Posted by Alex Bale
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
57,000 sales out of just over 14-million. That's how many electric cars sold in the United States last year, causing more than a few people to announce the second death of the electric car. But General Motors' US president Mark Reuss has come out fighting for the battery car, saying that he expects Americans to embrace the technology more and more.
“The electric vehicle is not dead. We at GM believe that the public will accept and embrace electric vehicles. Some people already have" said Reuss at the Automotive News World Congress in Detroit.
He also promised that not only would the next generation of Chevrolet Volt, sold here as the Opel Ampera, have a greater battery range, it would also be thousands of dollars cheaper, as GM is now able to make batteries and electric drivetrains more efficiently.
Posted by Alex Bale
Friday, January 11, 2013
In a week when rumours once again surfaced that Opel was up for sale to PSA Peugeot Citroen, the German firm's US masters at General Motors have come up with (another) new plan to turn around the loss-making car company.Interestingly, GM Europe boss Steve Girsky admits that this is the first Opel turnaround programme "not to include hope as part of the package" and the 10-year plan centres on cutting costs (Opel needs to get its fixed costs down by about €500-million, and make around €1-billion of savings in its parts-and-platform sharing agreement with PSA) and to introduce 23 new models (along with a bevy of new, more efficient engines) by 2022. The plan, rather playfully, is called Drive! 2022.
If everything works, Opel will hit break-even in a couple of years and move back into profit by around 2018. Some of the plan has already been implemented; the tie-up with Peugeot and Citroen is already well progressed, the decision to close the loss-making factory in Bochum has already been taken and several key new models, including the Astra saloon, Adam city car and Mokka compact SUV, have already been introduced.
Opel actually had quite a good year in 2012, finishing up as Europe's third best-selling brand and going a long way to winding down stocks of unsold models. Next up will be to start building non-Opel-badged models in Opel's German plants, to take up the slack in capacity. Expect to see Buicks for China (China is now a massive market for this classic American brand) and mechanically-identical Chevrolets for Europe built in Russelsheim and elsewhere. And, although the plan doesn't overtly admit it, expect too to see the next-generation of Citroen C5 and Peugeot 508 built on a common platform with the Opel Insignia in Germany.
