When GM moved the Corvette team into the EV space in Warren, Michigan, and when GM revealed the new mid-engine Corvette, Mark Ruess said there would be “more to come.”
This morning he talked with Phil LeBeau of CNBC and finally answered the big Corvette question.
“Yes, in addition to the amazing new Chevrolet Corvette Z06 and other gas-powered variants coming, we will offer an electrified and a fully electric, Ultium-based Corvette in the future. In fact, we will offer an electrified Corvette as early as next year. Details and names to come at a later date,” says Ruess.
In addition, GM also announced today Ultium Platform’s energy recovery system, a patented onboard system that takes the heat generated by EV batteries and uses it to warm the cabin, create more efficient charging conditions, and even increase vehicle acceleration. And it can boost the vehicle’s range by about 10%.
Through the Ultium Platform’s energy recovery system, this waste energy can increase a vehicle’s range, reduce battery energy needed for heating, increase charging speed and even enable sportier driving.
EV batteries, power electronics and other propulsion components produce heat. The Ultium Platform can recover and store this waste heat from the Ultium propulsion system. Further, it can also capture and use humidity from both inside and outside the vehicle, including body heat from passengers. The Ultium Platform can then deploy energy stored through the recovery process to heat the cabin more quickly in cold weather than comparable systems found in vehicles with an internal combustion engine.
Ultium’s energy recovery capabilities reduce the need to power heating and other functions from energy stored in the battery, which provides GM’s EVs with as much as 10% more range1, potentially allowing more power and range than vehicles with similarly sized batteries without energy recovery capabilities. With its active heating capabilities, Ultium vehicles can also potentially charge more efficiently by warming up the batteries before charging2.
Ultium’s energy recovery even enables GMC HUMMER EV’s available Watts to Freedom feature. Energy recovery precools the propulsion system to help the all-electric supertruck accelerate from 0-60 mph in approximately 3 seconds3.
“Having a ground-up EV architecture gives us the freedom to build in standard features like Ultium’s energy recovery capabilities,” said Doug Parks, GM executive vice president, Global Product Development, Purchasing and Supply Chain. “This helps us squeeze more efficiency, performance and overall customer benefit out of our EVs.”
Covered by 11 patents and four publications, the development of Ultium energy recovery traces its inception back to GM’s first EV, the EV1, in the late 1990s, when GM engineers first developed an EV heat pump. Ultium energy recovery is available on all current Ultium vehicles and planned for future Ultium vehicles.