Does GM now mean green motors?
LOS ANGELES–General Motors is already developing a slew of cars that will run on alternative fuels such as electricity, hydrogen, or green liquids like ethanol. But don’t count on an all-electric car anytime soon from the auto giant. It’s the one green transportation idea that the company isn’t dedicating a lot of time to, Dave Barthmuss, GM’s group general manager for environment and energy communications, said during a break at the Hollywood Goes Green conference that took place here this week. GM brought a prototype of its Chevy Volt and the Equinox, a hydrogen-powered SUV, to the conference. Why not go all the way, with a fully electric vehicle? In a word, batteries. Batteries cost a lot, weigh quite a bit, and can’t take a car nearly as far as a combination of gas and electric power, or even a full tank of gas. Battery capacity and endurance are improving, but at an incremental pace. Even bringing down the price and boosting the performance of batteries to manufacture plug-in hyb
