chevrolet Corvettes, its Cadillac Escalades, its Holden utes with V8 engines, its Ford Falcons and everything. We wouldn’t have to change a thing and yet we could get the world off oil.
Q: You’ve been very vocal in your criticisms of the CAFE fuel regulations, do you think it’s a genuinely sound solution or simply a political knee jerk reaction?
A: Boy, you got it. I’m glad you said it, that way I didn’t have to! But that’s exactly what it is. You know that politics nowadays days goes by sound bytes. And Hillary [Clinton] is saying ‘If I get elected we’re not going to stop at 35 miles-per-gallon (mpg), I say 50mpg. And of course [Barack] Obama, never one to take a back seat, says I see your 50 and I’ll raise you five. It’s gotten to be a complete joke, but [our technology] would really solve the problem.
Q: On the lighter side, tell us about your fighter jets. Do you still get up in the air?
A: I’ll get up in the air at least once a week. With the price of jet fuel going up, I’ll fly each one of them for a half an hour. I’ve got an L39 Albatross ZO, the weapons model not the training version, I think it’s a 1987 model. Then in 2004 I got this lovely German air force, Alpha-jet. That’s my pride and joy. It’s an ’87 or ’88 model. I got that thing for the price of a good Ferrari, seriously! I got this new one because it’s half the weight and twice the thrust. Too much thrust in a jet aircraft is barely enough.
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