Friday, November 6th, 2009...8:06 am
Lance: from night vision to battery packs
- Lance and his family!
Lance Turner, Battery Development Lead Engineer
On my iPod: Weezer and Lincoln Park are always at the top of my playlist, but I’ll listen to anything from Devo to Fall Out Boy.
Pass the binky, please: The Volt is no longer my only “baby”. I received my new job title as a dad about 14 months ago, when my wife gave birth to my beautiful baby girl, Sydney.
If I were a movie director, I would want to be: Wes Anderson. What can I say? I like quirky movies. My top two are The Life Aquatic and the Royal Tennenbaums.
I like to dive right in: You may not know it by looking at me, but I’m a Certified Scuba Dive Master.
I grew up in Michigan, the son of a GM engineer who worked at the Milford and Mesa Proving Grounds, and thought someday, I might end up working at General Motors. After earning my Electrical Engineering degree at DeVry University in Columbus, Ohio, I moved to California, where I began working on radar for F-14D and night vision systems of F-18’s at Hughes Aircraft Company in El Segundo. Night vision? Aircrafts? Yes, I was living the dream! Over time, GM became interested in commercializing the night vision for Cadillac and started working with Hughes as a joint project. The rest is history – I’ve been working with GM ever since.
I’m a self-proclaimed computer geek and I love solving problems, which makes my job at GM a perfect fit. For example, I wrote a piece of software called Overlord which watched over our battery lab to monitor all the battery cells and modules, and found a glitch that would only repeat itself every 27 days. So, not only did we capture data associated to the glitch, we were accurate with our prediction on when it would occur next. It is archived as legacy code now, but lives on today – we’ve modeled this software to monitor all the EV& Hybrid battery packs in our new battery lab. As a result, our process is much more automated, lean and efficient.
In my current position, I work with a team of engineers on the safety and reliability of the battery within the Volt. What I do should be completely unseen by the consumer, other than by a smile on their face. Right now, I’m working on the mechanical, thermal and electrical development side of our Voltec battery packs. Sounds thrilling, right? Well, to me, it actually is. We compare models of the battery to the performance of actual hardware, and continue to improve product, model accuracy, and specifications for future packs. Our schedule is pretty tight, so we work pretty quickly, but exceptionally safely, and are tasked with capturing what we’re doing so we/others can repeat it for future trailblazing.
Even when I’m not working, I’m always on the computer. I’m a iMac guy. I Skype with my parents and in-laws on a regular basis and in my spare time, I like to make video montages. I’m learning how to edit photos and insert music – it’s pretty cool.
I’m lucky that my family understands my work. Not only was my dad an engineer, but my wife used to work at Ford on the hybrid program. Now she’s a stay-at-home mom or, as I like to call her, a full-time mother engineer. She’s now focused on evaluating the life cycle of our daughter, Sydney. She’s growing up fast. In fact, she just received her first haircut last week. Check out the picture above. Now I try to get out of work at a decent time – a first for me!
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12 Comments
November 6th, 2009 at 9:32 am
The world is waiting for an all electric vehicle and hopefully, the volt is the first real solution to shifting the economic balance of power. I live in Canada and I have two kids. If the volt is priced correctly, I will be first in line to buy one and it will mean that I will never have to put gas in my car again (almost) as my daily commute is less then 40 miles per day. When I read about Lance Turner, I say to myself: “do a good job Lance because this means so much to so many people”.
A caring citizen.
ps I am a French-Canadien so pardon my English…
November 6th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Cute kid and great story. The volt is so exciting and when you hear the stories behind it, it gets even better. Thanks, Lance, for helping GM make automotive history. – Kim at GM
November 6th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
What a great family picture! Speaking from experience “full-time mother engineer” perfectly describes the job. Your story really communicates the joy and excitement of data. Thanks.
-a fellow test engineer at GM
November 6th, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Congratulations Lance on your recent accomplishments (Volt batteries, Overlord software and new family members)! I’m going to vote for you. Brings back memories of all the testing we did way back when on the EV1. – Steven at GM
November 6th, 2009 at 8:41 pm
Congratulations…………….you have my vote, Mom
November 7th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Lance,
you are a great colleague, I am glad I can work with you.
Your experience, creativity and motivation is key factor to success for the VOLT battery and the VOLT itself.
You are my test engineer of the year ,… , I think you deserve to win the vote.
And you are doing a great job of growing more test engineers at GM (and at home)
See you, Roland at GM
November 9th, 2009 at 4:35 am
Congratulations Lance on your accomplishments , I’m a computer geek and I love solving problems, , I work with mac’s and p.c’s
November 9th, 2009 at 9:44 am
Great job Lance.
You have my vote. Smart Family of Engineers.
Very pretty kid.
Keep it up – a fellow at GM
November 9th, 2009 at 7:17 pm
Lance,
We at GM couldn’t be prouder of you and your accomplishments. We’re pulling for you to win Test Engineer of the year. But don’t forget, it’s nice to be nominated too!
November 10th, 2009 at 9:36 pm
LANCE!! Great to see you on here! Your enthusiasm for your job is my favorite thing about you! Well, that and the fact that you are a fancy dive master, AND that you’re kind of smart
Your daughter is beautiful!
Oh – and you’ll be happy to know that I am a mac convert! Bought a macair a few months ago – my first laptop just for fun (no more hardcore graduate school computing required)!!!
November 12th, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Holly cats, this blog is so nice, I can see my mom is even blogging now << believe that is a 1st. Thank you, all, for your support toward yet, another moon shot. I keep saying that because of a NASA & NIST in the competition, but the volt project had started with that montra..hardly hear it anymore
November 17th, 2009 at 10:57 pm
Excellent Job Lance,
You have my vote. I am sure, you are inspiration to many engineers at GM.
Congratulations.. keep it up.
— Validation Engineer from India
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