two-mode hybrid

  • 2014 Chevrolet Silverado 1500

    GM's full-size hybrid pickups, the Chevrolet Silverado Hybrid and GMC Sierra Hybrid, for much of the time they've been on sale, have offered the highest gas mileage of any full-size truck on the U.S. market. Yet these hybrid pickups, which were introduced for the 2009 model year, have been surprisingly slow-selling. Total sales numbers for the GM [NYSE: GM] full-size hybrid trucks added up to just 3,114 last year, from a high of 8,797 across five models in 2009. And now, we've received official confirmation that they're discontinued. At a special event last week previewing GM's 2014 Chevy...

  • Silverado Hybrid Badge
    GM May Kill Two-Mode Hybrid Pickups, SUVs: Report

    "We can't provide you with any information related to future product technologies or timing." That's the standard response from carmakers--in this case, from Kevin Kelly, GM's Manager, Electric Vehicle and Hybrid Communications--when asked a question they'd rather not address. Our question was...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Cruze and pre-production 2011 Chevrolet Volt
    GM Exec Confirms 2014 Chevrolet Cruze Plug-In Hybrid Model

    The Chevrolet Cruze compact sedan is an important car for General Motors. It's hugely outselling its lackluster predecessor, the Chevy Cobalt, and the EPA rates the special Cruze Eco model at 42 mpg in the highway cycle, giving it gas-mileage bragging rights. Plug-in hybrid to join diesel model But...

  • GM electric motor production
    Brewing Hybrid Battle: Is One Electric Motor Better Than Two?

    The word "hybrid" means many things. It can be interpreted as "high gas mileage," or "annoying leftie smugmobile," or--by engineers--an automotive powertrain that uses two different sources to generate the torque that moves the car. But among "full hybrids"--those powertrains that can move the car...

  • Cadillac Ciel four-seat convertible concept launch in Carmel, California, Aug 2011
    Cadillac Ciel Concept: GM's Next Hybrid, Maybe, Or Not? (Updated)

    Last night at an event before the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance in Carmel, Cailfornia, Cadillac unveiled its Ciel concept car, which it calls "an open-air grand touring car." Under the sleek, imposing lines, the all-wheel-drive Ciel four-seat convertible is powered by a 425-horsepower, 3.6-liter...

  • 2010 Cadillac SRX Turbo
    What Really Killed The Cadillac SRX Plug-In? It's Complicated

    When a major automaker cancels an innovative plug-in hybrid vehicle program, that's big news. If it's General Motors, that goes double, given the politics that continue to swirl around GM's bankruptcy and the U.S. government's ongoing ownership of part of the company. So it was news when...

  • 2010 Cadillac SRX Turbo

    Well, now we know a little more about why the Cadillac SRX Plug-In Hybrid project was killed by its development team at General Motors. The culprit, according to GMInsideNews, was the lithium-ion battery pack. More specifically, it wasn't providing the efficiency gains that would have been needed to make the car viable. The SRX Plug-In Hybrid was to have been the most advanced version of a new generation of GM's Two-Mode Hybrid system. As well as refinements to its operating modes, it was to use a lithium-ion battery pack rather than the current system's older nickel-metal-hydride pack. But...

  • 2011 Cadillac SRX
    Cadillac SRX Plug-In Hybrid Crossover: Killed Before Birth?

    It may be the most star-crossed program in recent automotive history, and now it's apparently dead. According to Reuters, General Motors has canceled work on the planned plug-in hybrid version of its Cadillac SRX crossover sport utility. The canceled SRX plug-in would have been the second GM car...

  • Cadillac XTS Platinum Concept
    Chevy's Got the Volt; Will Cadillac Be GM's Hybrid Leader?

    Among car buyers, none of the four surviving General Motors brands are really associated with hybrid vehicles. Now that customer deliveries have started for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric car, GM's other brands will need some green cred too. What's the future of GM's Two-Mode...

  • 2010 Dodge Ram 1500
    Still Dead: Dodge Ram Hybrid Pickup, With Or Without Diesel

    It's all very strange. Just last March, Chrysler definitively killed the Ram Hemi Hybrid pickup it had been developing for several years. RIP Hemi Hybrid. Now comes a mysterious post on fan site Allpar.com that proposes that the company's Ram 1500 pickup truck will offer a Cummins 5.0-liter...

  • Voltec electric drive unit on 2011 Chevrolet Volt
    What a 2011 Chevy Volt Has In Common With a Huge Tahoe Hybrid

    Put them side by side, and they could be vehicles from two different planets. The new 2011 Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car is GM's green halo car, its foray into the future of electric drive vehicles, and the focus of a huge marketing and publicity effort. The 2011 Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid...

  • 2010 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 Nurburgring
    Corvette Could Go Hybrid, Says GM Head Engineer; World To End?

