GM

Doug Parks, vehicle line executive for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, GM's range-extended electric vehicle, confirmed Tuesday that the company loses money on every Volt it sells. This should hardly be a surprise. It's called R&D, folks Every major automaker spends billions of dollars a year on...

General Motors [NYSE: GM] stock might be up for initial public offering today under the same stock symbol as before, but the company is trying hard to show that it's not the same company in many respects. "We'll do that by demonstrating that GM is doing things differently," said CEO Dan Akerson...

The 2011 Chevrolet Volt has gotten all the attention lately, including a narrow second-place finish in our GreenCarReports 2011 Best Car To Buy award, but General Motors also has a significant hybrid-electric vehicle program. While its full-size Two-Mode Hybrid trucks have had mixed success, the...

NOTE: Your faithful editor, John Voelcker, moderated this panel at VentureBeat's GreenBeat 2010 conference. As electric cars move towards the smart grid, there’s been a lot of worry about the cars overstraining the grid. But at least for now, GM and PG&E are united on the answer: Not a...

While General Motors is focusing its U.S. electric-drive efforts solely on the 2011 Chevrolet Volt, a range-extended electric car, elsewhere in the world it's experimenting with full battery electric vehicles. Now the company has said it will unveil a Chinese-built electric subcompact in the Indian...

When GM Ventures announced it would invest an unspecified amount of money into startup hybrid truck-maker Bright Automotive, several of us noted that the prototype Bright Idea delivery van used an 2.0-liter engine and transmission from a Dodge Caliber. The announcement two weeks ago from General...

Think of the 2011 Chevrolet Volt and very little seems conventional about it. With a range of 40 miles per charge and a range-extending gasoline engine used to provide extra power when the battery pack is depleted, Chevrolet is keen to push the car’s green credentials. Built at the Hamtramck...

With the demise of Saturn, GM was left with only one model featuring its mild hybrid system, the 2009 Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid sedan, but sadly even that green vehicle was dropped from the automaker’s lineup this year. GM is planning to bring back its mild hybrid models, however, and according to...

General Motors announced today that it will invest in startup Bright Automotive, which hopes to start final production engineering of its Idea plug-in hybrid delivery van design later this year. GM Ventures, the automaker's venture investing arm, already provided funds to Bright this week; formal...

Among the many substances emitted by autos back in the "good old days" were the refrigerant gases that would leak from older auto air conditioners. Freon, also known as R-12, was replaced starting in the early 1990s with R-134a, which did less damage to the ozone layer. Now concern has expanded to...

Almost a year ago, General Motors launched a little marketing campaign connecting its 2011 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car to the figure "230 mpg." As we pointed out at the time, they were basing that projection on a proposed formula for fuel usage patterns that made a lot of assumptions...

Last week's heat wave prompted another eruption of that perennial question: Won't electric cars that recharge from grid power overload the nation's electricity system? Or put more bluntly: Will electric vehicles bring down the U.S. power grid? The answer, equally bluntly, is: No. They won't. (And...

Some auto writers (not us, truly) have been known to sneer at car forum sites. But we try to monitor the forums regularly, 'cause sometimes you see the darnedest things. Take, for example, this photo of a 2011 Chevrolet Aveo in undisguised form, minus the usual spy-shot camouflage. It comes from...

The Two-Mode Hybrid system for large sport utilities and trucks hasn't exactly set the world on fire. In 2006, General Motors, Daimler and Chrysler (then a single company) announced a partnership, soon joined by BMW, to develop the Two-Mode Hybrid system for large rear-wheel drive vehicles. But...

Last year, General Motors sold about 7,200 of its full-size hybrid SUVs--but just 1,600 hybrid pickup trucks using the same system. So the company took the unusual step last Friday of issuing a press release to announce that it had sold 576 of Silverado Hybrid pickups in one fell swoop. The buyer...

 The EPA and CARB like zero emissions vehicles, but don't want you controlling when you decide your vehicle is zero emissions. According to Tony Posawatz, line director for the Chevy Volt program, the two agencies concerned with protecting the emissions from cars aren't happy about a plug in...

When it comes to fuel economy, the powertrain is the first thing people think of when it comes time to improving it. After that it’s typically vehicle weight. However, one of the simplest and most effective ways of improving fuel economy is through aerodynamics. Everyone knows that the slipperier...

Want to save a few dollars or just be a little bit greener with your new commercial van? Now, thanks to GM, you can. The automaker has announced today that Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) powered versions of the Chevrolet Express and GMC Savana full-size vans will be...

OnStar is already one of the most handy features you can get in a GM vehicle but soon it will be even better thanks to a little help from Google. Together, the two will develop a number of new mobile app features that strengthen Chevrolet’s commitment to providing Volt customers with the most...

Sometimes a "new" green idea is actually just the way we used to do things, before disposability and convenience became primary consumer values. Consider the "cartridge filter" that GM touts on the Ecotec engines fitted to its new 2011 Chevrolet Cruze. Instead of a one-piece metal cannister that's...