GM Battery Boss Running on Full Charge
May 16, 2008
By Bill Visnic
DETROIT -- General Motors' Denise Gray talks a little fast, a little earnestly. We don't think it's because she's nervous -- more like she's got a lot to tell you about things you likely don't understand, and she figures her time is limited.
In a way, her time is quite limited -- Gray is in charge of delivering the most critical component for one of the highest-profile vehicle-development projects GM has ever undertaken, the Chevrolet Volt "extended-range" electric vehicle.
GM management, led by its indefatigable and boosterish product-development chief Bob Lutz, has insisted the Volt will be ready for public consumption by 2010, an implausibly short and probably undoable three years or so after the Volt concept car's unveiling in January, 2007.
Indeed, earlier this week, Lutz told AutoObserver in an exclusive interview, that the Volt's innovative gas-electric powertrain was being test-driven for the first time on public roads and was hitting its target of 40 miles on pure electric power.
The Volt's development timeframe is improbable (some industry experts say impossible) largely because the lithium-ion batteries at the heart of the Volt's very reason for being - an ability to travel 40 miles strictly on electric power - currently don't exist. At least not in a form ready for the rigors of production-car duty.
Without the high-capacity lithium-ion batteries, the Volt is a concept that is dead on arrival. That's why GM called Denise Gray, a career engineer who's never worked anywhere else, to direct the Volt's tense and time-constrained battery-development program.
Although nobody at the time could have envisioned her current title - Energy Storage
Devices and Strategies Director - it seems GM, not known for rash choices when it comes to appointing executives and engineers for key positions, has been grooming Denise Gray for this very job since the day the company hired her as a co-op student at its Technical Center in suburban Warren, MI.
Gray, a lifelong Detroit-area resident, says the co-op job was a "wonderful opportunity" for a high-school student hailing not from some blue-blood private academy, but the Detroit public school system.
She subsequently studied electrical engineering at the former General Motors Institute, which changed its name to the Kettering Institute while she was a student there, graduating in 1986.
Gray began work at GM in vehicle engineering - "The same place I am today," more than two decades later, she beams.
Her start in GM's electrical validation and development laboratory, testing batteries and wiring and such, is a job that sounds a little snoozy, we suggest.
But Gray gushes about her early work there, alongside a valued mentor. They worked on electrical devices and features we now take for granted, such as keyless-entry systems (radical!) and daytime running lights.
As the "electrification" of vehicles progressed in earnest, Gray was on the front lines, developing the complex closed-loop engine-management systems that played an enormous role in coaxing more power from engines while simultaneously drastically cutting emissions and improving driveability. While many automakers were quick to farm out this vital intellectual heavy lifting to specialized suppliers, GM, with engineers like Gray, decided to retain engine-management competency in-house - a decision that pays dividends to this day, say engineers from all corners of GM's product-development universe.
Although Gray downplays her ability to write engine-management software, coding and algorithms, it is likely was a challenging continuing-education detour many of her contemporaries likely chose not to explore. Gray says she spent several years perfecting the electronic workings of engine-control modules for GM's high-performance cars, the Corvette and F-body Chevrolet Camaro and Pontiac Trans-Am.
In 1998, Gray moved to GM's highest-volume platform, the then-new GMT800 architecture that underpinned the company's fullsize pickup trucks and SUVs.
More recently, she worked on the control systems and other components for GM's latest 6-speed automatic transmissions.
Not long after joining GM, Gray somehow found the time to get married and have two sons, now aged 17 and 13. Her oldest son is an accomplished football and basketball player. Attending his games is a favorite pursuit.
"I love sports," but, "can't play a thing," she laughs. "I'm a spectator."
It's insight into her personality that although she openly admits to no athletic abilities of her own, Gray would "love to coach someday. I'd really like to do that."
Gray surprises us by not extending the tired analogy between her desire to coach and her current job description. In fact, we'd almost expected it - expected GM "handlers" to have coached her to say it. We've heard managers - not just in the auto business - fall back on the cliché a thousand times.
Maybe it's because Gray, despite her ambition to coach, probably doesn't act like one at work. Since taking the job of director of energy source systems in December 2006 (her title, like the batteries, seems to be a work in progress), she's been directing all manner of battery-development efforts, not just the Volt's, but also programs such as the plug-in hybrid Saturn Vue, which is more of a "conventional" hybrid in that it employs a parallel hybrid design that blends the drive from an internal-combustion engine and an electric motor.
In watching Gray brief the media prior to our interview, she doesn't much adopt the attitude of a coach; she seems to be more the mentor type. Her conviction and energy is evident, but she's not coaching, not rooting anybody on. She's working with you to define the problem, chart the course, get a solution. It's the studied approach of an engineer accustomed to close collaboration, not the exhortation of a coach who pumps you up, only to step back and watch you play.
Is she under the microscope? Of course.
"I knew it was heavy coming in," says Gray of the almost unspeakable pressure to develop batteries that essentially didn't exist, for a car even the experts are saying will never work.
But she says she's not frightened at all - her 20-plus years of engineering have proven many problems that initially seem impossible often are resolved.
But in the end, "It's intense," she admits. "It's a huge amount of responsibility."
Gray says she adores gospel music, has been singing in a choir since age eight. And that's where it all fits.
Gray, coordinating the efforts of countless GM engineers, not to mention the crucial independent battery-cell developers who have little or no prior automotive experience, isn't coaching these people. She's simply singing along with them, her years of experience giving her the faith the harmony will work.
Photos by GM
1 - GM's battery czar Denise Gray poses with the Chevrolet Volt concept.
2 - Denise Gray
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