It sounds to me more like someone setting themselves up to blame someone else for missing a deadline. In my industry it happens every day.

 

Assuming that the technical problems with the battery are solved (and as an automotive engineer I'm not ready to make that assumption), there's still the minor problem of finishing the production design, prototyping the packs in fairly large quantities (larger than the handful of packs that have been delivered so far), conducting a wide array of validation tests on the prototypes, iterating the design, tooling up the pack, building the pack with production-intent processing, running the validation testing again, and then proving that the pack can be built at the appropriate volumetric rate for production.

If you asked me to start today on the above tasks for a "simple" powertrain part (something using technology that already exists) for the 2011 model year, the timing is a bit tight but doable. If you asked me to do the above using technology that has never yet before been implemented in an automobile (especially in such a mission-critical fashion), I'd be happy to take on the task, but there's no way in hell I'd sign up to any particular completion date.

I'm one of the most optimistic engineers you'll find in the auto industry, and even I think that it'll take a miracle - or several! - for the Volt to roll down an assembly line within the next 3-4 years.

 

 

In all honesty.... is anyone actually surprised? I'm not.

The freakin' GMT900's (for the most part) don't have the 6 speed tranny yet.

 

GM probably has multi millions $ in the Volt concept car. Might as well get what you can out of it publicity wise while you are trying to figure out how to make it work for mass production.

 

This won't exactly do much to help GM's "overpromise and underdeliver" reputation.

 

To add something to the conversation, my bro-in-law is working in the batteries area of the patent trade office outside of DC and he said they are about 2-3 years behind on all battery patents. So anything being developed right now won't be approved for a patent for a few years so how will GM et al be able to use it / protect the technology by then?

 

As long as the patent has been applied for, the product can be sold. If someone infringes, then the courts get to sort it out.

Stuff goes into production all the time without approved patents - compared to the USPTO, the auto industry moves at the speed of light

 

Yeah my bro in law said they are VERY short on people to process stuff. Something to the effect of there are like 400k applications filed each year and like 150k-200k get processed a year. Apparently if they stopped accepting patents today they would be able to work for another 3 years on the stuff already filed.