Yesterday at the LA Auto Show Bob Lutz, GM Vice Chairman, announced November of 2010 as the target date for the production release of the Chevy Volt Extended Range Electric Vehicle (EREV). This is the most specific time frame heard from GM yet on the concept vehicle originally announced at the Detroit Auto Show in January, and Lutz himself admits that the time frame is aggressive.

To us this seems very aggressive since just the day before we actually drove a Chevy Equinox Fuel Cell which is already going in the hands of real drivers in Project Driveway starting in January, and according to Fuel Cell Commercialization Manager Britta Gross the Equinox Fuel Cell won’t be ready for production before 2010, either. This announcement will however keep Toyota on their toes, as they are also trying to get a battery-powered vehicle off the ground in the near future.

I had a chance to talk to Denise Gray (courtesy of our GM hosts), who is GM’s director of Hybrid Energy Storage Systems, about her thoughts on their ability to have lithium-ion batteries ready in time. Although they are not quite there yet I got the impression that if anyone could meet Lutz’s lofty goals, Denise Gray and her team could. Denise said that they received there first battery to try from contractor LG Chem on October 31st and GM says they are planning to ramp up testing of the electric power plant in the first part of next year, but probably inside the body of a Chevy Malibu instead of the Volt design. We’ll expand more on our time with Denise and batteries later on.

The Chevy Volt will be driven solely by electricity and will have a battery in it that can be charged from a standard household outlet. The car does have an engine in that can be run by gasoline, but the engine is only used as a generator to charge the battery. The fully charged battery alone would take the Volt the first 40 miles and any further distance would be handled by the gas-powered generator creating electricity to charge the battery on the fly. Why 40 miles? Well, GM feels that this “magic number” will bring a majority of commuters to work and home again without having to use any gas at all. When the generator is in use the company expects fuel economy any where from 50 to 150 mpg, depending on the length of the trip.

Lutz plans to sell the Volt (which may look quite a bit different than the current concept design) around the world starting at 100,000 vehicles the first year.