Archive for Chevrolet

Chevrolet has developed a new Chevrolet Caprice PPV for the US market, and as indicated by its PPV suffix (Police Patrol Vehicle) it will be police-only. The new Caprice PPV is based on the GM Zeta platform which is shared between its large vehicles like the Camaro, and in long wheelbase form, the Holden Statesman. The Caprice has the same 3,010mm long wheelbase as the Statesman.

Under the hood is a massive 355 horsepower 6.0 liter V8 that can take the cop car from 0 to 100km/h in under 6 seconds. A smaller V6 engine will be offered later. The transmission used is a 6-speed automatic. The front seats are sculpted to “pocket” the officer’s equipment belt (worn on the waist), which greatly increases the comfort for a great range of police officer sizes. The foam density of the seatback and cushion insert surfaces are designed to conform to the shape of an equipment belt’s various items, too, allowing the officer’s back to rest properly on the seatback surface.

Feedback was obtained from the police force during the development process. “The new Chevrolet Caprice police car is the right tool at the right time for law enforcement. We asked for a lot of feedback from our police customers, which helped us develop a vehicle that is superior to the Crown Victoria in key areas,” said Jim Campbell, general manager for GM Fleet and Commercial Operations.

I’m not sure how hard exactly that can be considering how old the Crown Victoria is (over a decade)! Now I wonder what happened to the Carbon Motors E7…

Click here to read the rest of Chevrolet Caprice police car returns to the US!

This is the new Chevrolet Agile, a product that GM designed for the South American market. The Agile’s development was done by GM Mercosur located in Sao Paulo, Brazil at a cost of US$400 million. Target markets include Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay so I don’t think we can expect the Agile to reach our country anytime soon, at least not in this form. There’s some word that a variation of this car will end up launched as the new Aveo though. The Agile is based on the same platform as the Opel/Vauxhall Corsa D and has a wheelbase of 2,510mm, putting it in competition with cars such as the Fiesta and the Polo. A few engines will be available ranging from a 105hp 1.4 liter up to a 129hp 1.8 liter engine.

This is GM’s “Bare Necessity” Car concept, which was the result of them asking themselves: what are people willing to trade off for efficiency’s sake? And this is what they think is the car with the lowest cost per mile of any four-seater on the road.

They’ve conceptually designed it with some interesting stuff like retractable wipers to improve aerodynamic efficiency, and on the slide detailing the interior you can see that the default is pretty bare but they’ve already pre-planned various add-ons such as a reconfigurable touch display, modular HVAC systems, etc.

I’m pretty sure it’s an EREV with a hybrid system like the Volt too, since the instrumentation panel features both fuel levels and a battery level. GM thinks the best way to go about car propulsion now is what they call an Extended Range Electric Vehicle, which means the vehicle runs primarily on a battery and an electric motor, but a combustion engine is available to run to produce power to charge the battery only, not drive the wheels.

Look after the jump to view all the slides they’ve published. There’s also a video where they interview some of the team behind the concept.

Click here to read the rest of GM’s Bare Necessity Car Concept – a perfect trade-off between creature comforts and efficiency?

When GM first announced the Chevrolet Volt project, Bob Lutz said the production version could end up being priced somewhere in the high US$20,000s. That’s not so bad. The car is Cobalt-sized and a Cobalt starts at just under US$15k and tops out at US$23k. For about US$29k you can get a fully loaded up Chevy Impala. So I suppose you’ll be trading an upsize in vehicle class for the advanced EREV powertrain. But not any longer. It turns out the price tag was a big underestimation.

Apparently now the realistic price tag for the Volt hovers at somewhere around US$43,000. For that kind of money you can buy a fully loaded top of the range 3-Series, or even a basic BMW 5-Series. A Prius starts at just under US$22k. And how did Lutz end up with high US$20k range in the first place? “I just thought if a conventional car of that size with a four-cylinder engine can go for US$15k-16k, add US$8k for the battery and we’re at US$25k,” admitted Lutz.

