Atlantic GMVolt 2008

8/12/2019 Atlantic GMVolt 2008

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BY JON TH N R U C H

ast year, while he was w orking in G er-manyasan engineer for General Motors,

J Andrew Farah got a call from a seniorengineer in Detroit asking him to come hom e.

Why?A car special car.Farah had heard about it, of course. The

ChevroletVolt wasthe autom otive sensation of2007,a new kind of electric hybrid th at GMwasproposing to have in showrooms in late 2010 .Farah had advocated a similar designyearsear-lier, so he didn t need to be sold on th e idea.

Still, he hesitated. GM had called himbecause of his deep experience with battery-


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on GM's EVl, an aJl-electric technological masterpiecethat had done so poorly commercially that GM woundup crushing the cars amidahail of public co ndem nation.Farah had been fiercelycommittedtothe EVl, andhe wasnot about to relive the disappointm ent. Hell, no, he said. I've been on prog ram s like thisbefore. They're n ot real.No, came the reply. This one is real. Farah asked totalk to other sen ior executives, and they concurred.So,inthe spring of last year, he took one o fthe hardest jobs atGM, and became theVolt'schief engineer.And how,1ask over coffee early one February morn-ing in Detroit, is it going? It is 6 a.m., and Farah, who is47 and has ang ular features and pro minen t black glasses,is rushing to m ake a 7 a.m. meeting. The car, he says, is10 weeks behind the original schedule. Any more slip-

page, and the 2010 deadline will be history. Even if nomore timeislost, he will have only eightweeksto test theunderbody, the car's structural base.Is that enough time? He answers indirectly. In somecars,hesays,testing the underbody can takeayear.GM, he tells m e, is taking an industrial organizationdesigned to grind out incremental improvements andrepurposingitfor a technological leap. Ispend20percentofmytime being a psychologist and counselor, he says. Itell people,Yes,there's a lot ofrisk.And,yes,that's OK.' It's not a program for the faint of heart.THEY RE MAKING A HUGE MISTAKEW hen one ofthe world's mightiest corporationsthrows everything its got at a project, and whenit shreds its rule book in the process, th e resu ltsare likelytobe impressive. Stilt, even for G eneral Mo tors,the Voltisa reach. If it m eets specifications, itwillchargeup o vernight from any standa rd electrical socket. It willgo40 miles onacharge. Then a small gasoline engine willignite. The engine's sole job will be to drive a generator,whose sole job wilt be to maintain the battery's ch ar g e-no ttodrive the w heels, which will neverseeanything but

electricit>\ In generator mode, th e carwill drivehundredsof miles on a tank ofgas,at about 50 miles per gallon.But about three-foutths of Americans comm utelessthan40 miles a day, so on most days m ost Volt drivers woulduse no gas at all.Because it will have both an electric and a gasolinemotor on bo ard, th e Volt will be a h ybrid. But it will belike no hybrid on the road today. Existing hybrids aregasoline-powered cars, with an electric assist to improvethe gasmileage.The Volt will be an electric-powered car,with a gasoline assisttoincrease the battery's range.Electricdrive is asoldasthe automobileitself.Anyonewho has ridden inagolf cart has experiencedit.Compared

marvelous acceleration and torque . Foracentury, thougthe dea l-breaker has b een the battery. Any battery witnearly enough power to drive a full-size car was prohibtively large and heavy, prohibitively expensive, unab le tgo more tha n a few miles on a charge , or (usually) all othe above. Only recently has the advent of lithium-iobatteries brough t a full-range electric car into the realmofth e practical. Even so, the ba ttery for the Volt doesnyetexist at least not at a m ass-market price, and buildinit poses formidable challenges. Loading enough energinto a sufficiently small, lightweight packageishard (thbattery isn't much good unless it fits in the car);keepinitcoollestitburstintoflamesisharde r; m aking it durabenough to last 10 years on bum py roads is harder yemanufacturing it in high volumes and at mass-markeprices may be harde st of all.

