Sadly, GM and other car companies are still fixated on the idea that hybrid engines are a good idea. This is probably because they sell all the replacement parts that you’ll eventually need in a complex gas engine, which would probably be even more complex and numerous in a hybrid engine.

To that end, we have to endure GM’s boast that they have hybrid technology covered. Jon Lauckner, GM vice president of Global Program Management, says that: "That’s why we are also showing a variant of the Chevrolet Volt with a hydrogen-powered fuel cell, instead of a gasoline engine EV range-extender. Or, you might have a diesel engine driving the generator to create electricity, using bio-diesel. Finally, an engine using 100-percent ethanol might be factored into the mix. The point is, all of these alternatives are possible with the E-Flex System.”

Of course, Telsa Motors have shown us all that the alternatives are simply unnecessary with a purely electric motor. Hybrids are a distraction, something to keep the gas loving public happy. But eventually the public will realize that a hybrid engine simply wasn’t a necessary step, especially as fast charging technology enables a car to be fully recharged in only a few minutes. Companies like Toshiba announced such a breakthrough last year, with production due to come online around the same time that GM are promising the Volt’s rubber will hit the road.

Larry Burns, GM vice president for research and development and strategic planning, clearly knows the damage that dirty gas engines have had on the world, yet he still wants to keep on making them, even though they now say that electric is their focus.

Burns says that “Whether your concern is energy security, global climate change, natural disasters, the high price of gas, the volatile pricing of a barrel of oil and the effect that unpredictability has on Wall Street – all of these issues point to a need for energy diversity. Today, there are more than 800 million cars and trucks in the world. In 15 years, that will grow to 1.1 billion vehicles. We can’t continue to be 98-percent dependent on oil to meet our transportation needs. Something has to give. We think the Chevrolet Volt helps bring about the diversity that is needed. If electricity met only 10 percent of the world’s transportation needs, the impact would be huge.”

Of course, the impact would be even more huge if we transitioned to fully electric cars instead of the half-way step of a hybrid vehicle.

Burns says that “The DNA of the automobile has not changed in more than 100 years. “Vehicles still operate in pretty much the same fashion as when Karl Benz introduced the ‘horseless carriage’ in 1886”.

Of course, this isn’t entirely true. Back in the early 1900’s, there were cars that ran on gas/petrol, steam and electricity.  Gas won because it was cheap. How sad it is for the world that electric cars did not win the race 100 years ago – we’d be living in a very different world today.

But, thankfully, GM is finally putting electric cars firmly back at the top of their priorities, even as they continue flirting with the manufactured need for a hybrid engine. Burns says that “While mechanical propulsion will be with us for many decades to come, GM sees a market for various forms of electric vehicles, including fuel cells and electric vehicles using gas and diesel engines to extend the range. With our new E-flex concept, we can produce electricity from gasoline, ethanol, bio-diesel or hydrogen”.

He continues that “We can tailor the propulsion to meet the specific needs and infrastructure of a given market. For example, somebody in Brazil might use 100-percent ethanol (E100) to power an engine generator and battery. A customer in Shanghai might get hydrogen from the sun and create electricity in a fuel cell. Meanwhile, a customer in Sweden might use wood to create bio-diesel.”

All of that is good and well, but if Tesla Motors can make a powerful electric only car today, without need for any wood powered bio-diesel from the forests of Sweden, with engines dramatically less complicated than hybrid engines, most of these alternatives are just sweet sounding distractions that are simply not needed.

Want to know more? Visit GM’s website to read the entire press release and look out for plenty of news about the Volt in the week to come all over the Internet.
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