But of course the Volt is more than a regular inline-4 car with a battery. Yes, the battery did end up being US$8,000, supplied by Korean company LG Chem. But you also have to add the electric motor, ECU and various controls for the motor and battery charging systems, as well as equip the car with new auxiliaries that can continue to work via other methods rather than draw power from an internal combustion engine via an aux belt. The Volt also ended up using many one-off parts which does not benefit from economies of scale from use in other GM cars.

Even at the US$43k to the customer price tag, GM will also have to sell the car to the dealers at a loss. They are banking on warranty costs being much less than they provisioned and for technology advancement to reduce the costs of the Volt’s components halfway down the road to make the car profitable.

It was last reported that our neighbours up in Thailand north will be getting it beginning 2011, and who knows, maybe we’ll get it too, albeit if that happens it will probably be only as a halo model of some sort because of the kind of price tag it will have. Even in Thailand it is estimated to be priced at nearly 3 million Thai baht (roughly RM300,000), because of Thai import duty structures.

Related Posts:
Production Chevrolet Volt Hybrid Car Revealed!
New official details on the Chevrolet Volt

Click here to read the rest of The Chevrolet Volt’s biggest problem: its cost

General Motors (GM) has emerged from bankruptcy after filing for Chapter 11 administration in early June. Still called General Motors, the “new” auto maker is now 60.8% owned by the US Government, 11.7% by the governments of Canada and Ontario, 17.5% by UAW retirees, and another 10% is owned by bondholders from the “old GM”.

The auto maker also revealed that it will only maintain four vehicle brands in its group, including Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC, as these four are more profitable than the rest. Other brands such as Saab and Saturn were put on sale, while the Pontiac brand name has been shelved.

The auto maker will still continue to scale down its operations by reducing plants, dealers and a portion of it’s workforce, in the name of improving efficiency. GM, which has Fritz Henderson as it’s President and CEO and Ed Whitacre from AT&T as it’s chairman, has also also cut lose a total of 54 advertising and marketing contracts.

Such contracts include the placement of a Chevrolet Clock at Times Square (since 1930’s), sponsorships for the Oakland Raiders (American football team) and the Arnold Palmer Invitational tournament (golf event) and more.

For the record, the so-called “struggling” auto maker has spent US$424 million in advertising and marketing just for the first three months of 2009! Although the figure is down by 20% from last year, it is still alot.

GM’s Australian car company Holden will take charge of the development of a 5-door hatchback version of the Chevrolet Cruze, which would be the replacement for the Chevrolet Optra5 which was sold here in Malaysia. The project will cost AU$600 million and Holden will build it alongside the Cruze sedan at its Elizabeth plant in South Australia from Q3 2010 onwards, and the company also intends to export it.

Holden says it needs a hatchback car as they claim Australia’s largest passenger car segment in terms of volume consists roughly half of hatchbacks. It used to bring the Astra in as an offering but decided to stop because of currency fluctuations.

Holden will use the Cruze platform (of which global platform also underpins the new Astra) and build a hatchback version positioned in a more upmarket position compared to the Cruze sedan. It will have an “European” feel that will lean more towards how the Astra feels rather than the Cruze, thanks to steering and suspension input from Holden.

GM aims to bring in a new range of small vehicles into the US and plans to have these made in China!

Though not technically a “Chinese car” as in produced by a Chinese marque, it is still the first time a volume car produced in China will be sold in the US.

Will the American consumer be able to accept that these set of cars will be made in China? It’s not a lot though, GM expects these Chinese-made models to only account for 1.6% (just over 50,000 units) of American GM sales in 2014.

The same GM document that details plans to bring in cars from China also reveals plan to increase production in Mexico from over 300,000 to over 500,000 and South Korea from just under 40,000 to nearly 160,000 by the year 2014. In turn, Canadian production will be cut.

Of course their UAW union is kicking up a fuss all over again, accusing GM of using taxpayer money to fund manufacturing outsourcing to other countries. Business is business and if the UAW cannot make cars at a cost that is competitive enough with the world, then this is just what GM has to do in order to improve profitability.