Given the challenges, standard procedu re d ictatefirst building and testing the battery, and only thedesigning a car arou nd it. That process, however, woultake until 2012 or 2013time GM does not have if wantstobeat Toyota. The only hope of meeting the 201deadline is to invent the battery while simultaneousldesigning the car. Just-in-time inventory is commonow in the car business, but just-in-tinie invention otheVolt'sscale is new toGMand probablytothe modeautomotive industry.Many in the industr>'will tell youthere's a good reascar com panies don't do thing s this way. Toyota, whichproceeding much more cautiously with its own plug-icar, has made no secret of its belief that neither GM noanyone else can keep th e Volt's prom ises. W hen I calleMenahem A ndermati,aprominent battery consultantCalifornia, he said the lithium-ion battery will be expesivefaxtooexpensivetomake sense asabusiness propsitionaslongasgasis $3or $4 a gallon. ( At $10 agallwe can have a different discussion. ) Its life is unp roveand unp rovable in the sh ort time GM h as allotted. Tdeliver tens of thousa nds of vehicles in 2010, A ndermasaid, they should have had hun dre ds of them alreaddriving around for two or three years. Hundreds Neverybody can say it publicly, but everybody in the higvolume industryissaying, 'W hatarethey thinking abouAn executive with a GM competitor, after making somofthe same points, offered forthrightness in exchange fanonym ity: They're mak ing a huge mistake.The people at GM un derstand very well the reasonthey're not supposed to do wh at they're doing. They offa variety of retorts. Batterieswillimprove and get cheapGasprices willrise.Theyhave twodecades' worth ofexrience with electric drive. Theyhavesmart algorithmstest the battery. Strict new fuel-economy standards wivindicate the business case. But, at bottom, w hat the


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8

In conversa tions with everyone fromstaff engineers toRick Wagoner, the cha irman andCEO,I heard referencesto the Apollo prog ram . John Kennedy didn't say, 'Let'sgo to the moon and, you know, we'll get there as soon aswecan,' Wagoner said in a recen t interview in his office,atop a high-rise in Detroit. I asked our expe rts, Guys,do we have a reasonable chance of mak ing it or not?'Yes.'Well, then, let's go for what we want rather than go forwhatweknowwecando.' With theVolt,GMbattered.

minivans andSUVstook off ,GMwas caught unp repared.In theearlypart ofthisdecade,itdecidedhybrids weretoounprofitable to pursue, leaving a gap in the market thatToyota, with itsPrius,brilliantly and mercilessly exploited.Bythe time GM recognized its blunder and launched itsown hybrids, Toyota dom inated the field.GM also had problems with high health-care andmanufacturing costs, expensive union contracts, excess,poor quality, lackluster designs. Its public image

MR. ENVIRONMENT? Vice Chairman Bob Lutzwho pushed hard for the Volt with pa rt of his personal fl

beleaguered, struggling for profitabilityhopes to re-engineer n ot jus t the car but the way the public thinksabout cars, the way the public thinks ab out GM, and theway GM thinks about itselfTH A T COULD HAVE BEEN US

' ^ ' l > hecompany tum s 100thisyear,but amid the birth-I day celebrations it can expect a slap in the face: in' 200 8 GM is likely to be demoted to No. 2 amongthe world's carm akers. M emories of past glory make beingovertakenbyToyotaallthemoregalling. In th e 1950s and1.9fiOs,GMpoured forthastream of innovations in designand technology. In the 1960s, it manufactured nearly 60percent o fthe cars sold in Am erica. Then, of course, theJiipanese arrived, the energy crisis hit, and GM began tolook tike the com pany th at never missed an opportunityto miss an opportunity. In the1970s,whengasprices rose,GM proved incapable of building a decent small car. Inthe1980s,whentheJapanese redefmed quality,GMfailedto respond, because its brands were competing against

got so bad that focus groups liked the company's carsbetter when the logo was removed. In 20 05 , GM lost$8.6billion andsaw itsbonds downgraded to junk rating.Analysts were speculating about bankm ptcy.Adding insult to injury, the prominent acquisition ofHummerin 1999had madeGMa poster child for environ-

men tal irresponsibility, evenasToyota and the P rius piledup accolades for eco-friendliness. Welooked at the Priusand th e masterfiji job of positioning and public relationsToyota did withthat, SteveHarris,GM'stopPRexecutive,says, andwethought.Thatcould h ve beenlis.The com bination of bad new s and w orse publicitycre-ated a sense of emergency. Everyones thinking the samething:We ve gotto tum this thingarouTid one executivetoldme. We'vegottoget our m ojo backonadvanced tech -nology. The PR guys want som ething more sexy and dra-matic, a singular point for our m essage. This issue oftheenvironmental image was hurting the company substan-

tially. Playing itsafe looked paradoxically more dangerousthan taking a gamble. The company was conductive to a


