GM Serious About Producing Volt Electric Car

08 April, 2007 12:00:00

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The debate surrounding General Motors' Chevrolet Volt (read more aboout Chevy Volt concept)has been highly charged, to say the least.

The buzz around the electric car concept has hardly diminished since GM unveiled it four months ago at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit. It's been passionate, and not all of it good.

Critics have accused GM of capitalizing on the global-warming panic to give the financially troubled auto giant a much-needed PR boost.

GM has promised mass-produced electric cars were just around the corner since the first oil crises in the 1970s, some suggest.

They point to most its aborted US$1.5-billion effort to market the EV1 in the 1990s as the latest evidence GM can't deliver. Only about 100 of the battery-powered two-seat commuter cars were delivered into drivers' hands in Arizona and California test markets despite heavily subsidized leases.

The failure spawned a 2006 documentary - Who Killed the Electric Car? - that suggested a conspiracy between the automotive and oil industries to head off the move to electrics.

The theory is discounted by experts who point to the EV1's well-known problems, including limited range, especially if the heat or air conditioning was turned on and its impracticality in power-sapping cold-weather regions.

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The car's lead-acid batteries themselves had evolved little since the days of the Ford Model T.

But GM insists the Volt is for real.

The non-running mockup made a splash at the Detroit show and 300,000 people clicked onto a GM web site to say they wanted the car to be built. The EV1 had its fans too, but only a few opened their wallets.

Vice-chairman Bob Lutz, the company's product-development guru, told reporters at the Geneva Auto Show last month GM would have a running Volt prototype by the end of this year and had set 2010 as its internal target for production.

[source: cjob.com]