Introduction
Meeting the demands of this generation requires embrace to new technology and a greater sense to the future. The world at this juncture suffers from the financial crisis that need to be solved; there is energy crisis and a cry for the greener environment. This is what Chevy Volt kept in perspective and developed one of the automotive that has satisfied most of its buyer. The vehicle is pocket friendly, effective, safer and modern. This has reduced environmental degradation, and the life span of the battery is long lasting ("The car of the future | Drive For Innovation – AVNETExpress").
Major Innovation of Chevy volts
Chevrolet Volt has been designed to fulfill the technological dream of going green, because it does not use gasoline as the primary source of power, but rather secondary. It has been designed with backup gas engines that enable drivers to stay green without necessarily finding ways to plug in everywhere they go. This is an enormous expectation and stand for the hype of General Motors. By integrating new technology, GM innovation has sent a clear message that its innovation is for the future ("Chevy Volt | Innovation Case Study").
The future demands that the ultimate car should contain the three important features. This cars should be smart, lighter, and awesome. With the advent of technology and computing, future cars would be safer, greener and better connected machines than the present ones.
Looking at the demand for the future Chevrolet designer and manufacturer took into consideration the issue of going green and offered entirely unique product in the global auto mobile. The five door, with a capacity of containing four passenger has been developed to provide emission reducing, fuel saving vehicle having exploited the benefit of electrical vehicle technology. Volt has thus brought new customers into the Chevrolet dealership ("Chevy Volt | Innovation Case Study").
Others technologies included in this model has not left out the awesomeness. The body color roof and its interior is extremely outstanding. The exterior color is Silver topaz metallic. This is inclusive with interior color of pebble Beige. This is a new generation expectancy of a car.
The Volt propulsion System.
The heart of innovation of Chevrolet Volt is its Voltec propulsion system. This combines a pure electric drive, range-extending engine, and efficient. It has the capability of giving the Volts up to 382 miles of 615 km of range.
The long life battery consists of up to a 5.5 foot, weighing 434 pound; T shaped, and has 16 kWh lithium battery pack. This battery supplies the electric drive unit that propels the vehicle with 111 kW energy. By use of this energy produced from the battery, the vehicle can be propelled up to 38 miles. This is emission free electric drive that has no any other joint fueling, that depends on the terrain, the day’s temperature and the driving techniques ("Chevy Volt | Innovation Case Study").
This battery has a longer life to the extend GM has covered an 8 year warrantee or rather 100,000 miles warranty. Then begs the question what happens when the battery is depleted? GM has designed the vehicle in such away; it has a backup gasoline powered engine onboard. Therefore, when power from the battery depletes, the Volts enters a transition mode. This extended range mode gives the car time to transition from battery powered mode to the backup gasoline engine. The onboard gasoline engine provides power that is inverted to provide a capacity that adds the driving range to 344 miles (Mitchell and Borroni-Bird et al.).
The battery changing system is quiet simple and intuitive. The Battery can be charged with conventional household electrical outlet. With 120 Volts, one can charge the battery in their homes outlets (Mitchell and Borroni-Bird et al.). For a charging station, 240 Volts will suffice the charging need of these batteries that only takes up to 4 hours. In the household electric outlet, this will take approximately 10 to 16 hours, depending on the outside temperature and charging levels.
The vehicle is smart too. The owners have control over the vehicle remotely. The have the capability of monitoring Volts via Computes at MyVolt.com. The flexibility has been enhanced by having the ability to monitor it via smart phones that have been powered by OnStar application. When the vehicle has been plugged into the charging system, the owners, can schedule the charging; ether delayed or immediate.
The aerodynamic Exterior features.
The engineers and designers of GM working hand in hand with aerodynamicist, they were able to work together and produces the most aerodynamic automotive in Chevrolet history. The volts external features of tampered corner and rounded front fascia enabled the air to maneuver easily on the automotive reducing drag. At the rear, the designers of the body created sharp edges and therefore carefully made a spoiler air control flow. To reduce turbulence, these designers made a wind shields have an aggressive rake (Mitchell and Borroni-Bird et al.).
Using aerodynamics, the energy that was required to resist air resistance is reduced. Quantified in figures this would translate an estimated 50 miles off range and 8 miles of electric range. Other exterior innovations include; a high mounted LED centered stop lamb, LED illuminated daytime running lamps, Power adjustable mirrors with turn indicators, smartly designed 17 inch aluminum wheels that are painted, Friendly alert for pedestrian, and several color choices that fits different tastes.
The Interiors design of Volts.
The vehicle is designed with seven features of user’s preferences. It offers convenience, safety, comfort, storage compartment, easily accessible by use of seven doors, proper lighting, and entertainment. It comes with a variety of interior colors that the user may prefer. For entertainment, the car is fitted with seven inch screen with high resolution (Mitchell and Borroni-Bird et al.). One has reconfigurable high resolution graphic cluster display and the other, is at the center stack featured with a touch screen display, integrated shifter and touch-control switches.
The interior has USB enabled audio interface, a satellite radio with 3 month trial, blue tooth connectivity, automated climate control, ignition and keyless access, remote vehicle starting system, premium cloth seats, universal home remote, For safety package there include, auto dimming inside review mirror, rear pack assist and rear vision camera.
The Volts Chassis and Suspension.
