Cadillac chief Jim Taylor likes him some motorcycles, so it's not all too surprising that he commissioned a Cadillac-themed chopper from Great American Chopper in Clawson, Michigan (at right). What is surprising is that Cadillac has commissioned a second chopper from V20 Consulting out of New York City that will be an ethanol hybrid capable of running on corn fuel or pure electrons. It can reportedly even reach 60 mph in just 4.5 seconds. Cadillac plans to unveil the bike at the LA Auto Show later this year, but the thing we can't figure out is what motorcycles or hybrid powertrains have to do with Cadillac, which has never been associated with either. The source says that the bike is supposed to display GM's "strength in science and technology". How about delivering the series hybrid Volt on time? That's the only evidence of GM's strength in science and technology that we need.UPDATE: Cadillac contacted us to clarify that in fact it didn't commission either motorcycle, but both custom bike-building shops are building these choppers on their own, and Cadillac has given them permission to use its logo and branding. It was also pointed out that the Cadillac Escalade Two-Mode Hybrid is almost here, so in fact the wreath and crest will soon be getting its first hybrid.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Andy @ May 6th 2008 3:41PM
Ethanol is as much of a joke as a Cadillac chopper.
Brandon @ May 6th 2008 3:50PM
Couldn't have said it better. Maybe if Detroit spent more time making decent cars and less time pulling stupid PR stunts they'd be in better shape.
CarlosMC @ May 6th 2008 3:59PM
Don't said that, who could refuse to smoke the food out of the poorest's mouth?...
Lithous @ May 6th 2008 4:20PM
I bet in 100 years or less (actually you can say that now since we are trying to get away from it right now) that people will say that oil based fuels are a joke as well but some genius (I guess geniuses) brought us down the path for at least a hundred years now. If only someone would have told Daimler the same thing then maybe we'd have electric vehicles that could go 500 miles on a charge already. Damn. Why weren't you around sooner.
No one is perfect (as you and the rest of the dumb posts that followed, present post excluded, of course.)
CarlosMC @ May 6th 2008 9:44PM
You're right, irony is dumb (caution, this might be an ironic comment, itself).
Still, trying to push the idea that ethanol is a solution (and an "ecologic" one, to boot) has nothing dumb in it, that's just plain criminal.
Btw, you might also want to ask brazilians about it, health wise, without forgetting that, being an alcohol, it's fumes are highly corrosive, as well ("New York, New York"...).
"No one is perfect" indeed, just that, insisting in a stupid, criminal idea only because, being a "miraculous" novelty (which isn't), it grabs the attention of idiots, is actually plain cynical hypocrisy.
Dave @ May 7th 2008 8:48AM
Is that an antique Hardley engine?
Lithous @ May 6th 2008 3:41PM
"but the thing we can't figure out is what motorcycles or hybrid powertrains have to do with Cadillac"
Isn't the Escalade hybrid coming out soon? There is your hybrid to hybrid connection. You just mentioned the guy likes motorcycles big time (and he works for Cadillac) so there is that connection connection. Read this site sometimes and you might get the connection with Cadillac and hybrids: http://www.autoblog.com/2007/11/09/officially-official-2009-cadillac-escalade-hybrid/
"How about delivering the series hybrid Volt on time?"
How many Cadillac engineers do you propose they are taking off of the Volt to contract out the building of this bike?
You are no James Burke.
tankd0g @ May 6th 2008 3:45PM
"How many Cadillac engineers do you propose they are taking off of the Volt to contract out the building of this bike?"
Every dollar spent on crap like this in a money losing company like GM is another hour/day/month behind the Volt launch will be.
Blake @ May 6th 2008 4:00PM
"You are no James Burke."
Oh snap!
Lithous @ May 6th 2008 4:12PM
Go get your check from Toyota stupid.
This will in no way delay the Volt and companies get these motorcycle builders to do this all the time.
Dan Schneider threw money at the Redskins and it didn't help. GM throwing every last penny on the Volt won't help it any faster most likely. Sometimes there can be too many cooks in the kitchen.
If Cadillac did build it themselves then it would most likely take resources from the Volt because it would take people from the advanced powertrain team to do it in house, but then maybe they would learn something from a completely new exercise. So if Cadillac built the frame themselves that would be a waste because no more frames would ever be built by them again. So no resources were wasted. But as it stands it put Cadillac in another blog post. Only the haters think up why it is so ultra bad that this vehicle was created.