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BATTERIES O N TH E BR AINA fterastoried career atGM,BMW, Ford, atid Chrysler,l Lutz returned to GM in2001,asvice chairman, toX Jt_ reinvigorate its droopy productline.He isnot thefirst person you might expect to bend GM's will toward

politically correct propulsion. Foronething, heisnot whatyou wouldcallgreen. A tall, gravel-voiced former Marinepilot in his 70s, he has a carbon footprint approximatelythesizeof Delaware, thankstohis l6 classic cars and eightmotorcycles andtwohelicopters andtwom ilitary-surplusfighter jets (which he flies). He relishes his ciga r-chom p-ing, fast-driving image, and scoffs at any notion that hehas converted to en vironmentalism. A few m onths ago,while GM was busy trying to improve its e nvironmentalimage,he couldn'tstophimself from telling reporters thatglobal wa rming is a "total crock of shit."But L utz is also, as he has describedhimself "a walk-ing contradiction." He is trihngual (Enghsh, French, andGerm an), the sophisticated product of aneliteupbringingin both Sw itzerland and Am erica, and he spent years suc-cessfully working in Europe, w here gas is expensive andcarsaresmall.Like manyofGM's topexecutives now adays,he is convinced that dependence on a single, increasingly

electric concept car for the 2 00 7 Detroit auto show, a yeaaway.The car hadtobemorethan just interesting,hesaiIt had to be remarkable: a game-changer.RISK IS MY FRIEND

f auckner, 50 , is vice president of global prog ram.1 managem ent, which puts him in charge of movingvehicles through GM's new-product pipeline. Hifather and grandfather worked for GM. Although he haa Stanford m anagem ent degree, Laucknerisan engineeto th e core. Ask him why he is so sure the Volt is doabland he is likely to say, "I work in power train " He seethe Volt as an engineering problem that, with enoughdete rmin ation, can be broken down and .solved, He alsthinks engineersdotheir best work when asked to stretcand the furthertliebetter."Riskismy friend,"he oncetome."I like risk. You eith ergobig orgohome."In February 2006, Lauckner pulled together brainstorming team that included, unusually, a publirelations m an, Chris Preuss. Then just turning 40 ,Preuwas a Chrysler veteran who had come to GM in the lat1990s and discoveredadepressingly hidebound organiztion. Things had improvedsincethen, but not enough f

The brainstorm ing group did not pull puncheswith the top leadership.GMhad to show a real change of mindon the environment and sustaiaabihty or remain Toyota's doormat

prob lematic fiiel, gasoline,hasbecome theautoindustry'sAchilles' heel. Plug-in cars nm on as many d ifferent fiielsas the electricity plants that charge them: coal, methane,nuclear, hydro, and wand, and potentially solar, biofuels,and garbagebut almost never Saudi or Venezuelan oil.This suits Lutz,ahawk on energy security. The onethingIcareaboutisgettingoHimportedoil,"hetoldme inDecem-ber overdinnerinDetroit. And asit happens,hislast stopbeforeGM wasthe chairmanship of Exide, a battery com-pany. There, he becam e fascinated with electric drive.

When he returned,Lutzhad asa GMengineer recalls,"batteriesonthe brain." He nagged and he nagged, but th ecompany pushed back. The EVl had been a commercialflop and a public-relations fiasco, and no one wanted togoback dovra thatroad.Then , in late2005,Lutzgot windtha t a Silicon Valley star t-up , Tesla M otors, was movingtoward prod uction of a high-performance electric road-ster. (It's available this year, if you have $1 00 ,00 0.) A ttha t po int, Lutz "just lost it," as he puts it. He refused toaccept that asmallstart-up company could build and sellan electric car but mightyGMcouldn't. In early 20 06 , he

Preuss. WhileLutz wasagitating for electric drive, Preuhad been arguing that GM needed a breakthrough prouct in the mold of theiPod."Apple Computerwasalmoon its last breath," Preuss says. "Once th e iPod hit, all thother things they had suddenly looked relevant again."That March, the group laid its conclusions before RicWagoner and the rest of the top leadership. Preuss an

Larry Burns, who runs the company's research opertions and is regarded in the industry as something ofvisionary, did not pull punc hes. GM had to show a rechange of mind on the environment and sustainabilitor remain Toyota's doormat. It had to lead on plug-inor get left behind in yet another new market. It had restore credibility damaged by the mishandling of thEVl, the abdication on hy brids, and the repeated failuto deliver on promises. It needed not just one m ore inlong series of research program s and concept cars butreal-world product, one ambitious enough to impreseven the cynics.The group proposed a plug-in th at would drive at lea10m iles on a charge. It wouldbea cool, stylish, high -te


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Thesenior leadership green-lighted th e project. Bu mslett the m eeting feeling eup horic.

