It's all on the line and increasingly online for General Motors these days, as the company launches its $40,000 electric vehicle, the Chevy Volt.
On Tuesday, August 11, the resurrected Detroit giant claimed triple-digit mileage per gallon for all-electric Volt sedan, which it says can run at 230 MPG in city driving.
That would dwarf the fuel efficiency credentials of the popular hybrid-electric Toyota Prius, which the top Japanese automaker says is capable of 48 MPG in stop-and-start operation.
But GM's math and claim to nearly quintuple the Prius's performance immediately raised eyebrows.
The company says it's using new U.S. Environmental Protection Agency metrics that assign electric vehicles an equivalency to gasoline mileage based on kilowatt-hours.
By the same standard, Google research contends that the Prius can achieve efficiency equivalent to approximately 93.5 MPG.
However the numbers are crunched, GM has a major chip on its shoulder and needs to crank sales up to last long beyond the government's "cash for clunkers" program.
So that's why GM is going online big time, launching into a dealer-based effort to sell millions of automobiles through e-commerce and auction website eBay.
Some 3 million cars have been sold through eBay in the past ten years, the Financial Times reports, and GM has to be hoping that expanded marketing and PR lead to an association of the company's many makes and models with online accessibility.
As for the Volt, we can't expect to see it on the showroom floor until late next year. Let's hope GM has a few stopgap measures in place to rev up its alternative fuel vehicle sales and market presence before then.
Certainly they'll tap into the Obama plan to launch $2.4 billion in new electric vehicle funding, but time to market will be the deciding factor in competitive success stemming from government help.
Regards,
Sam Hopkins
International Editor
P.S. - In Green Chip International, my colleague Nick Hodge and I have led subscribers to over 298% gains in a foreign carmaker that's leading the way in electric vehicles. GM may be making moves, but it's still far behind the international curve in many ways. To learn more, click here: http://www.angelnexus.com/o/web/14845
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