First 2011 Chevy Volt Battery Powers Out of Brownstown

From http://www.chevroletvoltage.com, witness the start of Volt battery production at the GM Brownstown Battery Assembly Plant. The plant, located in Brownstown Township, Mich., is the first lithium ion battery pack manufacturing plant in the U.S. operated by a major automaker.

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• Volt
• Chevy
• Chevrolet
• electric vehicle
• extended range
• battery
• Brownstown
• GM
• Michigan
• production
• VoltAge
• Voltec
• electric
• car

[floobertuber]

@Jimmyikon Here's a thought. Because the assembly of the pack is largely done with robots, and proprietary, they may not have wanted to reveal that part of it. Hence you only see some of the bits involving humans (like adding the external power cables) and pallatizing it for delivery to the Volt line.

Frankly I'm amazed they have even been as open with the Volt development process as the HAVE been... What's Nissan showing us about the Leaf's engineering, for example? Zilch!

[iplop]

That's the biggest Lithium Polymer battery I've ever seen. :o

[du4lstrik3]

disappointing. GM could've easily designed a battery with a much larger range, especially with how much lithium polymer these enormous batteries use. nope, gotta keep big oil happy.

not only is it NOT better for the environment (think of the amount of fossil fuels expended in developing countries in order to craft the battery), it's just prolonging our next problem:

what are we going to do when the lithium gets scarce and china says no more for us?

[tomintroy]

@Chronox5 You may rejoice to your hearts content. First EV's went public 90 years ago.

[kieranmullen]

@jpsalsman Seems to work ok with ipods and iphones.

[BrooklynNYC777]

we need a plant like this in new york city..........

[Charles2337]

@JogBird

I agree. Fucking unions destroying companies like this.

[Charles2337]

Amazing car.

I can see modders installing more powerful and high capacity batteries in this car afterwards. Sort of like electric car "tuning" =)

[jpsalsman]

What is the duty cycle in expected years life? Why isn't it modular? Why was li-poly preferred over lithium iron?

[Kingsoupturbo]

So basically they just inspect the battery, talk about redundency in jobs, like 10 ppl seem to do the exact same thing, measure, voltage test, pass it to next person, no wonder GM went bankrupt sheesh

[DaifukuAmerica]

This video shows the use of the SmartCart Automatic Guide Cart (AGC) by Jervis B Webb, a Daifuku company.

[canamm]

Just like the GM Impact. They never wanted to build that one in the first place and it happens to be the best car they've ever produced. 150 mile range on Li-ion. The Chevy Volt has a range of 40 miles and then starts using gas.