Crain News Service staff report
LAS VEGAS (Jan. 5, 2015) — General Motors Co. provided a sneak peek at the next-generation Chevrolet Volt — which will be quicker, quieter and have a longer range than its predecessor — last night at International CES in Las Vegas.
GM showed just the front end of the 2016 model-year update of its plug-in hybrid, which will make its official debut at the Detroit auto show next week.
Automotive News reported in October that GM will disclose the Volt's range and EPA rating at the Detroit show. The current Volt, which has a 1.4-liter, four-cylinder engine, has a gasoline-only EPA rating of 37 mpg in city/highway driving and an electric range of 38 miles.
The 1.4-liter engine will be replaced with a 1.5-liter, four-cylinder engine in the 2016 model, GM said in October. Larry Nitz, executive director of GM Powertrain's electrification engineering team, said the new engine will be 5-12 percent more efficient than the current 1.4-liter.
The next-gen Volt's battery pack is almost entirely redesigned. GM made the battery cells larger and increased their storage capacity by 20 percent but reduced the total to 192 cells — from 288. Overall, the battery pack will store more power than the current one.
In the first 11 months of 2014, GM sold 17,315 Volts in the U.S., down 16 percent compared with the same period a year ago.
This report appeared on the website of Automotive News, a Detroit-based sister publication of Tire Business.