After the Chevy Volt makes its U.S. debut, GM plans to sell the gas – electric hybrid worldwide. GM Car Czar Maximum Bob Lutz has already announced Australian Volt sales will begin "one or two years" after the car's U.S. launch. GM also has their corporate eye on the "very important" European market. But just as the rest of the U.S. will have to wait for California to get their Volts, the rest of the world will have to wait for China. Rick Wagoner says his employer's targeting The People's Republic as the Volt's second market– with one big "if." According to Reuters, GM is "lobbying China's government to provide subsidies for the development and sale" of alternative powerplants. Wagner wants China to provide tax credits and (while they're at it) develop a hydrogen refueling infrastructure for fuel cell vehicles. Of course, much of GM's credibility in such matters (and everything else) depends on a successful Volt launch in 2010, which Rabid Rick admitted is running "down to the wire." God forbid they should release a not-ready-for-prime-time vehicle just to make the deadline…
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GM’s hunting for Volt tax breaks in the US, too. China isn’t (or shouldn’t be) as motivated to provide them as the US government, as the automobile isn’t quite the critical part of the infrastructure that it is here.
I admire Wagoner’s optimism in believing that by 2011 or 2012 (or whenever) an RE-EV will still be something that the Chinese haven’t already built for themselves.
And I’m certainly cheering on tax breaks for plug-ins here in the US. Tax breaks could bring the price of the plug-in Prius down to $15K or so. You can bet I’ll be on the waiting list for that.
If GM’s predictions continue to be as poor as they are currently, ‘1 to 2 years after US launch’ will end up being 3-5 years. So maybe by the end of the next decade there’ll be Volts in China. Or maybe just ReVolts… oh wait… they already have those.
China is building coal power plants at an alarming rate and those plants don’t have particularly good cleaning/scrubbing technology. Is there any pollution benefit to running a Volt on electricity generated from those plants?
SunnyvaleCA :
April 21st, 2008 at 2:10 pm
China is building coal power plants at an alarming rate and those plants don’t have particularly good cleaning/scrubbing technology. Is there any pollution benefit to running a Volt on electricity generated from those plants?
Electric cars are very clean aslong as these black billow smoking diesel gen plants are out of the view.
Just like John Wayne the Duke’s view on Womens’ Lib.
” As long as dnner is ready by six, u can have all the womens’ Lib all u want.”
Blowfish: I believe that the coal plants are far worse than diesel ones. Coal naturally gives off a higher ratio of carbon to heat when burned, so it is bad on the CO2 front. Coal is loaded with far more mercury, uranium, etc. My point was that China’s electricity is far dirtier than the electricity generated in many other parts of the world, so the electric cars would be far dirtier in China than in many other parts of the world.
Electrc cars will work well in Hydro gen countries.