GM Could Reportedly Produce 60,000 Plug-in Hybrids in 2010

OAKLAND, Calif. — General Motors Corp. could reportedly produce up to 60,000 Volt electric cars in 2010, its first anticipated year on the market.

Bloomberg, citing anonymous sources, reported Wednesday that first year sales of the automaker's plug-in hybrid could quadruple that of the Toyota Prius' U.S. debut. The car, expected to run 40 miles without recharging, will cost less than $30,000.

"If they were able to get 30,000 to 60,000 (miles) on the road in a year, it would be a huge leap in technology," Brett Smith, an alternative-fuel analyst at the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan, told Bloomberg. "It will be difficult, though, because there are so many barriers to making this happen."

GM Product Chief Bob Lutz is quoted in various newspapers saying he wanted to get prototypes of the Volt ready for road tests next year, and ready for sale in 2010.

Selling 60,000 hybrids would be a coup for GM, which lost nearly $2 billion in 2006. That would make the Volt its best selling high mileage car behind the Chevrolet Aveo.

It took about five years for the Prius, which sells for about $22,000, to reach annual sales of 60,000, Bloomberg reported. Toyota has sold more than 1 million gasoline-electric vehicles since 1997.

An industry insider, however, dismissed the plans as close to impossible.

“To reach that level by 2010, they'd need to be placing the orders right now,' said Menahem Anderman, president of Advanced Automotive Batteries, an industry consultant in Oregon House, Calif.

If GM proceeds with Massachusets-based A123Systems Inc. as the main battery supplier, “they would be doing it with a company that has no experience in high-volume manufacturing on such a scale," Anderman said.

Nevertheless, GM is spending more than $3 billion in vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells and gasoline-electric hybrids at a time when half of new car shoppers are considering buying a hybrid, according to a quarterly report released by market research firm The MindClick Group.

Its May 2007 Global Warming Monitor found that more than 80 percent of people considering buying a hybrid were doing so because they anticipated future fuel savings.