GM announces “Volt” plug-in hybrid concept car
The plug-in revolution is gaining steam.
There’s a lot of excitement building around the North American International Auto Show in Detroit (a four-day event beginning today), where GM is introducing a concept car called the Volt — a flex-fuel plug-in hybrid that the world’s largest automaker is serious about mass-producing. You can read about the Volt in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Forbes and IEEE Spectrum. Here’s GM’s press release, which was put out this morning.
“Today, there are more than 800 million cars and trucks in the world. In 15 years, that will grow to 1.1 billion vehicles. We can’t continue to be 98-percent dependent on oil to meet our transportation needs. Something has to give. We think the Chevrolet Volt helps bring about the diversity that is needed. If electricity met only 10 percent of the world’s transportation needs, the impact would be huge,” said Larry Burns, GM’s vice-president of research and development and strategic planning.
Felix Kramer, founder of California Cars Initiative, or CalCars, applauded GM for taking this important first step. “We commend GM for being first out of the starting gate in the Great Plug-In Car Race of 2007,” he said in a release sent out to media and bloggers. “GM’s announcements are the biggest victories yet for CalCars.org and other PHEV advocates. Now, our campaign is in third gear.”
Kramer added: “We’ll work with the auto industry, government, fleet buyers and advocates to get to the day — soon, not in a decade — when customers can buy PHEVs as easily as any other car.”
Tyler Hamilton is editor-in-chief of Corporate Knights magazine and a business columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the clean technology and green energy market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper.