It has been designed to offer a smooth, responsive, refined ride, with on center feel. This has been achieved by the Volts MacPherson front suspension, electric power steering that has a react quickly sense when controlled by the driver.
It has a lower center of gravity, combined with wider tracks and for balance performance; it has a long wheel base. The car has been designed to avoid road harshness fitting the rear and front with hydraulic ride bushings.
The brakes of this vehicle are outstanding having being able to capture energy up to 0.2g because of the electro-hydraulic regenerative brakes. The material used to build the wheels is lightweight aluminum that weigh up to 17.8 pounds. This is done to ensure that the vehicle is light enough compared to conventional wheels that weigh at least 24.2 pounds for the same typical 17 inch wheel. The tires are fashioned dot has low rolling resistance which are optimized for an electrical range, feel, performance, and noise.
Volts Safety.
As designed for the car of the future that need to be safe, Chevrolet has been designed to help its passengers in times of accident. It has mechanization for accident avoidance, and protective gears in case one happens. The vehicle has a crash avoidance features which includes a standard anti-lock brakes which has traction control. To ensure the visibility of the vehicle, Chevrolet is made in such a way that the LED daytime running lamps are always on using StabiliTrak technology.
The body of this vehicle has been made in such a way that, in case of an accident, the occupant are protected because of the strong structure that comprises with advanced body steel to help in stiffness and crashworthiness. Almost 80 percent of the vehicle consist of advanced high strength of a structure ("The car of the future | Drive For Innovation – AVNETExpress").
Because of the kind of quietness maintained when the vehicle runs in electric mode, the driver of this machine has the capability of activating feature sound, a noise that is used to alert the pedestrians that the vehicle is approaching. Especially for the visual impaired, this technology was for a paramount important.
The car is fitted with eight standard air bags. These airbags are also fitted at the passenger’s knee level to help mitigate the lower limbs from hurting in case of the accident. The airbags are not limited on the front driver, but even the roof rail is fitted with air bags that clearly extend over both the seats rows to protect impact in case the vehicle rolls over.
Paradigm used to develop Volts
GM has can be said to have employed open paradigm in construction of this vehicle because the technology was not first innovated by them. After viewing a prototype at a major auto show in the year 2007, GM embarked on building this vehicle. It enhanced the concept about battery life by conceiving a vehicle with compact battery system and a backup gasoline engine ("The car of the future | Drive For Innovation – AVNETExpress").
In conceiving the idea with can say that, the Volt has used closed paradigm too because of conceiving the idea of using compact battery system. Therefore, it is true to say that the team employed both the closed and open paradigm to come up with the auto motive.
The Business Model
For decades, drivers have entirely depended on gasoline to power automotive. Then pump prices started swelling and desire of alternatives soared. At that moment, GM worked on the idea and gave people and opportunity to exploit other avenues to power their automotive.
Sometimes hitting the new market becomes hard. It becomes a challenge if not addressed well and can find a traction in the market because of the fear of the unknown. For Chevy, the scenario was completely different because it was unveiled in an appropriate time, just as the users had reached the end of their rope. The financial crisis, rise of the pump price and a great need for greener energy pushed the customer to search for alternative for powering vehicles. To come up with a quality acceptable product, The GM team shifted from the traditional research of customer’s segmentation and embarked of research of finding the customer’s preference and came up with a strategy of teaching the customer on the new product so as they can quickly stimulate the demand.
This strategy was worked well because the company rebranded itself during the launch as the car for the future. The strong sales that culminated in 2012 made volts to the world’s number one plug-in car. It won 2012 Consumer Reports Owner-Satisfaction survey. This was a good indication that the product met users preferences and therefore acceptable. In a survey, buyers who had purchased the product accepted to have been satisfied with an outstanding of 92 percent.
GM’s strategy for the future
According to the above innovation, GM has proved that new with the advent of technology it is possible to come up with smarter vehicles, which are safer to use and is awesome to behold. GM future vehicle might go fully green and reduce emission. The vehicle will be installed with other devices to mitigate accident and to keep the boarders safer compared to now (Chesbrough and Vanhaverbeke et al.).
In the future, they are going to make their vehicle smarter to the extent that it will have the ability to sense the passage from, distance, and automatically engage the alert voice so that the driver does not have to do it manually.
Propose GM to come up with technology that will make sure that the battery is self-rechargeable sufficient without the use of a backup gasoline. They will employ green methods to back up the battery or something like that.
Work Cited
Chesbrough, Henry William, Wim Vanhaverbeke and Joel West. Open innovation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Print.
"The car of the future | Drive For Innovation – AVNETExpress." Driveforinnovation.com, 2013. Web. 27 Nov 2013. <http://www.driveforinnovation.com/the-car-of-the-future-2/>.
"Chevy Volt | Innovation Case Study." Innosight.com, 2013. Web. 27 Nov 2013. <http://www.innosight.com/impact-stories/chevy-volt-case-study.cfm>.
"Chevrolet News - United States - Volt." media.gm.com, 2013. Web. 27 Nov 2013. <http://media.gm.com/media/us/en/chevrolet/vehicles/volt/2013.html>.
Mitchell, William J, Chris Borroni-Bird and Lawrence D Burns. Reinventing the automobile. Cambridge, Mass.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2010. Print.
