This year will be an important year for the electric vehicle industry as car makers look to develop and launch viable battery-powered transportation solutions. While hybrid gas/electric vehicles have been around for some time, the availability of fully electric passenger vehicles is now just becoming viable for the commercial vehicle market. Many expect rapid growth of this market segment as the green movement continues to accelerate.
Management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. came out with new research in January, following a year-long study suggesting that electric vehicles, including battery-electric and plug-in hybrid electric cars, could make up as much as 16% of new car sales in New York City alone, come 2015, or as many as 70,000 cars.
Among the newest wave of electric vehicles are the Tesla Roadster, Nissan Leaf, Coda, Think City, GM Volt, and the high-end Fisker Karma. These vehicles will provide insight into customer buying patterns, driving behavior and lay the groundwork for a much larger-scale deployment in the future.
As these fundamentally new products come to market, the automotive industry has little room for error when it comes to product safety and manufacturing efficiency.
Recognizing this importance, General Motors is looking to identify and eliminate a range of potential production problems well before they create an issue for its new, highly anticipated electric vehicle, the Chevrolet Volt. A critical issue for GM is that its future economic success will be part of a more environmentally friendly, low emissions world. The production of this new vehicle must be flawless. And, more importantly, consumers need to reach a comfort level with electric power.
Since EVs represent an entirely new technology compared with the current automobiles on the road today, GM will need to forge new supplier relationships and create a new set of quality checks as it pieces together the integral components of the Volt. This requires a fundamentally different approach to manufacturing operations, allowing GM to quickly adapt to evolving market demands and requirements for electric vehicles by implementing new production processes across a distributed manufacturing network.
Cost will be a key piece of the puzzle when it comes to GM's ability to claim success. The manufacturing process will be a fundamental driver of this challenge. Automobile industry analysts suggest that U.S. manufacturers have the potential to halve manufacturing costs in as little as five years. Reducing oversupply, sourcing parts globally and increasing efficiency through their processes and product supply network can help all U.S. automakers reach this tall order.
GM has begun this journey by implementing new software technology from Apriso to manage production and product quality in their new battery assembly plant for the Chevrolet Volt.
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