Automakers’ Plug-In Plans

By John Voelcker

A handful of global automakers plan to launch plug-in hybrid electric vehicles within a few years. All of them will be offered in limited numbers (up to perhaps 40 000 a year) for the first few years, until battery costs decline and the technology is established—just as Toyota and Honda did with their first hybrids in the late 1990s. Car companies rarely show their hands this far ahead, but here’s a look at three of the most likely. Bear in mind that, as they say, “your mileage may vary.”

Photo: GM

CHEVROLET VOLT: General Motors is determined to capture the “green” reputation now held by archrival Toyota, which has sold almost 80 percent of the world’s hybrids. The Chevrolet Volt concept stole the limelight at the 2007 Detroit auto show, and white-hot attention remains focused on the car. Unlike Toyota’s “power-split” hybrids, the Volt’s 1-liter, 3-cylinder gasoline engine does not drive the wheels. It switches itself on only when necessary to power a 53-kilowatt (71-horsepower) generator that recharges the car’s 16-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery pack. Early samples of that pack from two competing companies are now being tested at GM. The Volt is expected to get 48 to 64 kilometers (29 to 39 miles) of electric range, plus another thousand kilometers or so when using the engine to sustain battery charge. GM hopes to have Volts in showrooms by late 2010.

Photo: GM

SATURN VUE TWO-MODE HYBRID PLUG-IN: Left behind in the Volt hoopla is GM’s other plug-in project. A 2009 version of the Saturn Vue sport utility will have a conventional power-split hybrid, using infinitely variable combinations of engine torque and electric power to move the vehicle, also used in GM’s largest sport utilities and pickups. A later variation will add a larger battery and the ability to recharge it from wall current, making it a true plug-in hybrid. But unlike the Volt, the Vue PHEV is likely to offer only 16 km (10 miles) of all-electric range; again, batteries are the crucial technology. GM has said the plug-in “could launch about two years after” the Vue Two-Mode, which will appear by the end of this year. So, like the Volt, the Vue PHEV might be available in late 2010 or early 2011.

Photo: Toyota

TOYOTA PRIUS PLUG-IN: Toyota is traditionally secretive, so less is known about their production plans. Until this year, the company dismissed plug-in hybrids, saying that the batteries weren’t ready. But in a speedy about-face, the company has now doubled up its existing nickel-metal-hydride battery pack in a handful of Prius Plug-In test vehicles—and shown them off aggressively at electric and hybrid vehicle events and auto shows. The company has also partnered with University of California campuses in Davis and Irvine to test the cars. Analysts’ best guesses are that Toyota will launch a low-volume plug-in—although not its mainstream hybrid Prius—within a year of the Volt, perhaps in 2010.