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GM
Volt Spokesman Says Battery Reports Off The Mark
By Scott Doggett December 10, 2011Since the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued a statement Nov. 25 announcing that it would investigate the risk of fire in crashed Chevy Volts, numerous contradictory reports have appeared in the media relating to the problem and to General Motors' response to it. In an interview with AutoObserver this week, Rob Peterson, the model's top spokesman, went to lengths to set the record straight, beginning with a description regarding what is and what isn't known concerning sparks and/or fire that originated in three Volt batteries following laboratory crash testing. more
Chevrolet Volt Tops Owner-Satisfaction Survey
By Michelle Krebs December 1, 2011White-glove treatment of Chevrolet Volt owners paid off as the extended-range plug-in hybrid earned the top spot in Consumer Reports’ (http://www.consumerreports.org) latest car owner-satisfaction survey. The annual survey showed that 93 percent of Volt owners who responded said they would buy the car again. more
GM Offers Loaners to Concerned Chevy Volt Owners
By Michelle Krebs November 28, 2011General Motors Co. will provide free loaners of conventional vehicles to Chevrolet Volt owners who have concern about their plug-in hybrid-electric cars in light of fires that occurred in Volt battery packs following crash-testing by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), GM executives told the media in a conference call Monday. At the same time, GM senior engineers, as they have been for the past six months, will continue to work with NHTSA to determine the specific cause of the fires, which have occurred anywhere from a week to up to three weeks after the battery pack initially more
Chevy's $26K Malibu Eco Challenges Hybrid Formula
By Bill Visnic November 22, 2011General Motors Co. has been down the “mild hybrid” road before – and crashed through the guardrail, with its less-expensive take on the hybrid-electric vehicle formula losing out to Toyota Motor Corp.’s Prius and its higher-cost, higher-efficiency design. But the post-recession worm has turned in several different directions. Now Toyota’s floundering, the comparative high cost of hybrids of its ilk isn’t expanding the market and the nation seems to have calmed down about $4-a-gallon gasoline. Against this context, GM sees the time as right to launch another, better generation of mild hybrid and gambles the combination of price and more
GM To Build Chevy Equinox In Tennessee
By Michelle Krebs November 21, 2011General Motors Co. will restart vehicle assembly at its Spring Hill, Tenn., plant to build its hot-selling Chevrolet Equinox crossover. The Equinox currently is built only in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada, alongside its equally fast-selling GMC Terrain, but sales have outstripped the automaker’s ability to produce the vehicles. Through October, sales of the Equinox are up 23 percent for the year to date compared with the same period in 2010; Terrain sales are up 21 percent. Edmunds.com calculates the days-to-turn – the number of days from the vehicle being delivered to the dealership to being purchased by a consumer – more
Post-Crash Volt Fire Prompts New Safety Study
By John O'Dell November 14, 2011Federal regulators, stressing they see no consumer safety issue, have launched a new study of lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles after a battery pack for a Chevrolet Volt caught fire three weeks after the car was crashed in a side-impact collision test. The Volt fire occurred in June at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s test facility in Wisconsin, where the wrecked Volt was being stored. Since then, NHTSA has contacted all major automakers with EVs in their lineups or in the future product plans with questions about lithium-ion battery safety. Both General Motors and NHTSA have tried to more
GM Earns $1.7 Billion In Third Quarter
By Michelle Krebs November 9, 2011General Motors earned $1.7 billion in the third quarter, beating with analysts’ estimates even though profits slipped 15 percent from the $2 billion GM earned in the 2010 third quarter. “GM delivered a solid quarter thanks to our leadership positions in North America and China, where we have grown both sales and market share this year. But solid isn’t good enough, even in a tough global economy,” said Dan Akerson, chairman and CEO. “Our overall results underscore the work we have to do to leverage our scale and further improve our margins everywhere we do business.” more
Chevrolet Hoping Brand Catches Up With Products
By Dale Buss November 3, 2011Starting with the new Malibu introduced in 2007, Chevrolet, celebrating its 100th anniversary today, has launched a succession of products that have been big hits with consumers, critics or both, or at the very worst have held their own in an increasingly competitive market. The Traverse crossover came in 2008, a new version of the Equinox in 2009, and more recently a Camaro Convertible, the groundbreaking Volt extended-range hybrid, and perhaps the biggest winner of all: Cruze, arguably Chevrolet’s first-ever small car that could be called state-of-the-art. Is there any reason to believe that the new American-built Chevrolet Sonic, more
GM Doing Just Fine With Former Pontiac Owners
By AutoObserver Staff October 26, 2011One year after General Motors Co. shut down its Pontiac division for good, the company has managed to maintain – and even improve – its retention of former Pontiac owners, according to data analyzed by Edmunds.com. The decision to kill Pontiac was a controversy inside and outside of GM and when the company shuttered its storied performance-oriented division last October, there was widespread speculation that a disproportionate number of disenfranchised Pontiac buyers would shop outside the newly-downsized GM “family” that now consists of just four brands. But Edmunds.com data indicate that 39.9 percent of Pontiac owners who traded in more