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Silicon Valley Nation: Five epic road trips
Brian Fuller
12/21/2012 4:01 PM EST
Volt teardown
In the middle of it, someone emailed me, asking "Isn't it like watching grass grow?" She was referring to three days of methodically tearing apart a 2012 Chevrolet Volt as part of our Drive for Innovation teardown series.
It was quite the opposite. In fact it went really fast.
We had skidded to an icy stop at Munro & Associates outside Detroit in early January. Cold, doesn't begin to describe the temperature, but we got a warm reception from Sandy Munro, his wife and his Chief Teardown God, Al Steier. We set the car in Sandy's cavernous shop, cluttered with equipment, and broken-up hulks of cars, trucks and planes and had it prepped for three days of time-lapse photography.
These guys do automotive teardown analysis for a living so it was second hand, in, in 2007, we had used Steier as our CTG for a Toyota Prius analysis at Embedded Systems Conference.
What we found was amazing and we've laid it all out in text, powerpoints and video on our teardown sub-section. But the most amusing part of the three days came after day 2, when Steier and team had dropped the 370V LiOn battery out of the Volt's belly.
Roz Cooperman, the flamboyant woman hired to run the time lapse photography, gathered with the team to check out the battery. She began conceiving shots of the battery teardown that would occur the next day. In theatrical fashion, Roz started pointing animatedly to this part of the battery and that, her many bracelets and rings clinking and swinging dangerously close to the cells.
"Roz, don't get so close," Steier said quietly. Roz ignored him for the longest time until Steier said more forcefully, "Roz, suit yourself, but I will see you on the other side long after you fry yourself."
Later, Munro told a story about working decades ago in a Canadian power plant. An arrogant manager one day ignore safety protocol in the battery room and poof... all that was left of him was an ankle bone protuding from a smoldering shoe and his wedding ring.
Here's what Steier and John Scott-Thomas of TechInsights learned in their teardown analysis.
Next: Speed freaks
In the middle of it, someone emailed me, asking "Isn't it like watching grass grow?" She was referring to three days of methodically tearing apart a 2012 Chevrolet Volt as part of our Drive for Innovation teardown series.
It was quite the opposite. In fact it went really fast.
We had skidded to an icy stop at Munro & Associates outside Detroit in early January. Cold, doesn't begin to describe the temperature, but we got a warm reception from Sandy Munro, his wife and his Chief Teardown God, Al Steier. We set the car in Sandy's cavernous shop, cluttered with equipment, and broken-up hulks of cars, trucks and planes and had it prepped for three days of time-lapse photography.
These guys do automotive teardown analysis for a living so it was second hand, in, in 2007, we had used Steier as our CTG for a Toyota Prius analysis at Embedded Systems Conference.
What we found was amazing and we've laid it all out in text, powerpoints and video on our teardown sub-section. But the most amusing part of the three days came after day 2, when Steier and team had dropped the 370V LiOn battery out of the Volt's belly.
Roz Cooperman, the flamboyant woman hired to run the time lapse photography, gathered with the team to check out the battery. She began conceiving shots of the battery teardown that would occur the next day. In theatrical fashion, Roz started pointing animatedly to this part of the battery and that, her many bracelets and rings clinking and swinging dangerously close to the cells.
"Roz, don't get so close," Steier said quietly. Roz ignored him for the longest time until Steier said more forcefully, "Roz, suit yourself, but I will see you on the other side long after you fry yourself."
Later, Munro told a story about working decades ago in a Canadian power plant. An arrogant manager one day ignore safety protocol in the battery room and poof... all that was left of him was an ankle bone protuding from a smoldering shoe and his wedding ring.
Here's what Steier and John Scott-Thomas of TechInsights learned in their teardown analysis.
Next: Speed freaks
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