Former General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz worked tirelessly to bring the Chevrolet Volt to the market, but he recently suggested that plug-in hybrid technology makes a lot more sense when it is applied to larger vehicles.
Speaking at the North American International Auto Show earlier this week, Lutz admitted that if he could travel through time and go back to the early days of the Volt project, he would ask his team to fit the Voltec drivetrain to a large SUV such as the Cadillac Escaladeinstead of shoehorning it in the smaller Volt.
Lutz's logic is fairly simple: Since family cars typically use less fuel than SUVs and pickup trucks, they benefit less from plug-in hybrid technology and consumers are not willing to pay extra in return for minor gas savings. The former executive adamantly believes that his reasoning explains why the Volt and the Europe-only Opel Ampera consistently miss their sales target.
"Car companies need to get their minds on that: Electrifying an Opel Corsa that uses virtually no fuel anyway and then lumping a huge premium on it to cover the battery costs is nonsensical," saidLutz in an interview with England's Autocar magazine.
To test the theory in a real-world situation, Lutz's VIA Motors is currently developing a plug-in hybrid full-size pickup called X-Truck that is scheduled to debut in 2014.
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