Does
GM have a lithium advantage with hybrid vehicles?
Wednesday,
September 19, 2007
GM's
hybrid ace?
I'm a huge hybrid advocate, obviously, which also means
I've been a huge critic of American automakers because
they just don't have much to offer when it comes to hybrid
vehicles. Additionally, there won't be a full American
hybrid car for, for who knows how long - it's all hybrid
SUVs.
Certainly, the Ford
Escape hybrid, the GMC
Yukon hybrid and the Chevy
Tahoe hybrid are all significant improvements upon
their conventional counterparts, but how about some hybrid
cars?
To date, the biggest hybrid car news coming from Detroit
has been the Chevy
Volt, a plug-in hybrid. Unfortunately, many critics
have questioned whether the Volt is anything but a
publicity stunt. I don't believe it is.
More interesting, GM's Bob Lutz has been claiming that the
Volt will beat a Prius
plug-in hybrid to market because GM's battery partner, A123System's
Nanophosphate lithium technology is better than anything
Toyota has tested.
That's not just great for the Volt, but for GM's dual mode
hybrid technology. In fact, it might be easier to
implement this lithium technology into a dual mode hybrid,
as GM has discussed doing with the Saturn Vue hybrid,
until the very sophisticated E Flex Platform and the Volt
can be perfected.
Moreover, a plug-in Saturn
Vue hybrid might actually be a big seller for GM.
According to a recent plug-in hybrid poll, SUV owners have
the greatest interest in converting to plug-in technology.
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