Chev Volt will carry a Holden badge in Oz from 2012 and could even be built here

By MARTON PETTENDY 9 December 2008


GM HOLDEN has announced the Chevrolet Volt hybrid will be sold as a Holden in Australia by 2012 – and it could eventually be built here.

Chairman and managing director Mark Reuss revealed the Holden-badged Volt plan at Holden’s annual Christmas address in Sydney on Friday (December 5), when he reiterated the company’s promise to introduce a new fuel-saving technology in Holden’s homegrown vehicles every two to three months from next year.

Holden used October’s Australian International Motor Show in Sydney motor show to announce plans to introduce the Volt in Australia by 2012, but at the time said it was too early to confirm what brand badging the extended-range electric car would wear.

“There has been much speculation as to how that vehicle will be badged. A lot of you asked me those questions in Sydney as we stood next to the car – and I think there’s probably a really good 100 per cent chance it will have a Lion (badge) on the front of it,” he said on Friday.

The Holden boss was more unequivocal during the Melbourne staging of the event the previous night, when he said, “I’m here to tell you tonight that it (the Volt) is going to have the lion on the front of it and it’s going to be a Holden Volt – that's very exciting for us.”

Many industry observers had expected GM’s plug-in hybrid to remain badged as a Chevrolet in Australia, despite the fact it will carry Opel badging in continental Europe and Vauxhall badging in the UK, with some analysts even suggesting it would spearhead a return of the Chevrolet brand here alongside the Holden-engineered Camaro coupe.

Mr Reuss said it was conceivable the ground-breaking General Motors (GM) small car, which is based on GM’s new Delta architecture, could also eventually be built in Australia, following news from the UK that high-level government intervention may see it manufactured at Vauxhall’s Astra plant in Ellesmere Port from 2011.

Asked if the Volt could be assembled at Holden’s Elizabeth plant outside Adelaide, Mr Reuss replied, “Sure”, before cautioning the timeframe for that possibility was unknown “because I can’t tell you the rate of change of development of the manufacturing of the lithium-ion battery”.

“If that’s true, they (Vauxhall) may be doing that, but I think it’s important to know how we’re designing and developing a car like the Volt.

“It is a range-extending hybrid – it is not a true electric hybrid, so we rely on another energy source to charge an electric powertrain that’s always in motion and always powering the vehicle.

“It is very different from a conventional hybrid and the reason why that’s important is because the battery pack that a vehicle like the Volt will take and use is the fundamental source of energy and so we’ve gone to lithium-ion technology in that battery.

“The lithium-ion technology and the storage of a lot of energy in that battery dictates a very strict manufacturing process of that battery. The battery equation itself, to actually power the car and use the car, is very robust within GM (but) the manufacture of that battery is the next frontier of innovation and challenge that we have.

“So to produce the first Volts we want to keep that in our own backyard to be able to develop and understand that technology and to pave the way for a larger manufacturing system that could be done anywhere in the world ultimately, but we want to keep a very tight reign on how that battery is developed and manufactured in the early days of a technology that is very new,” said Mr Reuss.

GM Europe chief Carl-Peter Forster said recently that GM would consider assembling the Volt in the UK if the EU’s upcoming emissions policy made it viable, and UK reports claim GM executives will establish a business plan over the coming months to produce the Volt there.

“We would look at assembling Volt at Ellesmere Port if super-credits were included in the EU CO2 legislation, because this would encourage auto-makers to provide more ultra-low CO2 vehicles earlier and in greater volume,” said Mr Forster.

“While the CO2 policy is close to finalisation, we will wait to see the final policy before making any further decisions.”

As we GoAuto revealed in October, leaks from union sources that claimed Holden is was planning to build a small car in Adelaide have sparked speculation as disparate as a return of the Torana to the release of a homegrown successor to the Astra and/or Viva.

More recently, Holden has refused to comment on a News Limited report that last week claimed Holden was on the verge of announcing a plan to build its first four-cylinder car since the 1980s at Elizabeth alongside the VE Commodore from 2011 and 2012.

Mr Reuss is on record as saying Holden’s manufacturing operation is flexible enough to produce a wide variety of models and that plans for new future products were continuously being developed at Holden.

If it comes to fruition, the Holden small-car manufacturing program would echo a similar move by Ford Australia, which has announced it will produce the next-generation Focus small car at Geelong and Broadmeadows in 2011 for sales locally and exports to the Asia-Pacific region.

Holden design director Tony Stolfo told GoAuto last week: “We’ve made it very clear we’re exploring all options to keep the plant busy.

“Two architectures out of the plant makes the factory more viable. We’re not saying we’re going to do it, but we’re looking at.”

Mr Stolfo said Holden’s situation was more complex than Ford’s.

“If we build Delta, do we do left-hand drive or right-hand drive? It could make more sense to build right-hand drive for the global market – it comes down to complexity and expense.”

Chevrolet’s Cruze, which will be the first GM model to appear on the new front-drive Delta small-car platform, will form the basis of a new low-cost global model to replace existing GM models including the Daewoo-sourced Holden Viva. It will be followed by the next-generation Astra, which will continue to be built by Opel at Russelsheim in Germany.

Holden is likely to continue to sell both models side by side in its range here, but now appears to be in a position to manufacture not only the Cruze in Australia, – but eventually perhaps also the Volt.

Holden engineering chief Greg Tyus told GoAuto that until the Volt had reached mass-production stage it was too early to talk about local production.

“You’ve got to create the technology before you can expand it,” he said. “Yes, it (local Volt production) is doable and we’d all like to say ‘yes, we’ll build it here’, but we’re still in phase one.

“If the battery technology has passed phase three (mass production), then you can talk about economies of scale and suppliers making batteries. (But) I’d be surprised if every country we sold the Volt into built its own batteries.”

However, Mr Tyus said that economies of scale could be sufficient enough to produce Volt battery packs here if the vehicle’s rechargeable drive system was adapted to fit Holden’s volume-selling Commodore - and he also suggested such arrangements weren’t necessarily predicated on being immediately profitable.

“If we bring the Volt here and apply the same extended-range technology to Commodore then we could reach the tipping point in terms of viability of cost.

“(But) If it was just (dependent on) a business case, it wouldn’t happen. When did Toyota make money on Prius?”

The Holden boss told GoAuto that, unlike Nissan – which has committed to introducing Australia’s first fully -electric vehicle by 2012 - – his company was not in ongoing discussions with government or electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure enterprise Better Place about establishing a national EV recharging system, because the Volt was not a dedicated EV.

“How can you have infrastructure if there’s no demand? We have serious doubts,” he said.

Mr Tyus admitted his staff has had contact with Better Place, but said the hybrid drive technology GM chose for the Volt, which will come with a 240-volt adapter that will allow it to be charged at home, makes its proposed EV recharging infrastructure and battery pack replacement/subscription system redundant.

“The issue is that everyone has a good idea. For pure electric vehicles it makes sense (but) to charge people for ongoing battery charging may or may not be feasible.

“We (GM) already did EVs. The technology we have chosen (for the Volt) is independent of power supply. Why replace if you can recharge?” said Mr Tyus.