According to this article, GM is working on a plug-in version of the Saturn VUE. It will be interesting to see what they come out with.

GM chairman Rick Wagoner said today the auotmaker has begun work on creating a battery powered plug-in but wouldn't say when it would be ready for sale.

"I can't give you a date, but can tell you this is a top priority program for GM given the huge potential it offers for fuel economy improvement"

 

Why? Doesn't the Vue only have a very small HV Battery used mainly for engine shutdown/start up?

 

Yes, the current VUE does. GM plans on increasing the battery size so the 2009 "electric all-wheel-drive" 2-mode hybrid VUE can go 10 miles on EV power

Found another article that has much more detail on this.

While Ladjiak couldn't offer an estimated time for relasing a plug-in version of the 2-mode system, she said it has the pontential to "double the mileage" of any current SUV. The plug-in would enhance the 2-mode system with a Lithium Ion battery pack to offer up to 10 miles of electric-only propulsion. It could also be charged from an external electrical outlet.

 

You can do some intresting calculation here. 1 gallon of petrol is ~121.66MJ of energy. If you assume that you would have driven these 10 miles on pure petrol at 20 mpg, which may be resonable since we are talking, most likely, about city driving, that mean that you would consume ~60.5 MJ of engergy.

But the efficency of a electrical "system" is approx. 3 times higher than compared to a ICE system, which means that you would need ~20.2 MJ of engery if you would drive 10 miles on pure electrical drive.

20.2MJ is 5.6 kWh which means that it would take 2.5 hours to charge the energy you would need do drive 10 miles, if you use a 1 phase system with 230 Volt and a 10 amp fuse.

Is that resonable? No, not at my house at least. I have 10 amps fuses and the above calculation assume that the car is "alone" on that fuse, which isn't really resonable. And I don' think that the car manufactures will take the risk to set the charing level that high which, most likely, would mean a lot of broken fuses at the customers. Instead 5 Amp charging would be more resonable. Which gives us a charing time of ~5 hours.

What does that figure tell us? 5 hours is quite a long time, we are talking about "during nighttime charging" here. And 10 miles isn't that much either.

 

Sorry that your house can't support 10 amps on a 230 volt circuit.

I have a welder and an air compressor that each consume more than that, and I don't have a problem running a dedicated circuit to each of them. My welder runs on a dedicated 50 amp single phase 230 volt circuit. My air compressor runs on a 20 amp single phase 230 volt circuit. I don't really think it is unreasonable to require the consumer to have a dedicated circuit installed for the purpose of charging their new car. You drop $30,000 plus on a new technology auto, and you would refuse to hire an electrician to install a circuit for less than $1000.

Honda sells a natural gas civic that requires the installation of a home fueling station, why can't GM require the installation of a new circuit. Heck, you don't even have to install the circuit, if you don't want to plug it in, it will still act like a normal hybrid, but I think that would be silly to get a plug-in hybrid and not plug it in.

Also, if you have an electric oven, range top, clotes dryer, heater, etc... they all pull more than 10 amps on a 230 volt single phase service. Where you might get into trouble is the sum of all consumption if you have an old 50 - 60 amp house service. Most new homes have around 110 - 150 amp services.

 

From my own experience, if the project has no dates, it has no priority.

 

Wow, I haven't seen a house that had only 10 fuses (circuits), in a very long time. Even a typical hair dryer today would blow those out.

 

I have a 10 kW electric shower, it draws 42 amps and has a 60 amp fuse.

Incidentally, the 10 mile range would be equivalent to 2.5 kWh (4 miles per kWh is well established for Prius and similar size EVs etc), so even with only a 10 amp fuse it would take just over 1 hour to charge.

 

From my own experience, when the CEO of my company announces at a national auto show that we are going to build a vehicle, we build it.

And when prototypes are displayed, it is typically because the project is far enough down the development path that it's more a matter of "when" not "if".



The 2008 2-Mode is a lock. You can be as skeptical as you'd like to be wrt whether the plug-in option appears in 2009. Only time will tell.

Peace,

Martin

 

Applying that 4miles/KWh (the Phoenix Motorcar SUV all electric gets 3.7miles/KWh) and working backward with ...

I get 2.5/5.6 * 20.2 = 9MJ . That means the efficiency of electrical "system" is more like 6.7 times higher than compared with an ICE system. We need to get off oil, and GM at least is announcing going in the right direction. PHEV is the right next step, finally! I've never considered GM before, but if they are the first with PHEV, I will (although I rather see affordable pure EV).