GM

  • 2011 Chevy Cruze EV

    General Motors announced this morning that it would jointly design and engineer "future electric vehicles" with Korea's LG Group, in a statement that raised more questions than it answered. The announcement, the company said, will "help GM expand the number and types of electric vehicles it makes and sells" because it can use "LG’s proven expertise in batteries and other systems." LG Group is the sprawling conglomerate that owns LG Chem, which supplies lithium-ion cells to the Chevrolet Volt range-extended electric car that GM starting selling last December. GM vice-chairman Steve...

  • 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 GM EN-V Concept
    Remember GM's Autonomous Pod Cars? GPS Has To Catch Up First

    We've always been intrigued by the EN-V autonomous pod cars proposed by General Motors. Maybe they harken back to the happy futurism of the Fifties, or maybe it's just that they're the first total reinvention of wheeled personal transit in quite a while that makes inherent sense. Prototyped more...

  • Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell with mobile refueler
    Fuel-Cell Vehicles Are Likely Coming (A Few): Who's Winning?

    We're on record with the analysis that electric-car production will far, far outweigh that of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles built over the next decade, and perhaps longer. Still several carmakers are pressing ahead with plans to build hydrogen-powered vehicles, and now Pike Research has ranked them...

  • GM Battery Lab, Warren Technical Center
    A123 Gets Lithium-Cell Deal For Unspecified GM Electric Car

    Another shoe dropped today, revealing one more little piece of General Motors' electric-car strategy. GM said this morning it had awarded a production contract for nanophosphate lithium-ion cells to A123 Systems, to be used in "future GM electric vehicles" that will be "announced at a later date"...

  • Lithium-ion battery pack for 2011 Chevrolet Volt
    A New Life On The Grid For Tired Chevy Volt Battery Packs?

    GM is working with ABB Group to develop new ways to use partially depleted Volt battery packs. One promising idea involves using arrays of battery packs to feed power to the grid in times of need.

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt outside Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant

    After a one-month hiatus, Chevy has begun production of the 2012 Volt. Thanks to the retooling, the Hamtramck assembly plant now has three times the build capacity.

  • 2010 Honda Civic GX natural-gas vehicle, Los Angeles, November 2010
    First A Diesel, Now GM To Work On Natural-Gas Cars For U.S. (Report)

    General Motors makes a lot of vehicles globally. And despite all the publicity around its 2011 Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid, most of them run on gasoline. Now, GM has agreed to develop natural-gas engines for light-duty vehicles (that means cars and crossovers bought by retail customers) with...

  • Chevrolet Beat EV electric vehicle with GM executives, India, June 2011
    Chevy Shows Fourth Electric-Car Project: Beat EV Minicar In India

    Right now, the sole plug-in vehicle you can buy from Chevrolet--or indeed all of General Motors--is the 2011 Volt range-extended electric car. But that doesn't mean GM isn't testing a lot of other concepts. The company just isn't doing it in North America, the sole region where Volts are sold this...

  • Dan Akerson, GM CEO as of September 1, 2010
    Gas Taxes Should Go Up To Boost Green-Car Sales, Says GM CEO Akerson

    The CEO of General Motors, Dan Akerson, told a Detroit newspaper that the Federal tax on gasoline should be raised by 50 cents or $1 a gallon to encourage consumers to buy more fuel efficient vehicles.. In an interview last week with the Detroit News, Akerson said a higher gas tax should be part of...

  • 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
    Weak Battery Explains Death Of Cadillac SRX Plug-In Hybrid

    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...

  • Buick Envision Concept

    The guessing games continue, with General Motors releasing more details about its Buick Envision concept car that give tantalizing hints of a concept stuffed with technology, but without the benefit of too many metrics. Following the release of a sketch two weeks ago, now GM has released a whole set of concept photos. We'll be eager to see the actual car in the flesh once it's revealed at Auto Shanghai, which starts tonight (Tuesday morning in China). Buick sells three times as many vehicles in China as it does in the States, so Chinese buyers--and future buyers--are the market for this...