Lauektier's eng ineers, meanw hile, were strugglingwith the battery problem . With anything like an afford-able battery, an all-electric car would lack the range con-sumers expect. But a Prius-style hybrid, however wellexecuted, would amount to a mere me-too. The solutionturn ed up in th e form of a rediscovery. In th e early 1990s,engineers testing the EVl had been vexed by its limitedrange. After 60 miles or so oti the test track, they wouldhave to wait hours for the cartorecharge. So they riggedup a motorcycle engine, connected it to a generator, andconnected that to the battery. Now the car rechargeditself while driving. Some ofthe engineersamo ng them ,Andrew Farahthought this was a nifty arrangementand pressed to develop it.Afew years later, GM p ut anonboard recharger in an EVl show car.

And thatwas asfarasthe idea got. It elicitedzerointer-est because inthe 1990s,policy makersand car companieswere focused on zero emissionsthatis,on ears that b umno gas at alt. By 2006 , however, all of that ha d changed.Thanks to the Prius, the marketwasbrisk for hybrids, andtbe public seemed receptive to a plug-in car; but Toyotaand Honda were pooh-poohing plug-in technology asunready for prim e time.GM'sbrainstormers thought theysaw a gap in tbe Japanese line and relisbed the thoug htof doingtoToyota what Toyota bad done to tbem. A fter asometimes beatcd de bate, they decided the iCar would betbe lineal descendant of that once-orphaned test car.

IT WAS COMPLETELY BACKW ARDSThe company tben made a series of decisions thatlook, in hindsight, startlingly audacious. Insteadof becoming a safer bet as it ran tbe internal sla-lom, tbe iCar became more ambitious. Its target rangeon a single charge increased from at least 10 miles to+0tbe outer limit of wbat seemed possible. Not a fewoutsiders tbink tbis decision was misguided; a 20-milebattery, say, would still allow many commuters to drivegas-free most days, and it would be easier and cbea per tobuild. But Lauckner, always pusbing, insistedona car tbattbe public would perceive not jus tassaving gasoline (tbatWitsPrius territoiy ) but as replacing gasoline.TheVolt astbe iCar was eventually renam ed, had to be perceived assevering tbe umbilical cord between the car and tbe gjispum p, and notb ing less than the longest feasible gas-freerange, be believed, would accomplisb th at.

Yetthis adv enturous car would be branded Cbevrolet.Chevy is GM's biggest brand, and tbe only brand it sellseverywhere it does bu siness. The last time GM tried fora big breakthrough, in the 1980s, it avoided tbe Chevybrand, instead creating anewdivision u nder a new name(Saturn). Tbis time, GM was proposing to tie its core

big difference w itb this, W agoner told me, we have todo this witb a big brand.Producing a higb-end statement car for trendsetters,as Tesla is doing, would bave been pretty safe, but posi-tioning tbe Volt as affordable family transportation

Chevy's bread and butteris an order of magnitudebarder. It implies selling not tbousands but b undre ds ofthousands ofcars,and at Cbevrolet rathe r tban Cadillacprices. The batteryalone islikelytocost sometbing in thehigb four figures. AtCbevyprices, GM can expecttolosemoney on every Volt it sells, at least in tbe early going,and possibly tor years.Outflanking Toyota makes good sense strategically,but GM's market capitalization is less than a tentb ofToyota's. Unless batterj'costsfall as quicklyasGM bopes,the car eould break th e bank by succeeding.Perbaps most au daciou s of all was a decision to allowunusu al public access to theVoltprogram.The industry'sstandard procedure is to develop new products, espe-cially risl^ ones, out of sight, unveiling tbem only wbenproven. GM decided to do exactly the opposite. The PRdepartm ent flung open tbe doors.GMexecutives discusstbe program's progress as publicly as if it were a bill inCongress. Tbey sbow off pbotos of batteries under devel-opment. Tbey promise to let reporters ride in test cars.Tbey lead tbem tbrough tbe labs and design cen ters andeven into the wind tunnel. Tbey m n ads, for instance intbis magazine, touting tbeVoltin tbe present tense,asif it

already existed.Byearlier tbisyear ex-pectations were sohigbtbat President Bushwascommending thecar and itbad developed a national g rassroots following.Thisarticleis itself a product ofthe fishbowl strategy.GM isusing tb e publicityto exciteth e public, of course.Itisalso using the publicity to pusbitself Wethougbt itwould be a motivating thing todo, W agoner says. Cer-tainly it gets everybody aligned not always easy in agiant corporation. AndGMwan ts credit for trying, whichit never received for the E Vl. If it fails, Ha rris says oftbe Volt, we wa nt people to know exactly why it failed.