    Last week, Karl-Friedrich Stracke, GM's vice president of global vehicle engineering, set to rest rumors of a mid-engine next-generation Chevrolet Corvette. That got a lot of attention among Corvette fans. But a footnote to the story was that Stracke said not only that a hybrid Corvette was...

  • 2010 Chevrolet Silverado Hybrid

    GM sells only about 10,000 Two-Mode Hybrids a year, but if nothing else, its system is technically sophisticated. Sophisticated enough, in fact, that a former General Motors employee and her husband have been indicted on charges of copying thousands of pages of GM documents on the system in January 2005, just five days after the company extended her a severance offer. According to the indictment, after Shanshan Du of Troy, Michigan, did so, her husband Yu Qin arranged a sale of the information to Chinese automaker Chery. In May 2006, the couple allegedly shredded the documents and discarded...

  • Rolls-Royce Phantom Hybrid, photographed in New York City, July 2010
    Spy Shots: Top Secret Rolls-Royce Phantom Hybrid Revealed!

    Sometimes, we get the most amazing stuff in our e-mail. Most spy shots show up on our sister site, MotorAuthority.com, but once in a while, sometimes they come directly to us here in green-car-land. Which is how we ended up with these spy shots, taken by a reader on his mobile phone while walking...

  • 2010 GMC Yukon Hybrid
    Two-Mode Hybrid System: GM's Larry Nitz on Lessons Learned

    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...

  • 2010 Chevrolet Silverado Hybrid
    GM Sells 570 Hybrid Pickups To Phone Company, Jubilation Ensues

    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...

  • Ford Escape Hybrid Cargo Space (Seats Up)
    Roundup: Hybrid SUVs and Crossovers from Ford, Toyota, Chevy

    Our reader Celeste wrote to ask us about available hybrid SUVs and crossovers, and we thought our answer might be useful for the site. At the moment, there are three main hybrid SUVs sold in the U.S. Each of them also has variations sold under other brands. All are likely to be durable, as their...

  • BMW ActiveHybrid 5 Concept
    BMW Hybrid 5-Series On Sale in 2011, Hybrid 3-Series To Follow

    BMW's chief executive officer, Norbert Reithofer, has confirmed that the company's ActiveHybrid 5 sedan will go on sale as early as next year. Reithofer told shareholders yesterday at BMW's annual meeting that the car it showed at the Geneva Motor Show in March as the BMW Concept 5-Series...

  • 2009 dodge ram pickup 001

    The big green car news from Chrysler yesterday was its announcement that it would build an electric version of the Fiat 500 mini-car for the U.S. market. Win one, lose one, perhaps. The company also dropped a death notice: It has ended development of its Ram Two-Mode Hybrid pickup truck, scheduled for introduction this year as a 2011 model. No business case "After closely evaluating the response to hybrid pickups in the marketplace, the company could not formulate an appropriate business case," Chrysler said in its release. So it "has decided to cancel development work" on the Two-Mode...

  • detail of spy shot showing GM Two-Mode Plug-In Hybrid being tested in Saturn Vue mule
    GM Plug-In Hybrid Program Underway, Vehicle Still Unconfirmed

    Recent spy shots posted by our sister site Motor Authority show that despite delays, General Motors is continuing to develop the plug-in version of its Two-Mode Hybrid system. While the system is being tested in a discontinued Saturn Vue crossover, it now seems likely to appear in a version of...

  • GM electric motor
    GM To Build Its Own Electric Motors for Future Hybrids

    General Motors will become the first U.S. automaker to design and build its own electric motors for hybrid and electric cars, the company said today. While Toyota and Honda have long made their own motors, until now GM--along with Ford--has purchased them from third-party suppliers. GM views the...

  • 2010 Chevrolet Equinox LT
    2010 Detroit Auto Show: Lutz Lays Out (Some) GM Plug-In Plans

    Cleaning up a few odds and ends from last week's 2010 Detroit Auto Show brings us to General Motors' future product plans for plug-in hybrids. In the crush of reporters asking questions (known as the "scrum") after a GM announcement, a few more nuggets came to light. GM showed its striking and...

  • Cadillac XTS Platinum Concept
    2010 Detroit Auto Show: Cadillac XTS Concept Revives GM's Plug-In Hybrid Hopes

    Say "luxury hybrid," and very few people think of Cadillac. Sure, the Escalade Hybrid large luxury sport-utility vehicle has been around for a few years, but Cadillac has no hybrid sedans. That may be about to change, if the Cadillac XTS Platinum Concept unveiled this morning at the Detroit Auto...

  • 2010 Audi A3 TDI named Green Car of the Year, 2009 LA Auto Show
    Green Car Sales: Winners and Losers of 2009

    It's beginning to look as if the worst is over for U.S. auto sales. The year that just closed was, in the immortal words of Queen Elizabeth II, an annus horribilis, with only 10.4 million vehicles sold, down 21 percent on 2008 and the lowest total since 1982. But some light seems to be appearing on...

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