GM
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With GM's 2011 Chevrolet Volt now in pre-production and due to launch in November 2010, Former GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz fully supports range-extended electric vehicles but remains doubtful of the near future of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. In an interview with GM-Volt.com before his retirement, the 78-year-old veteran of the automotive industry shared his thoughts on the future of both electric and hydrogen fuel celled vehicles. Lutz remains a fan of the concept of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, but he cited high cost as prohibitive to their current commercial success. "We're getting very...
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Nissan, GM Are Right to Quiz Potential Electric-Car Buyers
Nissan has been criticized by consumers and EV owners alike for the online questionnaire that accompanies the signup process for reserving a 2011 Nissan Leaf. As part of the process, Nissan tries to ascertain if potential customers have a lifestyle compatible with the Leaf's range, recharging...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
GM Confirms Lithium-Air Battery Research to Revolutionize EV
General Motors is quietly conducting research into Lithium-Air batteries, the next Holy Grail of electric vehicle technology, according to a Friday article in The New York Times. GM acknowledges that while the battery technology has some way to go before it is used in commercial electric cars, the...
Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield -
2011 Chevy Volt Marketing Theme Emerges: An EV for Road Trips
GM has been talking about the 2011 Chevrolet Volt for three and a half years now. After absorbing an enormous amount of Volt propaganda, we've learned that subtle shifts in message can be important. A conference call yesterday revealed what we suspect will become a main marketing message for the...
John Voelcker -
GM To Invest $890 Million In Making Its V-8 Engines Save Gas
Going green on the road may involve smaller engines, electric cars, and clean diesels, but it also requires making all engines far more fuel efficient. To that end, General Motors will announce this morning that it will invest almost one billion dollars in five separate plants to build a new, far...
John Voelcker -
2011 Chevrolet Volt Electric Car To Reach Dealers In October
The three-year drumbeat of anticipation for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric car has just gotten slightly louder. General Motors CEO Ed Whitacre announced yesterday that the car will arrive at selected Chevy dealers in October, a month earlier than expected. The first pre-production...
John Voelcker -
Used to be that turbos were used in performance cars, from the Saab Turbos of the late Seventies to BMW's current range of twin-turbo sixes. These days, the little air pumps more often make smaller engines perform like bigger ones to give fuel economy. In brief, a turbocharger uses exhaust gases to drive a turbine that pumps more air into the intake manifold, so more gasoline can be burnt for greater power. We write about this engine downsizing theme a lot, and we're hitting it again because our colleague Bengt Halvorson just looked at the 1.4-liter turbocharged four that GM fits to the...
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First 2011 Chevrolet Volt Rolls Off the Line, But Not For Sale
The 2011 Chevrolet Volt took another step last week in its long and highly publicized gestation, with the first complete vehicle rolling off the production line at GM's Detroit Hamtramck assembly plant. On Wenesday, March 31, the first model of the mass-produced electric car built in North America...
John Voelcker -
GM's Future City-Car Vision: Autonomous, Electric, Two-Wheeler
What does personal transportation look like in a new century, when more than 60 percent of the world's citizens live in cities and the number of vehicles on the globe could rise to 2 billion? Would future urbanites accept the idea of moving around in pod-shaped electric two-seaters with only two...
John Voelcker -
Chrysler Kills Ram Two-Mode Hybrid Pickup Truck After All
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...
John Voelcker -
BREAKING: GM Battery Czar Denise Gray Leaves Volt Team For California Startup
A key member of the small team brought together four years ago to create the 2011 Chevrolet Volt electric car is unexpectedly leaving General Motors. Denise Gray, director of global battery systems engineering at General Motors, will leave the company on Friday, March 5, to take an unspecified...
John Voelcker -
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...
John Voelcker -
Auto shows have always been the forum for unveiling the wildest, wackiest, most over-the-top drool-worthy vehicles. The shows have been more subdued over the past two years of economic turmoil, but this year, the folks at Revenge delivered something to smile about. The Revenge Verde takes its underpinnings from the old, beloved Ford GT and drops a green carbon fiber body on top. But you won't find Ford's supercharged V8 under the hood of this new machine. Instead, Revenge will offer three engine choices: a 605-horsepower Ford engine, a 638-horsepower GM LS9 powerplant, or (the hands-down...
