General Motors’ Chevrolet Volt will be sold in right-hand-drive Australia, according to local reports.
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Local GM unit Holden unveiled the electric car at a motor show in Sydney this week and confirmed it would be in Australian dealerships by 2012, the website drive.com.au reported.
Pricing – and whether or not the car would be badged as a Chevrolet or Holden – is yet to be confirmed but the new car is expected to cost over A$30,000.
GM exports some Holden models to the Middle East, South Africa and South America badged as Chevrolets but has not marketed the brand in Australia since the late 1960s when it stopped assembling Chevrolets and Pontiacs from kits imported from Canada.
The Volt is expected to be the first plug-in electric car to go on sale in Australia.
Holden’s chairman and managing director, American Mark Reuss, is understood to have used his contacts in Detroit to fast-track the Volt coming to Australia, drive.com.au said, adding that the car’s surprise show appearance was its first outside the US and only the second public showing world-wide.
A Holden statement said: “It is a reflection of the importance of the Australian market for General Motors that a vehicle as significant as Volt has been provided for this show. This technology is potentially the most exciting addition to GM’s range of alternative fuels on the horizon … by reducing our dependence on foreign oil.”
The Volt is due to go on sale in the US in 2010 and other countries will follow. A right-hand drive Volt is yet to be developed but the car has been designed from the outset to be made in both left- and right-hand drive, the Australian report added.
