Just how many hybrids has General Motors sold? Apparently not very many. We all know the Prius is the 800lb gorilla of the hybrid segment with sales of between 800,000 and 900,000 so far. A reader left a link to an IRS website in a comment the other day. The site lists which vehicles are still eligible for federal tax credits which get phased out as sales for each manufacturer increase. According to the last update in October 2007, General Motors had only sold a total of 9,577 hybrid vehicles by the end of September 2007.
At a lunch discussion with GM North America President Troy Clarke today at the Chicago Auto Show, I posed the question of how many hybrids the company had sold. According to Clarke until now GM had not been very aggressive in marketing their hybrid models. He explained that they were still feeling their way in the market and the time period covered by those numbers was prior to the launch of the 2008 Saturn Vue and Chevy Malibu mild hybrids along with the two-mode hybrid SUVs. GM actually started shipping the hybrid Tahoes and Yukons during the first week of January and ran an ad for the Yukon during the Super Bowl. Clarke says that now that five of these hybrids are shipping and five more are coming later this year, they will be pushing them a lot more. Hopefully by the end of this year that number will grow by an order of magnitude.
[Source: General Motors]
At a lunch discussion with GM North America President Troy Clarke today at the Chicago Auto Show, I posed the question of how many hybrids the company had sold. According to Clarke until now GM had not been very aggressive in marketing their hybrid models. He explained that they were still feeling their way in the market and the time period covered by those numbers was prior to the launch of the 2008 Saturn Vue and Chevy Malibu mild hybrids along with the two-mode hybrid SUVs. GM actually started shipping the hybrid Tahoes and Yukons during the first week of January and ran an ad for the Yukon during the Super Bowl. Clarke says that now that five of these hybrids are shipping and five more are coming later this year, they will be pushing them a lot more. Hopefully by the end of this year that number will grow by an order of magnitude.
[Source: General Motors]
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