They supported some jobs in their home state. They are so bad that GM. Michigan is not having great times leave them alone. I'm sure Toyota execs would have a Japanese company build a custom bike (unless it really truly was all about publicity) That is for sure. No, but they love us and they would make sure all Americans have jobs unlike the evil big 3. I know, I know.
psarhjinian @ May 6th 2008 4:53PM
The hybrid 'Slade is probably the strangest mistake in product planning yet: take a vehicle that essentially epitomizes conspicuous consumption and hybridize it because, you know, all those Escalade buyers were really thinking "Gee, my three-ton luxury truck is great, but I just don't feel green".
GM should have had an all-hybrid lineup at Saab first. You know, Saab, the brand associated with left-wing intellectuals since the 1980s. The brand that's practically in the dictionary under "unconventional". The brand that, prior to GM's wholesale destruction of it's core market, had perfect demographics for a premium hybrid.
Heck, even Saturn would make some sense. A hybrid Escalade is even less sensible than a Toyota Corolla with a sports package.
Lithous @ May 6th 2008 6:24PM
Let me piece it together for you. Computers were large. They got smaller over time. Toyota needs only make hybrid components fit in an engine bay because that was their view of how to do it. GM thought more modular must make their hybrid system fit in what is essentially a transmission housing. GM started out with buses and then large SUVs then VUE is next. Eventually cars will get the application (unless a competing internal technology, the series hybrid, is completed by then)
Sure the GM way has a longer startup time before their hybrid system is small enough to fit in the transmission foot print of any vehicle but then any car could potentially be hybridized. Even older cars made 20 years ago. Just add a new transmission and a small (compared to electric vehicle) battery. A small controller box under the hood and it is a much easier task than throwing out the big engine and putting a smaller engine and motor under the hood. Two different ways of tackling the problem. Will GM do retro kits or sell the license to companies that like to help out the 200 million vehicles on the road without hybrids? Probably not. But GM had to develop a hybrid system without having patent problems (didn't Ford run into that with Toyota or Aisin?) So GM's system is different, whatever the reason (philosophical or legal) and it takes time to get it to fit into their full line of vehicles.
But can you imagine, once GM makes the system tiny enough. A micro car could have a hybrid system so easily because just replace the transmission. Yet, conventional hybrid systems would need to fit a tiny engine and tiny motor under the tiny hood. GM's way is better, IMO.
GM's series hybrid system is a better way (than Toyota's synergy) to think about the problem, IMO, too. I just don't understand why Americans would want to give up all the technology coming from the American companies by handing over everything to the foreign companies. I know, I know, every American does their job so much better than any GM employee. I understand.
BTW, to answer your question, which I already did above if you read between the lines, SAAB only makes cars (9-7 was a GM product) so they don't have a hybrid transmission that fits a SAAB yet.
Is that all just common sense? I don't work for GM and never have. It just makes sense to me. It is how life works. Sometimes you have internal competition (that accounts for mild, two mode, SAAB hybrid being developed and the series) and if all system are viable then you let them all come out. Sure, you could have people from all over the world working on one hybrid system but if that fails for some reason then you don't have a fall back. Who knows how it happened. Maybe some SAAB engineers spent free time getting their version prototyped and presented it. It doesn't mean that GM is bad for killing all but one design. If they did kill all but one design they would be narrow minded if they didn't (which they didn't) then they are bad for having too many technologies. Whatever.
psarhjinian @ May 6th 2008 9:28PM
Lithious,
That's an interesting point and, to a degree, I'll agree with the idea that they need actual road mileage to prove the concept. Where I disagree is in the marketing: there's a point to hybrid buses, or hybrid light trucks that do in-city work; I don't think there's a lot of marketing viability to a hybrid Escalade, but there would have been some for one--even a mild-hybrid BAS implementation--in Saab and that GM's product planning really dropped the ball there. They could have charged a premium and made real margin on it, rather than being landed with hybrid GMT900s that are moving slowly, or BAS sedans that aren't selling a fraction of the volume of Toyota or Ford's efforts.
Product planning has never been one of GM's strong suits, at least not since it became impossible to sustain six or seven brands on less than 30% marketshare. There's a squandered opportunity to make Saab a green leader, much as (prior to the G8) a hugely missed opportunity to make Pontiac a real purveyor of sporty cars, rather than just a mover of dressed-up Chevrolets. Cadillac, to it's credit, has been managed fairly well, but I think hybrids aren't a fit for them.
