Production Chevy Volt Hits The Road - With Video

Here is an exciting story from GM's Fastlane blog, where Andrew Farah gets to take production car number one out for a spin. What a lucky guy. I must say, the car looks very nice, although what we are all interested in is the quiet electric ride!

From GM's Fastlane Blog:

Nearly two years ago, we put plans in motion to begin building the first pre-production Chevrolet Volts in May 2009. Back in February of this year, I hung a countdown clock on my office wall. It read 99 days, 23 hours and 59 minutes. The countdown had begun to the start of the first Chevrolet Volt pre-production vehicle - May 27, 2009. At the same time, I set a personal goal to be driving in one of these vehicles by the Fourth of July.

Yesterday, I drove the first Volt pre-production vehicle - more than a week ahead of schedule, and due in no small part to the commitment and enthusiasm of a great design, engineering and manufacturing team.

To this point, I’ve only experienced the Volt through the virtual world of computer aided-design and concepts, as pieces and components scattered about on tables during meetings, and as engineering development “mule” vehicles during test drives.

But yesterday, I was able to sit in, touch and drive an early version of the real thing. The mules demonstrated the potential drive experience of the Volt’s chassis and powertrain, but the pre-production vehicles bring together the complete Volt experience into one dynamic vehicle.

I adjusted the seat and mirrors, pressed the POWER button, moved the shifter to D, and then took it on a few laps around our Technical Center campus in Warren, Mich. This was the moment I’d been looking forward to and it was exhilarating. And when I was done, I pulled it into the garage and charged it with the production intent equipment.

These vehicles are being built by our Pre-Production Operations (PPO) organization in Warren - the birthplace of all GM cars and trucks in North America. We’re producing a few Volts per week now, but we’ll quickly ramp up to 10 per week and will have approximately 80 pre-production vehicles built by October.

Most of these vehicles will be used for testing and validating the production intent design as well as developing the final vehicle software and controls - we’ll also use them to tune the vehicle’s overall driving experience. Some of these Volts will have very short lives as they’ll be used in safety and structural integrity testing.

By exceeding our own pre-production deadlines it allows us additional time to refine the vehicle. We’ve already discovered a few small tweaks we need to make, but nothing out of the ordinary for this stage of development.

The Volt team is getting accustomed to beating deadlines. Earlier this month, GM’s Global Battery Systems Lab came on-line almost six months ahead of schedule. It’s easy to explain why, there’s a solid commitment by our leadership to lead in the electrification of the automobile and a contagious enthusiasm within the team to bring this vehicle to market next year on time and beyond expectations.

While there’s a still a long way to go, after driving the Volt yesterday, I’m increasingly confident we’re on target to deliver. I’ll be back here on FastLane tomorrow at 4 p.m. EDT to chat live with you about my drive experience this week. I look forward to answering your questions since I’m sure many of you are very curious.