Chevrolet Cruze hybrid on its way

The car that was responsible for bringing General Motors out of the dark is soon going to get hybrid treatment. General motors is planning to bring out a hybrid version of the Cruze to compete against Toyota Prius PHEV.

However, despite using electricity as a source of power,  the Cruze will not compete against the company’s image leading Volt because GM plans to fix it up differently. Essentially, the Cruze will be a plug-in hybrid whereas the Volt will be a electric car with a range extender.

Both are hybrid in their own way. The Volt uses the electric motor to power the front wheels and the gasoline engine only charges the battery, whereas the Cruze will use a combination of electric and gasoline engine to power the front wheels.

On a different note, last September, General Motors  announced the start of field trials of an all-electric version of Cruze in Seoul (pictured) which involved a fleet of Cruze EVs sent out by GM and LG to fetch data. These were fully electric Cruze models and not plug in hybrids. The trial models could travel up to 160km on a single charge.

This trial project was done to explore the market requirement and customer acceptance of electric vehicles in Korea.

Back home, the Cruze hybrid surfing the market is a very dim possibility. Hybrid cars such as then Prius and Honda Civic hybrid did not perform very well due to their enormous cost of purchase. However, there is a very strong possibility that the Bengaluru research center will play a key role in development of the Cruze hybrid just as it played in Beat EV and Volt.

Source: GoAuto