It wasn't lack of comm itment or passion on our pa rt; webit a bard pointwecouldn't get around.On tbe otherhand ifitfails, it w ill fail in fullview.GMwill bave given its critics the most spectacular exampleyet of a broken promise, and Toyota will look prudentinstead of timid.Eacb of these decisionswasamb itious; togetber, theyamountedtoan all-in comm itment. Tbe company hopedto mak e a splash with tb e Volt at tbe conce pt car's unveil-ing in January 2007, at the Detroit auto show. Even so,executiveswerestunned by thepublic'sreaction.GMwonboth No rtb American Car andTVuckof tbeYear but tbe

enthusiasm created by tbe Volt completely eclipsed thatnews. Wewerepumped for something big, Wagoner says,


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Riding the waveof euphoria following th e show, GM'shoard of directors urged the project on. Although GMhad made no formal decision to produce the Volt, whathad begun as an experiment was coming to he regardedinside the company as destined. Momentum built stillfurther tha t spring, asGMbegan staffing the project withdozens of its ahlest engineerspeople like Andrew Farali,plucked on short notice from whatever it was they weredoing, anywhere in the world.

The pencil pushers had done none ofthe marketingand cost studies that typically precede a product launch,but no matte r. Normally, Bob Lutz says, you basicallydefine the wholefuture ofthe caronpaper beforeyou givethe go-ahead to start spending someserious engineeringand design m oney onit.Andin thiscaseit wascompletelybackwards. We saw that we had a smash hit th at hugelyresonated w ith the public, and wejust decided: lets goto work. No business case, but let's get this thing intoproduction-ready form, and we'll worry about the costand investm ent and the profitahility later.

IfGMwas seeking to seize the world's attention andupstage Toyota, it had succeeded, spectacularly. But nowit had to build the car.

I M ALL GIDDY

LanceTurneris43 ,of medium height, with a thatchof brown h airand asofl, round face commandeeredhyheavy, squareglasses.Likemany at the heartofthe Volt project, Tu rner isa gearhead, the sort of personwho gets excited by a histogram ofcellvoltages. (Don'task.) GM is full of people who have labored for years onadvanced-technology concept cars and test vehicles science projects, in the company vernacularwith noprospect of seeing their hand iwork reach showTooms. Forthem, the Volt isa jailbreak. Turner, an electrical engineerwhoworkedonthe ill-starred EVl anda seriesof forgottenelectric concept cars with names like Precept (bad namefor a car) and Im pact (even worse), woke up one m orningto findhimself in the m iddle ofGM sbusiest intersection.

He is the guy testing the ba ttery. It's swim. I already know, Turner told m e, whe n Iasked if the batter>' was Hkely to sink or swim. This wasduring a visit in December to GM's mile-square tech-nical center in Warren, Michigan, just outside Detroit.Volt development is going on both here and in Germany,allowing for around-the-clock testing. Th e batterylab,anexpansive but otherwise unimpressive room containingtest cham bers and consoles with digital readou ts, clearlyhad not been dressed up forvisiting journalists, of whomI was only the latest. Before Td even started th e proj-ect, we'd opened u p the lab to 50 reporters that cam e in,Turner told me, sounding bemused. You're not allowedto bring a cam era or a cell phone into this building. Here

During this visit, I found the technical center brimming with optimism, and the hattery lab was no exception. One oftwosuppliers, a company called CompacPower (a subsidiary ofa big South Korean chemical anadvance d-materials company, LG Chem), had deliered two copies of itsversion ofthe battery, and on thbench they were testing brilliantly. They may not looheautiful, Turner saidthe hatter>' was a six-foot-lonT-shaped object from which wires, clamps, and circuboard s protruded but a s far as the d ata goes, they'rthe hest I've worked with. Heat is a problem with litium-ion b atteries, but th is one was staging cool evewhen run hard and the cooling system h ad yet to battached.

Moreover, improvementswereheing incorporated afast as they could he conceived; the battery would be oits second generation in January; its third in June. Itincredihle, Turn er said. The design they've come uwith for therniiil changed 10 times efojvthey deliverethe first hattery. And all of this was before tlie arrival oa com peting battery th at might be as good or even bettedesigned jointly by the Massachusetts-based companA123Systems and the G erman company Continental A We're inventing and creating on the critical path, TXirnsaid.He wasusing the industry jargon for the countdowto produ ction, when tim e is money an d delays can comillions. I've got guys trying to release things beforthey're actually invented.

As I got ready togo, Rirner pointed to a laptop wireto the battery. I'm testing as I'm talking toyou, he sa It's working gre at. I'm all giddy.