Lithous @ May 6th 2008 10:38PM
psarhjinian,
I didn't mean to state anything that was to do with road test time. That in itself is a given that that is needed. I'm talking about physical parts of the hybrid system need to be shrunk down. Sure GM could put any two (two mode) electric motors in a car transmission but will it be enough to propel? Physically, they started out with making a large transmission containing the two mode for buses and then moved down. Lots of electronic and metal parts that need to propel a vehicle thousands of pounds that need to fit in a much smaller physical area.
I'm sure if GM could snap their figures and have the bus hybrid system shrink to the foot print of a car transmission then they would be offering the system in every passenger car. why wouldn't they? (OK, here come the conspiracy theorist out there with Big Oil on their minds again)
Look at the size of the first DVD platers and then years later the portable ones or cell phones how they shrunk. Physically, all they could produce was a brick and now razors. Same with the physical size of the two mode. At least that is what I am observing.
Road time is a given to take a while but lab time to produce a small hybrid transmission is what I mean.
As far as marketability of the Escalade. For gosh sakes, the think is another GMT which already had the dollars spent making it fit other GMTs. Might as well throw it in there. There are enough rich sports stars that are 7 foot and want to be seen in a hybrid. It couldn't possibly hurt anything.
Again, as far as I can see SAAB vehicles are too small for the smallest version of the system ever made. SAAB engineers may have thought they could beat the two mode engineers to hybrid component size reduction and the game (internal competition) was on. Who knows.
mk @ May 6th 2008 3:44PM
GM's strength in Science and Technology....
by paying someone else to build a product that has nothing to do with GM production, science, or technology.
A hybrid cadillac custom fabricated chopper? c'mon. This has nothing to do with anything real, it is a publicity stunt.
Bo-ring.
inteller @ May 6th 2008 3:44PM
Hey I've got a great idea. Let's stop using our food supply as fuel.
mk @ May 6th 2008 4:15PM
+1, from an Iowa resident, and relative of farmers.
Ethanol production has raised the price of corn, for farmers and for consumers, including livestock farmers, and everyone else.
Ethanol takes as much or more energy input, from planting to gas pump, as it outputs as fuel. It also requires over-the-road trucking, rather than pipelining, due to being hygroscopic, which means absorbing water.
Not only that, but the raw corn biomass that get used to make A SINGE GALLON of ethanol fuel amounts to almost as much corn-product food that a modest family consumes as food in a YEAR.
So how many Gallons of ethanol (1 for every 10 of E10 ethanol, one for every ~1.2 gallons of E85.) have you used, which could have fed a lot of people for a long time... I don't blame anyone but the government for this stupid mandate for political bargaining chips.
Maybe fuel should be fuel, and food should be food, before we starve the third world, and make our own food more expensive. High corn bushel prices have also crowded out wheat, soy, and other grains which now the bread-basket of the world, the US Midwest, is having to import for the first time since the Marshall Plan era, and our resources were rebuilding Europe.
The more information that comes out about foodstuff-derived, or even production of alcohol fuel from aerable land, the more irresponsible it seems. That land and it's produce is much more viable as food than it ever could be for alcohol fuel
Using oil and coal for motive fuels, and nuclear, geo-thermal, hydro, natural gas, and some coal for stationary electric power generation, and heavy industry makes more sense, and I doubt we'll run out of those resources anytime in the forseeable future.
Laws of conservation of mass and energy are at work in the world. materials and energy get re-cycled by the natural systems far more efficiently and completely than our technology can. Elements and compounds get reclaimed, recombined, and re-used by the natural systems, as does energy.
Neither mass nor energy can be created nor destroyed by natural forces, merely converted between the two.
THAT is real science, not the charlatan that is "climate change". The climate does nothing BUT change, and change back, and will without noticing our input, and has been changing for billions of years in far greater ways than a few tenths of a degree of temperature difference, which is likely caused by the giant nuclear furnace also known as the SUN!
But that is just logic and reason. It has no place in the religion of emotional environmentalism.
Cameron @ May 6th 2008 4:46PM
+1
Frank @ May 6th 2008 6:45PM
Bravo to inteller and mk!
psarhjinian @ May 6th 2008 9:08PM
Hey, Monsanto and ADM paid good money for the ethanol CAFE exemption and they expect some ROI.