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Empresas y finanzas

GM claims unprecedented mileage rating for Volt


    By Kevin Krolicki

    DETROIT (Reuters) - The Chevrolet Volt -- the electric vehicle General Motors Co is counting on to recharge its image with consumers -- is on track to hit an unprecedented fuel economy rating of 230 miles per gallon in city driving, the automaker said on Tuesday.

    GM Chief Executive Fritz Henderson said the Volt would get a "triple-digit" fuel economy rating for combined highway and city driving based on a draft standard developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

    "The Volt is becoming very real, very fast," Henderson said in an announcement at GM's technical center that was webcast to the public.

    The Volt, which will be introduced late next year, is designed to run for 40 miles from a single charge of a lithium-ion battery pack. After the battery is partly depleted, a small engine will kick in to recharge the battery and power the vehicle.

    In drafting standards to calculate the published mileage rating for the Volt and other upcoming electric vehicles, U.S. regulators have made assumptions about how much a typical driver will rely on the traditional gas engine.

    Those standards, which will also provide a crucial benchmark under recently tightened federal fuel economy standards, are due to be published later this year.

    Henderson said that GM had engineers working on second and third-generation versions of the Volt in order to bring down the cost of battery-powered vehicles.

    GM has been racing to make the Volt the first mass-market plug-in hybrid in the U.S. market in order to shake its association with gas-guzzling trucks and generate buzz for its car line-up against competitors led by Toyota Motor Corp.

    The announcement of the Volt's projected fuel economy comes a month after GM exited a fast-track bankruptcy underwritten by the U.S. government and comes as part of an effort by Henderson to shift attention back to the company's upcoming vehicles and away from its recent financial crisis.

    (Reporting by Kevin Krolicki and Soyoung Kim; Editing by Derek Caney)