THERE IS NO NEXT WEEKThenews wasjustas good intheVolt sdesign studiorepurposed auditoriiun. Designers satin cubicles othe stage, an aptly theatrical touch for sopuhliciconscious acar.Amural proclaimed the program's goaone of which was Radically Shifts GM 's Puhlic Percetions. On the m ain floor was a full-size model ofth e cahidden unde r a blue tarp. As a m le, car companies go great lengthstohide their developmental designs, and I was surprised when my handler ordered the model drohed:even by Voltstandards, thiswasexceptional acceThe model looked rounder and smoother than the aggresivelysport)' showcar and for good reason :tosqueeze miles out of its batteiy, the Volt will need to be the moaerodynamically efficient car GMhas ever built.

Here, as in the battery lab, work was proceeding raidly. The design, though still evolving, was already 9percen t the re. Bob Boniface, the Volt's design directotold me. We've taken m ore tha n half a year out oft hschedule, hesaid.Ordinarily, if you had a prohlem withtaillight, you might schedu le a meeting for the next wee


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Early on, word had come down from Bob Lutz andJon Lauckner that standard procedure was suspendedwhere the Volt was concerned. "You guys are not goingto be held to the normal GM bureaucracy," Lutz recallssaying. "You guys spend money w hen you need to spendit. You have a problem, call us on the phone." Engine ers,designers, and executivesweretoldtotrust their instinctsand make decisions on the spot.If a largerissuecrops up,itistaken to a special Volt steering com mittee, and Lutz,Lauckner, and the key company vice presidents settle itbefore leaving the room .

"WheneverIhave a problem, itisresolved withindays,"Frank Weber, who manages the Volt project, told me.

"Withindays One call, and things happen immediately."Weber, a 41-year-old German import from GM's Opel

he was having any fiin, p erhaps not th e m ost delicate oquestion s, he said, "There's a fair amount of cam arade riin the misery of being tired." Had he had a vacation? Hecouldn't remembe r just then . "I'm going to takeone,"hsaid, not all tha t convincingly.

And how was the project going? "I'd had nothing b uphenom enal testing experiences last timeyouwere herehe replied. "This time I'm more humbled." He led mintoatemperature-controlled chamber, where one of thbatteries was hooked up to a tangle of tubes filled withclear orangefluid.It looked like an intensive-care p atienThe cooling system w as being tested. The eng ineers hadexpectedthis tobeachallenge, anditwas.The system waleaking bothfluidandelectricity,which mean titcould noyet be installed in a test car. Nor was the competing b a

Word came down from top managem ent tha t stand ard procedurewas suspended where the Volt was concerned:'You guys spend money when you need to.Youhave a problem, call us on the phonedivision in Europe , is precise, organized, unflappable, asif German-engineered himself.One morning, when thesteeringgroupheard tha t the battery was running behindschedule, a senior produ ction executive said to Weber,"Tell us what you need." By early tha t afternoon, the twoof them were enlisting more engineers.

SUDDENLY, PLAYTIME IS OVERA t the end of February, when I returned to the techni-

calcenter, the pictu re looked difFerent. Decem ber'sX i ebulhence had givenway toa sense of strain thatwasevidenteven to atourist. Wecu rrentlyareat the limitof our stretch," one senior battery engineer told me. Hewas just back froma week'sskiing in Co lorado, where hehad soughtescape,bu t where for three nights the batteryhad intruded on his dreams. "Three nights, and1 couldonly think about tha t battery "The Volthad movedfromhelate stagesof conceptionto the early stages of execution. The personnel count hadmorethan doubled,to500orso.Theywerenow out of thesunny foothills and beginning the craggyascent.Unpleas-ant surprises and resource limitations and aggressivedead lines and the laws of physicswerebiting. "Suddenly,"Weber told me, "playtime is over."

In the battery lab, I found Lance Turner visiblyexhausted. As we talked in a cluttered office, where hesatinfront ofablackboard covered with scribbled graphsand equationsasif out of a mad-scientist cartoon,hekept

tery robust enough to drive around. Originally expecteby Easter, testcars,the crucialproof would not be on throad before M ay."We're counting on home runs every single time, anquite frankly,we'rehitting doubles righ t now,"l\imersaas I watched d iodes on the battery's control circuits flagreen. It seemed, he added wearily, that there were noenough hours in the day.

