General Motors is resuscitating the plug-in hybrid — a technology it had left on its scrap heap even before it pledged to go all-electric by 2035. The reversal reflects a reckoning across America's auto industry as it tries to satisfy both regulators and fickle customers, all while remaining financially afloat amid the ever-present threat from Tesla. GM CEO Mary Barra told investors Tuesday that reviving the plug-in hybrid — or PHEV — will help America’s biggest automaker comply with stricter fuel economy standards proposed by EPA. She emphasized that GM will continue to offer all-electric models and is still good for its pledge to produce only electric vehicles by 2035 “We are timing the launches to help us comply with the more stringent fuel economy and tailpipe emission standards,” Barra said. No vehicle captures this particular moment in the American auto industry like the PHEV. Its configuration — mostly electric, with a gasoline backup engine — is profoundly different from that most famous of hybrids, the Toyota Prius. The traditional Prius actually runs on gasoline, with a little battery to provide a boost and share the propulsion duties. The PHEV is a different sort of compromise. That’s because EPA’s efforts to cut tailpipe emissions — and encourage EV production — is colliding with America’s feeble EV-charging network. Charging stations are multiplying fast, but nowhere near fast enough to allay the fears of most car-buyers that they won’t have a plug when they need it. So the PHEV’s particular proposition — zero-emissions on short, all-electric trips, but with a reassuring gas tank for longer ones — has caused many automakers to reembrace them, after they seemed likely to disappear. The big name in PHEVs is, once again, Toyota, the Japanese automaker that has enraged environmentalists with its staunch refusal to promise to go all-electric. Instead, the company has hedged its bets to include all sorts of drivetrains, including PHEVs like the Prius Prime. The irony is that GM created the first mass-market American PHEV. The Chevy Volt, debuted in 2010, introduced many drivers to an electric ride for the first time. But GM shelved it in 2019 to make room for its first mass-production EV, the Chevy Bolt — not the first time the company has killed an electric car. Now GM is making a grudging return to the car it largely invented. “GM is going to backtrack into what Toyota is doing,” said Karl Brauer, an auto analyst at the sales site iSeeCars.com. “This is 1,000 percent a sign that Toyota was right.”
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