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He was in his last year of studying Pharmacology at Ohio State University (OSU), when FilAm Gary Ruiz found his passion.
He accompanied a friend to a design class. They were designing golf clubs that day and Ruiz couldn’t help but feel enamored by the students putting their ideas on paper from theory to practice.
“That’s when a light bulb clicked inside of me,” said Ruiz to the Asian Journal. “This is what I wanted to do. I was always a good artist growing up. I’ve always been good at drawing but you know how Filipino parents are they wanted me to be a doctor or get into medicine. Well, I was half way there.”
After graduating from OSU, he worked in a pharmacy for a few years before heading back to school.
This time he pursued his passion.
In four years at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, he earned his BSA in Industrial Design with a specialization in transportation design.
Several years later, General Motors, one of the oldest and most respected automobile companies in the US, is touting this 34-year-old Cleveland born FilAm to the media for his design on GM’s latest and most innovative vehicle—the Chevy Volt.
Ruiz, whose mother hails from Legaspi and father from Pangasinan, is GM’s E-Flex studio Lead Exterior Designer of the Chevy Volt. He’s worked at GM for the past four years and prior to that, he worked at Chrysler LLC.
As lead designer, Ruiz is responsible for making the Chevy Volt look as electric as the battery it runs on.
The Chevy Volt is GM’s electric vehicle prototype. Not scheduled for release until 2010 or 2011, there is currently an “unofficial” waiting list of 43,500 prospective buyers from 77 countries worldwide anticipating for the Chevy Volt’s arrival, according to GM-Volt.com.
And the list is growing.
With the Toyota Prius already asserting itself as the No. 1 hybrid and the Honda FCX Clarity which will run on hydrogen fuel cells to make an appearance sometime next year, the race for the economical, green friendly, and inexpensive vehicle in the market is on.
Buyers weary of the high gas prices and dependency on foreign oil are lining up.
Ruiz said that the Volt is a “game changer” that will change people’s perception of electric vehicles and personal behavior.
The Volt will run on a lithium-ion battery, similar to a battery on a cell phone or laptop. While most of today’s hybrids run on a parallel of electric dependency and gas engine, the Volt will run strictly on electric motor power from an onboard generator at all times.
GM expects the Volt to run 40 miles on pure electricity from its battery before the gas engine kicks in. The car can be driven up to 400 miles (some reports say up to 600 miles) on a full tank of 6 or 7 gallons of gas, according to GM-Volt.com.
GM-Volt.com added that the engine charges in 6.5 hours using a 110-volt standard home outlet, and about 3 hours if they have a 220-volt supply.
Ruiz said that it was important to not only make a “green car” but the challenge was to make the four-door sedan look sleek and sexy.
“In order to achieve the forty mile battery range, my team and I had to balance between the aerodynamic performance and the styling,” he said.
He said he and his team have been working on the Volt for the past few years.
He admits he didn’t come up with the initial design concept but merely was taking over from the previous team.
Ruiz has a more difficult challenge—it’s one thing to come up with a concept vehicle but it’s another to have an actual full working model.
“The challenge is to take the concept car into production,” he said. “We’ve just been working on it to get it to market as soon as possible. So far, it’s looking good. I think it’ll be ready by 2010 or 2011.”
Besides the Volt, Ruiz has worked on other GM cars, most notably the 2008 Camaro.
Looking back, Ruiz is glad he pursued his dream—and advises young FilAms to pursue their passion. (www.asianjournal.com)
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