The American UAW and their colossal benefits schemes simply cannot compete with the lower labour costs of other countries.

According to Politico citing an unnamed White House official, Rick Wagoner will reportedly be stepping down as the CEO of General Motors at the request of the US Government, probably as part of conditions for more aid to be given to GM by the feds. In fact some sources day the 56 year old CEO already resigned yesterday.

The replacement for the outsted CEO who said over a week ago that he does not plan to resign anytime soon is likely to be GM’s COO Fritz Henderson, if the feds do not request for someone from the outside.

Chrysler chief executive Bob Nardelli is said to be safe from receiving similiar chopping, for now. If more and more aid is given to Chrysler (already $4 billion – they are asking for another $5 billion) with no results like GM so far, he may face the axe.

A formal announcement has yet to be made – Politico quoted the White House official and the rest of the media world ran the story. Look after the jump for a video of one of the latest congressional hearings regarding the Detroit Three bailout. One of the congress members (Senator Bob Corker) basically sums up what he thinks their plans to use the money are, quite interesting.

In other auto CEO news, PSA Peugeot Citroen has fired its CEO Christien Streiff and replaced him Philippe Varin, the man who oversaw the merger of Corus and Tata Steel two years ago. Streiff was replaced because his ability to perform as CEO was in doubt. He had two minor strokes in 2008. Apparently the board was also not happy with Streiff’s go-it-alone management style.

Click here to read the rest of GM CEO Rick Wagoner asked to resign?

The Chevrolet Cruze will hit Malaysian roads in July 2009 and it will be imported from Korea as a CBU model. The Cruze is a C-segment sedan in the same class as the Civic, Corolla Altis and Focus.

Under the hood will be a GM-Opel Powertrain sourced 1.8 liter DOHC unit while in other markets the Cruze is also available with a 1.6 liter ECOTEC. This new 1.8 liter unit replaces the older Holden-based engine that our market’s Optra comes with. The new engine will have DCVCP or Double Continuous Variable Cam Phasing and produce 140hp and 175Nm of torque at 3,800, so that’s quite a torquey mid-range there.

What’s most impressive is the Cruze will be a class leader in terms of transmission as it will be equipped with a 6-speed transmission, something that none of its rivals have. The closest is Honda with a 5-speed auto.

The Cruze is generally a rather good looking car and it has a pleasant interior as well. It has been touted over and over that this car together with the upcoming Chevrolet Volt will be the new global car that saves GM. Unlike previous GM C-segment offerings where the Americans got the Cobalt while the rest of the world got the Daewoo-derived Optra, the Cruze is one single model that will serve the global market.

Another new Chevy will come later – the D-segment Chevrolet Epica. Look after the jump to view a full featured high resolution interior & exterior photo gallery of the Cruze and its Daewoo-based version, the Lacetti Premiere.

Related Posts:
New Chevrolet Cruze and Chevrolet Epica set for 2009 debut
Chevrolet Cruze finally launched as the Daewoo Lacetti Premiere

Click here to read the rest of Chevrolet Cruze set for July 2009 Malaysian launch!

General Motors has revealed Vauxhall’s interpretation of the Chevy Volt which will be offered in a right hand drive form, and that potential buyers can expect a production version by 2012. Based on the Chevy Volt and the Opel Ampera, this almost similar looking Vauxhall Ampera also features the Voltec electric propulsion system, meaning for journeys of up to 60 kilometers, it runs on electricity stored in the 16-kWh, lithium-ion battery pack and this is done by emitting zero emissions.

Once energy in the battery pack is depleted, electricity generated from an engine-generator extends the Ampera’s range to more than 500 km. Recharging can be performed via a 230 volt house hold power outlet. GM also revealed that its Australian subsidiary Holden, will offer its own version of the Volt/Ampera for the Australian market. Personally, the Ampera looks a little better than the more down to earth Volt. Continue reading to view an image gallery.

Click here to read the rest of Geneva 2009: RHD Volt-based Vauxhall Ampera to be produced by 2012