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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...
John Voelcker -
2011 Chevrolet Volt Lithium-Ion Battery Pack Goes Into Production
The lithium-ion battery pack for the 2011 Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric vehicles officially went into volume production today. The 16-kilowatt-hour battery pack, containing 220 lithium-ion cells made by Korea's LG Chem, will be assembled in a 160,000-square-foot factory in Brownstown...
John Voelcker -
The Volt Song: What Happened, and What It Could Have Been
And we thought our piece on the LA Auto Show's Volt dance was pointed. Hah! Look here. Or here, followed by here. Or here. Ouch. Like a good journalist, we wanted to know more. So we asked for an interview with Maria Rohrer, Director of Global Volt Marketing Operations at Chevrolet, to understand...
John Voelcker -
Royalty Drives Fisker Karma Plug-In Hybrid, Journalists Not So Much
Not surprisingly, automotive journalists compete to be the first to drive the latest new cars. Some crave Chevies, others follow Ferrari. Here at GreenCarReports.com, we want to be among the first to drive electric cars and other plug-ins, new hybrids, clean diesels, and so forth. We've driven a...
John Voelcker -
2011 Chevy Volt Dance: Hey GM, We Want Our Bailout Back, Now
We don't use a lot of profanity here at the global GreenCarReports.com headquarters. But there were a whole bunch of horrified OMFGs floating around once we finally got to see the notorious Volt Dance that was unveiled at the Los Angeles Auto Show. We write about the 2011 Chevrolet Volt...
John Voelcker -
The people have spoken and they've chosen Viridian Joule as the name of the Chevy Volt's green-gray paint color. Dave Thomas, of Sanford, Florida came up with the winning entry which beat the second place offering, "enviroMint" by nearly 300 votes. "EV-ergreen" came in third, falling 400 votes off the pace. 3,000 total votes were cast in the online poll that determined the name. The newly chosen name seems apropos. Dictionary.com describes viridian as "a long-lasting, bluish-green pigment, consisting of a hydrated oxide of chromium." A joule is the SI unit of energy. The three contestants...
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Nissan Leaf Included in Time Magazine's 50 Best Inventions of 2009
Nissan changed the game for automakers planning electric vehicles in August when it unveiled the Leaf. The all-electric C-segment vehicle travels at speeds up to 90 miles per hour and goes 100 miles on a full charge. Nissan says it will only take 30 minutes to charge the batteries to 80% of their...
Robert Scardino -
GM To Produce Cadillac Converj
According to a report in the Detroit News today, General Motors will forge ahead with plans to produce the Cadillac Converj extended range electric vehicle (EREV). Though Cadillac would not confirm the story, a source close to the company's production plans says that the Converj was part of a...
Robert Scardino -
The Green Side of SEMA
November is a time to give thanks...for the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA). These are the people and companies who make car enthusiasts drool with automotive add-ons and accessories fit for a classic episode of Pimp My Ride. Each November, when the SEMA show takes place in Las Vegas...
Robert Scardino -
2011 Chevrolet Cruze Compact Car Launch Delayed Til Next Fall
As U.S. carmakers get serious about building world-class compact cars, one of the most eagerly awaited entries is the 2011 Chevrolet Cruze, which will face off against a totally new 2012 Ford Focus as well as revised models of the Toyota Corolla, Honda Civic, and Nissan Sentra. Now reports say that...
John Voelcker -
Your New Car Is Made Of Old Carpet, Milk Jugs, and Ripped Jeans
When you think of a brand-new, gleaming, 2010 model car rolling out of your driveway, what materials come to mind? Steel, chrome, soft-touch interior plastics, maybe even supple leather upholstery? Well, how about some old carpets, ground-up milk cartons, and shredded, faded, raggedy blue jeans?...
John Voelcker