  • EcoCAR2 teams will modify a Chevrolet Malibu. (PRNewsFoto/Argonne National Lab, Roy Feldman)
    EcoCar2 Will Challenge College Teams To Build Greener Cars

    The winning team for the third and final year of the first EcoCar Challenge has yet to be announced, but the next three-year competition has already been unveiled. On Wednesday, representatives from the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors officially launched EcoCar2, whose tagline will be...

  • 2012 Buick Regal with eAssist
    What's Good For GM Is...Good For The Environment?

    We asked last year if the new GM would be a cleantech play. It’s looking more and more like that’s the case. Yesterday, the company announced it would be rolling out a hybrid technology system called eAssist in the Buick Regal 2012 that will boost fuel economy by 25 percent. The system...

  • OnStar utility grid
    Video: OnStar Previews New Energy Management Tools For EV Owners

    As electric cars start to trickle into the market and public charging infrastructure grows, their drivers will need to know the best times to charge, the best places to charge on longer journeys, and the exact amount they will pay for the electricity they use. That will require automakers, utility...

  • Lithium-ion battery pack for 2011 Chevrolet Volt
    GM Bets On Cheaper Electric-Car Batteries With Envia, Invests $17 Million

    Riding high on a bout of good press of its Chevy Volt, GM is putting $7 million into its next big bet on electric cars: cheaper, higher-energy batteries. In his state of the union address yesterday, President Obama called for the U.S. to be the first country to put one million electric cars on the...

  • GM Logo
    GM Says More Government Money Not Needed--Though Rivals Took It

    Well, give them credit for resolve, anyway. General Motors said today it was withdrawing its applications to the U.S. Department of Energy for $14.4 billion of low-interest loans under the DoE's advanced technology vehicle manufacturing program. That's the program that so far has granted loans to...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt

    It's been quite a year for the 2011 Chevy Volt, GM's range-extended electric car that went on sale last month. It garnered a slew of awards from various car magazines and other auto media, and now it's capped the year by winning the prestigious North American Car of the Year award. Voted on by dozens of automotive journalists and presented at the Detroit Auto Show, the nominees for the NACoTY award were: Audi A8 Buick Regal Chevrolet Cruze Chevrolet Volt Ford Fiesta Hyundai Sonata/2.0T/Hybrid Infiniti M37/56 Jaguar XJ Kia Optima Mazda Mazda2 Nissan Juke Nissan Leaf Volkswagen Jetta Volvo S60...

  • 1999 GM (Specialty Vehicles) EV1
    GM EV1 Gets Another Shot At Smithsonian, 4 Years On

    If General Motors' EV1 had featured in the Disney Pixar animated film Cars, we can't imagine it would have been the happiest of characters. It might well have spent a little time complaining about its friends all being crushed back in 1999, and who could blame it? And four years ago it might have...

  • 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...

  • 2011 Chevrolet Volt MPV5 concept, Unveiled at 2010 Beijing Motor Show
    Volt-Based 'Amp' Due In Detroit: Wise Move By Chevrolet?

    The Voltec powetrain used in the 2011 Chevrolet Volt has never been meant for just the one vehicle. Restricting a new technology developed at great expense to a single niche vehicle makes poor economic sense. The prediction by Car and Driver of a Volt-based Chevrolet Amp, thought to be close in...

  • 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...

  • General Motors EN-V autonomous electric two-seat concept, 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show
    Video: GM's Two-Seat Autonomous Electric EN-V Spins Into Action

    To comply with upcoming gas mileage rules, automakers will launch appealing and economical compact or subcompact cars in the U.S. market over the coming years. But car designers are thinking far smaller yet. At the 2010 Los Angeles Auto Show two weeks ago, General Motors showed off an operating...

News First Drives Electric Cars Hybrids Guides Green Life