Two electric motors, a V8 engine that can work on only four cylinders, a computer and a four-speed transmission that joins them into one package GM calls “dual hybrid” will soon make pickup trucks or big sport utility vehicles as fuel efficient as some cars, the automaker said on Thursday.
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According to The Associated Press, the technology, showcased with General Motors’ future engines and powertrains at the company’s proving grounds northwest of Detroit, will go on sale in the 2008 model year with the GMC Tahoe SUV and also will be available on the GMC Yukon and Cadillac Escalade SUVs and the Chevrolet Silverado pickup – GM’s top-selling vehicle – later that year.
GM reportedly said the hybrids, similar to those now in use in the transit buses of 39 US cities, are so versatile that they will boost fuel economy by 25% over the current SUVs and pickups. For the two-wheel-drive Tahoe, which now gets an average of 18.3 miles per gallon in combined city-highway driving, that means nearly 23 mpg.
Figures for city and highway driving haven’t been calculated yet, but Tim Grewe, GM’s chief engineer for rear-wheel-drive powertrain hybrids, told The Associated Press there will be a significant improvement.
“We give you the highway economy and we give you the city economy while maintaining SUV performance,” he told the news agency.
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By GlobalDataThe dual hybrids, developed jointly by engineers at GM, DaimlerChrysler and BMW, will also be used in the Dodge Durango and BMW vehicles, the report noted.
Prices on the GM vehicles haven’t been set, Grewe told AP, but the company plans to make them competitive, similar to a $US2,000 premium on the hybrid version of the Saturn Vue.
The powertrains are huge for GM and its partners because they take the gas-guzzling prefix off trucks and bring people back into the market, Jim Sanfilippo, senior industry analyst for Automotive Marketing Consultants, told AP. “It’s a big thing. It’s a terrific thing,” Sanfilippo reportedly said.
Most current hybrids are efficient in stop-and-start city driving, Grewe told the news agency, but they aren’t as efficient at highway speeds. The new technology, he added, uses a computer to chose from thousands of combinations of running on one electric motor, two electric motors, a combination of electric motors and the V8 petrol engine, or shutting down some of the V8’s cylinders.
The computer judges speed, the load the vehicle is pulling, terrain, temperature and humidity, whether the pavement is wet and other factors to decide the most fuel-efficient combination of technologies, Grewe told AP.
“It’s got a gazillion choices to make, and it makes them 100 times a second,” he added. “It’s like having the world’s smartest co-pilot.”
The complex technology has been proved in buses, some of which have 150,000 miles on them and have been used since 2002, Grewe told The Associated Press.
Grewe reportedly said the future of fuel-efficient engines will include a combination of smaller diesels, petrol engines and hybrids as automakers continue developing hydrogen fuel cells. GM has teams of engineers working to make all the technologies more fuel efficient and environmentally friendly, engineers told the news agency on Thursday.
Sanfilippo told AP the new hybrids should take away the environmental stigma attached to driving a pickup or big SUV.
“It certainly is going to reopen the door to people who don’t necessarily work with their pickups but like to drive one. It makes them politically correct,” he told The Associated Press.
