Hold the Hybrids: Two-mode Dodge Ram officially dead

The same thing happened to the Saturn two-mode that some of us got to test drive in Detroit. It was a vehicle sized and shaped to compete with the Ford Escape hybrid yet GM developed and then killed it. Rhetorical question but how much money did GM burn in the two-mode nonsense?

If any company deserves a stockholder suit, it is GM for the two-mode hybrid. It has only been put in a handful of over priced, under performing land boats. The one 3,000 lb vehicle it might have made a difference was developed and abandoned. Technically complex, it makes a hydromechanical, automatic transmission look simple. Easily a billion dollars pissed away.

Bob Wilson

 

Sheesh ~ the number of more-eco-conscious cars being killed in the womb is so great that there's enough to make a trivia game out of it. It's the reason people have doubts about the Volt making it into high volume.
.

 

Actually, fuel-efficient cars. IMHO the "eco" argument has and continues to be used by hybrid skeptics so they don't have to fact the facts that our hybrid cars are significantly (or can be!) more efficient. GM's BAS(tarded) car have proved that they still think it is life style, not fuel-savings that count.

Bob Wilson

 

Chrysler announced recently that they will have a Fiat EV. I think the message here is "we missed the hybrid boat, so we'll leapfrog straight to the EV". Thought they are far behinf on that and will 2 years after the Leaf comes out.

 

thats just current excuse for companies that are behind in the hybrid game... Fiat has no experience or money to develop EV... Which means it will use supplier developed system... which means ;-)

 

I think it's too bad that they cancelled the hybrid pickup because I've repeatedly heard about the potential utility of on-board power generation to power tools and equipment.

 

There's another benefit to huge sized hybrids.

See page 38, paragraph 6.2 & you'll see proven technology for reversing the benefit ... so to speak.

http://acpropulsion.com/icat01-2_v2gplugin.pdf

A mongo sized hybrid, or PHEV, has the added benefit of being able to back feeding the grid, to make power distribution more economical. These tests were done years ago by AC propulsion, yet very little forward movement has been realized. But a larger chunk of batteries that larger vehicles necessarily need, have the potential to feed the grid from a larger source of batteries.

.