COSMIC PROPO RTIONSO f course, what I wonderediswhat everyone woders:CanGMpull this off? WlieneverIasked thquestion inside thecompany,I gotoneor anothversion of the same answer: "Failure is not an optionToday's GM, thoug h not ou t of trouble , is off the criticalist, thankstoa landm ark labor agreement, reduced cosand some vvidely acclaimed new cars; and the compannow has hybrid and ethanol programs to fall back on th eVoltfails.Still, everyone agreed th at failureontheVoreal or perceived, wouldbea severe setback. And G enerMotors has tried moon shots before.

In the early 1980s, hum iliatedby itsinabilit>'tobuilcar that met the Japanese challenge,GMannouncedanprogramto createa space-agesmallcar tha t would leapfrthe Japan ese and , in the process, reinvent GM's businemodel. It would be an effort of cosmicproportions" the CEO in those days, Roger Smith, put it. The n a mSaturnrecalled the space program. The developme


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urn project had become a giant media event, propelled bya s teady s t ream of tantalizing annou ncem ents from RogerSmith's office Mary ann Keller , a promine nt automotiveanalyst , wrote in her 1989 book on GM,Rude Awakening."With the promise of Saturn, the world was suddenlyRoger Smith 's oyster" The s tart -up moved at breakneck

FRO M A W IN D O WIncurable and unbel ievingIn any iriirli hut thf iriilh ofgi-ieving,

1 r-aw a iree iuside a u e eRise kaleidoscopically

As if the leaves had livelier ghosts.I |uTs,sed my fate as close

To the pane a-i could gelTowatcli thai lillul.. (lueiit spirit

That seemed a single being undefinedOr rouutless beings of one mind

Haul its .strange cohesionBeyond the limits of my vision

0\ er the house heavenwards.Of course1knew those leaves were birds.

Of course that old Iree stoodExactly as it had and would

(But why should it seem fuller now?)Atid thougli a man's mind might endow

Even a tree with some excessOf hff to which a man seems witness,

That \ \U- is not the life of men.And that is where the joy came in.

CHRtSKAN WIMANChrist lon Wiman 5 most recent book is mbition andSurvival

Speed, growing from six people to 8 00 in the first year; idesigned and bu ilt an all-new car in three years, Japan-fasand twiceGM'snormal pace. The carwaspopular,the neproduction system and dealer network even more so: b1992, there were waitinglistsfor Satu rns.

And then Saturn withered. The cars sold well bustruggled to break even, and GM's union and bureaucracy pushed back against the division's organizationaprivileges. Instead of nur turin g and growing Saturn, GMmerged it into the larger organizational blob and thenneglected it. Wh at was supposed to have been a tonic fothe corporate culture became another victim ofit.Onirecently has Saturn gotten back on its feet.

GM'shistory of greatleapsforwarddatesto its foundWilliam D urant,who wasknown forhissometimes impusivestyle. Mr.Durant would proceedona course of actioguided solely, as far as I could tell, by some intuitive flasof brilliance," his legendary successor, Alfred Sloan, oncwrote. Henever felt obligedtomake an engineering hunfor facts." In the 1980s and 1990s, the company foughstagnation anddeclinewitha seriesof whatithoped woube breakthroug hs: a joint venture w ith Toyotainthe earl1980s; acquisitions oftwohigh-techcompanies;aspendi

. spree on robots and other advanced m anufacturing tecnology; Satum ; the EVl. Some, like the acquisitions anthe program to replace huma ns with robots (which endeup painting each other instead ofthe cars), failed o utrig hOthers,likethe joint venture, Saturn, and th e EVl, yieldopportunities tha t GM tailed to exploit.History suggests that th e largest dangers for th e Voare not technological but organizational and commerciaWill GM have tbe focus and creativity to m arket such aunconventional car? Will it have the doggedness, and thcash, to weather th e inevitable comm ercial setbacks anfinancial losses?Tojudge solely from history, the od dare not great.

A FOLLOWER

O n the oth er hand, GM is not the company it wain the 1980s an d 1990s. "There's a generationachange in GM," Maryann Keller, whohastrackGM since the early 1970s, told me recently. "There's generation of managers who never knew the rich GMThese are people who are bruised and ba ttered. Thesare the kind of people who can m ake change." (And tbworm turn s: Toyota is now run by a generation th at h aknown only success.)GM, once notoriously smug, today is a hungry company. Its executives and engineers wall recount, at thdrop ofahat,the great technologies andcarsthatGMhfathered. They want some of that gloryback.They kno

the worldexpectsthemtofail,and thatmakesthem all thungrier. "The empire strikesback, ishow o ne executi


10/11

ELECTRO-SHOCK THERAPYJULY AUGUST 2008 THE ATLANTIC

Rick Wagoner, the CEO, is a GM liferwhojoined thecompany tresh out of Harvard Business School in1977,andhe knows hishistory. "Making big betsisnot something thiscompany has been averseto,"he told me. GM's downfallhas been in execution and follow-through, not ambition.

