cts | Volt a Day | Detroit Trip October 02, 2010

This blog was started September 9th. That was a couple days after GM called to see if I was interested in being on the Customer Advisory Board for the Volt. I wasn’t allowed to say anything about it, since they wanted to be the ones to announce it to the press. They didn’t say how I was selected, although I had also been asked to come test drive the Volt at Dodger Stadium and back then it was clearly because I had leased an EV1.

I never got the call about the Project Driveway. That was letting people drive hydrogen-powered Equinox vehicles for a while. I probably would have enjoyed that, even though it is an SUV. There’s nothing like having water being the only tailpipe product. Several of the other CAB members were former Project Driveway program.

The trip was scheduled for the end of September. We would be flown to Detroit, arriving by 5pm on Monday. We’d have dinner that evening at the hotel, then the next morning we would visit the plant where the Volt was being made. Afterwards we would go to the GM test track to drive the car before being returned to the airport to head home. Was I interested in the trip? Oh, yes. So understated, they didn't try to make it sound exciting at all, which of course made it more exciting.

When they called to arrange the travel I said, “You know, there are several of us coming from Southern California, if you want to send a jet.” There was a pause, and then she laughed and said, “Oh, I don’t think we have jets anymore.” That doesn’t mean you can’t charter, you know. We were booked coach on Delta.

At LAX on Monday, September 27th the flight was instantly delayed forty-five minutes. Welcome to Delta, aka Greyhound with wings. Fortunately, Chelsea Sexton found me and we talked about EV’s. Then Mark Swain showed up and Chelsea introduced us. Mark had a MINI-E for a year and ran the biggest discussion group for the owners. So he’s a fellow tech-head.

The pain of putting myself in the least-comfortable situation we put ourselves into in our modern life was mitigated by having WiFi on the plane. So I was able to read the news, keep my inbox emptied, and see what Volt news was out there. Not much and nothing yet about the CAB.

 

 

We were picked up by a GM driver in a huge purple Tahoe. As we got in I joked to Chelsea, “Don’t worry, it’s electric.” We rolled into Detroit and I snapped a photo of the Renaissance Center as we were arriving. It’s huge. Beyond huge. There’s a real sense, turning the corner and heading into it, that you are entering the belly of the beast. After checking into the hotel, we had to be downstairs for our escort to dinner, so I took a short video.

I was escorted up to the Coach Insignia restaurant, recognizably John Portman to anyone who is interested in architecture. Up to this point I wasn’t sure what I was getting into. I wasn’t sure what GM’s commitment was or what the intent of the program was. It could be lip service to a tiny, vocal minority. It could be a way to generate a little press run. The number of participants was small, so the cost was contained. Was this just one PR flack’s idea of how to turn the tide on Internet discussion board?

No.

We had ridden the elevator to the 73rd floor of the tallest building in Michigan. There were three or four of us joining a larger group for the dinner. We walked through the restaurant and then down a stair to a private area up against the two-story-high floor-to-ceiling glass. This is probably GM’s standard spot for twenty seat dinners. There were already people standing with drinks, waiting for us stragglers.

I’m terrible with names. Really awful. The moment I am introduced to someone, their name is lost for me. I can remember all sorts of things about them, but names feel like meaningless labels and float away instantly. This is with some help. The following people were there:

Customer Relationship managers from the various regions for the CAB members: This is a huge deal. This is the first time GM has invited customers to test a production vehicle. The cars are often given out to GM employees (a little over two hundred Volts will be driven by GM employees in what they call a “captured fleet”). The president of their entire North American operation spoke first and talked about how he had gotten his Volt that afternoon and he had run down to look at it in the parking lot, but couldn’t go for a drive because he had more meetings. So he was looking forward to finishing the dinner for the drive home. He was visibly excited when he discussed the car. He was hooked.

We were not assigned seats, although the GM people were. So we each had a GM person on either side of us and a GM person across from us. We were surrounded. I had Nick to my right, Rob Peterson to my left, and Alain across from me. It was great to be able to just ask question after question of the people who have been involved with the car for years now. They really know their stuff. I talked a lot with Rob about how to manage the cult of alternative-fuel vehicle enthusiasts, and how we have arrived at an age where a single blog author can write their way to having more access than an investigative reporter from the New York Times.

One of the points that came up over and over is that GM is struggling to be transparent about this vehicle program, something which is obviously difficult for them. They really want the public (which is both a customer and an shareholder for the company) to know what they are accomplishing and what their goals are. The CAB members will be vital in this effort, since they will be spreading the word about the car. If I were GM I would be very apprehensive about putting the product in the hands of two dozen people who could blog about every tiny problem that crops up before the sales push for the car gets a chance to move into high gear.

While he was talking about the challenges of marketing the Volt, Rob mentioned that it was heavy with technology. I muttered, “I love technology.” That prompted Rob to ask Nick if we could see the OnStar Command Center, which was in on of the forty-story towers below us. And that lead us to our next adventure...

Tomorrow: The OnStar Command Center