GM Chief Says Electric Auto Close to Reality
General Motors Chairman Roger B. Smith said Wednesday that GM is now closer to actually producing and selling electric cars than ever before.
“Our goal is to be the first automobile company since the early days of the auto industry to mass produce an electric car,” Smith said in a speech Wednesday to the National Press Club in Washington.
GM, he added, is “proceeding with our plan to produce and sell” the Impact, the electric car GM introduced at the Los Angeles Auto Show in January.
Smith and other GM officials refused to say, however, how soon GM might begin mass production of the Impact. But GM spokesman Don Postma said the company has put together a serious “business plan” for the Impact, one that designates a tentative timetable for the start of production and identifies the assembly plant in which the car could be built.
“We’ve set an aggressive schedule for ourselves in order to pull along the technological developments that we still need,” Smith stressed. “While we finalize production plans, we’re also beginning to think about other essentials, like the initial marketing plans and the service arrangements.”
Still, GM has a poor track record when it comes to actually following through with its ambitious pronouncements in the electric car field. GM has conducted research into electric-powered cars off and on since the 1960s and has often trumpeted its advances in the field, only to quietly turn its back on actual development later.
During the fuel crisis of the late 1970s and early 1980s, for example, GM mounted an emergency program to develop an electric car but killed the project when gas prices fell again.
But before it canceled the project, GM pledged that it would have electric-powered cars in production by the mid-1980s and said that 10% of its production would be in electric cars by 1990.
Wednesday’s announcement seemed designed to link GM with heightened public interest in environmental issues during the celebration this week of the 20th anniversary of Earth Day. It also comes at a time when the auto industry is fighting hard to persuade Congress not to impose tough new auto-related anti-pollution measures in the revision of the Clean Air Act.
In fact, Smith suggested in his speech Wednesday that the federal government should consider giving auto makers special credits for producing electric cars; such credits would then be used by the firms when trying to meet the federal mileage standards for their gas-powered cars.
But while the announcement may have been timed to give GM a public relations boost right before Earth Day, it still seemed to mark the company’s most serious commitment to electric cars. The technology behind the Impact also seems far superior to GM’s previous forays into electric vehicle development. The battery-powered car has a top speed of more than 100 miles per hour, can accelerate from 0 to 60 miles per hour in eight seconds and has a driving range of 124 miles before it needs recharging. The car uses only one-third the amount of energy burned by a gas-powered car.
Yet major technical obstacles remain. GM still estimates that the Impact’s driving costs in the Los Angeles area would be double the cost of a gas-powered car. In addition, the U.S. would have to increase its electrical energy base.