"IfI velearned anything over the past thr ee or four years,"Wagonersaid,it'sthat alot ofthisbusinessissticking withit and persistence. In the coaching vernacular, we're goingto leave it on the floor to make this happen."Myown feeling. Just a reporter'sguess,isthat batteryghtcbes have reduced tbe odds ofGM'shaving the Voltin showrooms by late 2010, but advances in the under-

lyingtechnologyhaveincreased th e odds of its producingthe Volt early in the decade. In other w ords, delay on theorder of months is looking more likely, but delay on theorder of yearsislookinglesslikely. I'd also guess that thecar's sticker price will be higher than GM initially hoped ,maybe north of $35,000.

How much the calendar and the price matter willdependonthe competition. Despite its bead start,GMwillhave to fight to be first. In Januar>-, after ay ea r of watch-ing GMbaskintheVolt'spublicity, Toyotareacted.Atthe

But the real answer was the grin tb at sp read across hisface as he recalled Watanabe's announcement and said,savoring each syllable, "He wasafoHower.I JUST WANT TO EA PART OF THIS

n late March, at the New York auto show, I checkedback in with Andrew Farah, the Volt's chief engineer,and asked for an update. "Still justasbadasbefore," besaid.WhenImentioned that anotherexecutivehadsaidtheunderbodywasa well-proven design that didn't need muchtesting,heshotmea look ofdisbelief."There's abiggapinghole down the center of this car where the batter>' goes."All around us, at tbe Chevrolet stand, a crowd wasforming. Volt fans from as far away as Arizona, Colorado,and California had m ade the pilgrimage to question theteam ab out the car.

Maybewhatwe'regoingtolearn out of this isn't sometechnological thing," Farah said."Maybe whatwe'releam-ing isto be more comfortable w itbahigherlevelof risk."Iasked ifhedid feel comfortable with therisksthe programwas taking. He thought for a moment. 1realize there'sno other way to do it, so I am com fortable w ith it." Was

Glancing at the concept car on the dais, I realizedI was looking at the Barack Obaina of automobileseveryone^s hope for change.

2008 Detroit auto show, Katsuaki Watanabe, the presi-dent, announced that Toyota would produce a lithium-ion plug-in car of its own, and would have it on the streetin test fleets "not at the end of 2010, bu t earlier than that."Toyota was talking abont a few hundred experimentalcars in a controlled setting , not tens of thou sands of carsin dealer showrooms, a much less ambitious goal thanGM's. But Toyota is famous for under-promising andover-delivering.In February, Tesla, the Silicon Valley company,announced plans for an electric sedan with a gasoline-powered generator, like the Voltbut set to arrive ayear earlier, in late 20 09 . In M arch, BMW said it mightproduce an electric car for th eU.S.market, and in May,NLssan said it would have one in te st fleets in 201 0. Thedrumbeat seemslikely tocontinue. Simplybyannouncingthe Volt, GM ha s attracted a bevy of comp etitors, bring-ing the electric car's mass-market advent from over thehorizon to around the corner.GM's leader s, needless tosay,do not particularly wel-come tbe com petition from a business point of \iew. Butthey relish it from a psychological one. When I askedLarry Burns, the R&D \ice president, how he felt about

he holdingupunder tb e pressure? He thoug ht again. "It'smyjobtoholdup."As the event began, I melted into the crowd. Next tome was a 23-year-old grad student who thoug ht the carwas historic; nexttohim, a 21-year-old ne twork engineerwho said he loved the car and w ould buy one now if hecould; next to him, a 59-year-old foreman (and grand-father) who said, Ijus t want to be a part ofthis."Noneof them were car people orGMpeople, at least not beforethe Volt. Glancing at the concept car on th e dais,1 real-izedIwas looking at tbe Barack Obama of automobileseveryone's hope for change.

At thepodium,Bob Lutz wassaying, Itliink the w holecompany has now leamed the lesson that when you setout and do bold things, you win, and when you're cau-tious and let someone else do tbe bold things, you lose."The crowd applauded warmly. A voice called ou t, "You'reabsolutely righ t. Bob "Lutz said, "It may be years beforewemake a dime onthis produc t. Years And the board said, 'Don't even talkabout profitability. eneral Motorsnee sthiscarlI couldn't see Andrew Farah just then, but for amom ent I almost envied him.GI


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Atlantic GMVolt 2008

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