That’s right, oil is making its trek toward $90 again, and once it busts through that all eyes will be on that psychological barrier – $100. Good timing then for General Electric, which announced today it has purchased 25,000 electric vehicles as part of a global revamping of its fleet (and the fleets of its customers). As the single-largest purchase of electric cars so far, and for the foreseeable future, GE is once again proving it can both push and pull the market. By 2015 EVs will represent half of GE’s global fleet, which sits at around 30,000 vehicles. Impressive. If you want to know why GE is so keen to embrace EVs, click here.

Earth2Tech reports that 12,000 of the EVs will be purchased from GM, and will include the Volt starting in 2011. About 10,000 of the vehicles will go to GE fleet customers.

For at least a couple of years now there’s been talk about what to do with battery packs after they’ve served their useful life, say, 10 years, in an electric car. The reason being that the batteries, while they may lose their punch after a decade of use in a car, still have useful storage capacity that collectively can be used for other applications: i.e. storing renewable energy like wind and solar; helping manage grid load; offering back-up power supply for remote communities; and allowing industrial/commercial users to play arbitrage with time-of-use pricing by storing power when it’s cheap and dispatching it went it’s expensive. Today ABB, the world’s largest supplier of power grid systems, announced a partnership with General Motors that will seek to study these “after-Volt” market uses for batteries. “The Volt’s battery will have significant capacity to store electrical energy, even after its automotive life,” said Micky Bly, GM’s executive director of electrical systems, hybrids, electric vehicles and batteries. “That’s why we’re joining forces with ABB to find ways to enable the Volt batteries to provide environmental benefits that stretch far beyond the highway.”

It’s the kind of collaboration that Gil Forer, global cleantech leader at Ernst & Young, urged during an executive roundtable held in Montreal last week. “Forging creative partnerships and business models will be critical for sustainable, long-term success,” he said. This was echoed by his colleague Mike Hanley, who heads up Ernst & Young’s global automotive group. He said there’s a big EV transition underway, but “to facilitate this transition the traditional automotive industry, new automotive market entrants, utilities, regulators and government agencies must collaborate effectively to take advantage of the opportunities and to make the entire consumer experience seamless.”

They offered some interesting numbers: in 2010 we’ll see the mass-market introduction of the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf, and the introduction of China’s largest EV charging station. Between 2010 and 2013 they expect to see more than a dozen battery-electric vehicles hit the market from incumbents such as Ford, Mitsubishi and Renault and new entrants including Tesla, BYD and Coda Automotive.

For the latest research on plug-in vehicle sales forecasts to 2015, click here. For a look at what researchers in California are doing with afterlife batteries, click here.

Sarwant Singh, vice-president of Frost and Sullivan’s automotive practice, forecasts that by 2020 hybrid and purely electric vehicles will account for seven to 12 per cent of all cars produced globally. Who would supply the market? He figures there will be 47 different automakers with electric models by 2015 and that models on the market will total about 75. What’s stunning is that 35 of those models, or 47 per cent, are expected to come from Chinese manufacturers. Singh has a great presentation here that gives a detailed overview of the market. It’s a year old now but still very relevant.

Why oh why is General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson pulling dinosaur Bob Lutz out of retirement and reinstating him as vice-chairman? Let’s ignore the fact that Lutz doesn’t believe man is responsible for global warming and calls talk of climate action as “a crock of shit.” But has it occurred to Fritz that Lutz, like former CEO Rick Wagoner, was one of the most powerful executives at GM during its demise into bankruptcy? Hell, why not bring back Wagoner then?

Lutz will be “responsible for all creative elements of products and customer relationships,” according to a GM release. “GM’s brands, marketing, advertising, and communications will report to Lutz for consistent messaging and results.”

No disrespect to Lutz, who certainly has a skills set that could be of some use to GM. He was the driving force behind GM’s Volt, though only pursued it with vigour after Tesla Motors came on the scene. But he’s also a guy who has dissed hybrids as making no sense, and most of his past projects have been about building more powerful, gas-guzzling vehicles, not smaller more fuel-efficient models. Lutz, 77, is arguably out of touch with the new generation of car-buyers that the new GM must tap if it hopes to regain its footing in the automotive marketplace.

By bringing Bob Lutz back, GM risks falling into the same trap that put it in hot water and eventually plunged it into bankruptcy. Since the U.S. government owns a majority of GM, I wonder what its position is on the rehiring of Lutz. What GM needs is some youth in the driver’s seat and executives that have the vision necessary to reinvent the company, not a climate-change denying auto-industry dinosaur that may end up doing more harm than good.

Personally, I’m looking forward to Magna International’s entry into the electric-car market, including its partnership with Ford and future partnerships that could bring electric-vehicle manufacturing to Canada.

GM’s Rob Peterson told MarketWatch that getting the Volt launched by 2010 is still a “top-priority program” for General Motors, which is staring bankruptcy in the face and is pleading — along with Ford and Chrysler — for a multibillion-dollar bailout from Washington. This is reassuring, and of course it makes loads of sense. If GM has any chance of getting more bailout money it has to convince U.S. Congress that it’s serious about changing its ways by producing vehicles that are more efficient and will help wean the United States from foreign oil. To cut back on the Volt wouldn’t send the right message to Washington, so the Volt in many ways is the only thing that GM has going for it. There’s also the fact that most of GM’s main competitors also have plans for plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles by 2010 or shortly after, so to stay competitive it really has no choice. (more…)

I was fortunate enough Tuesday evening to attend a small private dinner with GM vice-chairman Bob Lutz, who flew into Toronto following the launch of the Volt in Detroit earlier in the day. The 76-year-old auto executive was quite entertaining for his straight-shooting talk and occasional joke. (more…)