NEW CHEVY MALIBU WILL BE SOLD GLOBALLY, OFFER NUMEROUS STYLING CHANGES

By Rick Kranz, Automotive News - Chevrolet plans to sell the next-generation Malibu in nearly 100 countries and build the car in multiple locations, including China.

The Malibu concept will be unveiled April 19 at the Shanghai auto show and simultaneously Webcast at 8:30 pm EDT April 18 on www.facebook.com/chevrolet.

The web reveal also will be streamed live on iPad and iPhone mobile devices.

The next Malibu marks another step by General Motors to reduce its engineering costs by selling the same model in numerous markets. It also is another move to enhance Chevrolet as a global brand, GM says.

Although all of the sheet metal on the concept is new, a 60-second video prepared by Chevrolet depicts an evolutionary styling change. A tall grille, split by a wide bar is one of the styling themes carried over from the current Malibu.

However, the concept incorporates a styling design that will distinguish all Chevrolet cars in the future: two taillights, on this concept rectangularly shaped, on each side of the rear of the vehicle. The Malibu will be Chevrolet's first mid-sized car to be sold globally.

GM said the car will be assembled in two U.S. plants and labeled a 2013 model. U.S. sales begin next year. The concept also will be displayed April 23 to May 1 at the New York auto show.

"This Malibu takes Chevrolet's established and award-winning nameplate to new places and introduces it to new audiences around the world," Rick Scheidt, vice president of Chevrolet, said in a statement.

"Whether the Malibu is sold in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa or Australia, it has been engineered from the ground up to meet the needs of customers around the world."

Details about the vehicle were not released. However, GM said the car will be available only with four-cylinder engines.

Other automakers -- notably Hyundai and Kia -- have also dropped optional V-6 engines in their mid-sized sedans to meet tougher fuel economy requirements and address shifting consumer preferences.

Additionally, GM said the next Malibu will offer suspension tuning similar to European vehicles.

"We look forward to offering the new Malibu to our customers across China," Kevin Wale, president and managing director of the GM China Group, said in a statement.

"The Malibu fully embodies Chevrolet's tradition of dynamic styling, superior handling and outstanding fuel efficiency. It will address growing domestic demand in the upper-medium segment, especially among younger car buyers," Wale said.

Last year, Malibu was Chevrolet's to-selling car in the United States with 198,770 sales, a 23 percent increase over 2009.

IT'S A TIE: TRUCK TREND SAYS CHEVROLET, GMC 'BEST IN CLASS'

Sierra HD, Silverado HD, Yukon, Tahoe tops among work trucks and full-size SUVs

By General Motors - Truck Trend magazine says the GMC Sierra 2500HD and Silverado HD are the "Best in Class 2011 Work Truck" and GMC Yukon and Chevrolet Tahoe are judged "Best in Class 2011 Full-Size SUV."

In its June issue on newsstands Wednesday, Truck Trend picked Sierra and Silverado three-quarter ton trucks over the Ford F-250 and Dodge Ram. Yukon tied with Tahoe, topping the Toyota Sequoia.

Truck Trend lauded the GM heavy duties as pickups "you'll see on construction sites ... expected to work hard and take abuse every day." In terms of capability, editors pointed to the Silverado and Sierra RWD regular cab for towing capacity (17,800 pounds) and payload capacity (4,192 pounds).

In its full-size SUV category, Truck Trend cited the Yukon and Tahoe's fuel-efficient hybrid offerings, active fuel management, nine-passenger seating and 8,200-pound towing capacity as competitive strengths.

"Despite their size and the hard work demanded of these vehicles, much effort has been put into making full-sizes more fuel-efficient, capable, and comfortable," Truck Trend's editors said.

2011 CHEVROLET TRAVERSE EARNS IIHS TOP SAFETY PICK

Highest possible ratings achieved in all Insurance Institute safety tests

By General Motors of Canada - The 2011 Chevrolet Traverse today received a Top Safety Pick designation from the US Based Insurance Institute for Highway Safety for all models built after January.

"Car buyers shopping for safety get a big head start with vehicles earning our Top Safety Pick designation," said Institute president Adrian Lund. "This award highlights the elite group of vehicles that earn top Institute safety ratings across the board, and that have electronic stability control."

Vehicles named Top Safety Picks must achieve the highest possible IIHS ratings of "Good" in front, side, rear and rollover crash protection tests in addition to having electronic stability control. The Traverse earlier earned a 5-star overall vehicle score in the revised New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) run by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The 2011 Traverse represents Chevrolet's commitment to continuous safety - before, during and after a crash. Before a crash, active safety features like StabiliTrak electronic stability control, traction control and anti-lock brakes help drivers avoid crashes.

Technologies like rollover sensing, six standard air bags, front seat safety belt pretensioners and load limiters help protect occupants during a crash. Pretensioners reduce safety belt slack, and load limiters moderate the load of the safety belt on the occupant in a crash. Both safety belt technologies work together to help keep occupants in place during a crash.

After a crash, OnStar's Automatic Crash Response alerts first responders to get medical assistance on site as quickly as possible.

"The IIHS Top Safety Pick Award reinforces the already strong safety reputation of the Traverse," said Rick Scheidt, vice president of Chevrolet Marketing. "Traverse is a well-equipped crossover that provides the people- and cargo-carrying capability typically found in larger SUVs - all delivered in a proven safe and efficient package."

Kelley Blue Book's kbb.com recently named the Traverse one of its Top 10 Family Cars for 2011. Vehicle safety was a key consideration in the assessment along with comfort, economy of operation, child-friendliness, purchase price and resale value.

HOW PLUG-IN HYBRID CARS COULD BE GAME CHANGERS

By Venkat Srinivasan - gigaom.com - Over the last few months I've started thinking about buying a new car. My present car is 7 years old and problems are starting to creep up. New noises appear everyday and my dash lights appear to be failing one after the other. After 120,000 miles, I'm beginning to wonder if its time to get rid of the beast.

Considering my field of interest, I'm thinking its time to get a plug-in or an electric car. I'm thinking a new Chevy Volt or a Nissan Leaf will go well with our second car, a Toyota Prius. I would have considered the Tesla Roadster, but the lack of a backseat is a showstopper. And there is that little problem that it has one extra zero in the price, which I'm told is not a typo!

Considering my 70-mile daily commute and my present car's 25-mpg gas mileage, the change should give me some green cred.

All the planets appear to be lining up. Cars with my favorite technology are coming to the market. There is (up to) $7,500 tax credit from the Feds and $5,000 more from my home state of California when you buy these cars. You have a chance at getting the coveted carpool stickers (which are priceless!). Finally, we just bought a home, so "plugging in" is not an issue anymore.

The Leaf

Considering the $10,000 price differential between the Leaf and the Volt ($32,000 for the Leaf vs $42,000 for the Volt, before taxes), I started paying more attention to the Leaf. With the two tax credits, this car was beginning to look like something that was highly affordable.

But a quick Google search and 10 minutes later, it was obvious that the Leaf was not going to work for me. When you see reports that you could end up with 47-50 mile range (under certain commute conditions) before you spend the next 8-20 hours charging the battery, you begin to realize that you get what you pay for. With a daily commute of 70 miles in traffic, with some days stretching to 100 miles, I will need to charge at work and, as of today, there appear to be very, very few charging stations available.

I heard this week that, apparently, a typical American takes 8 long trips (greater than 100 miles) a year. Our cars need to have the energy to take us on these trips. The Leaf will have difficulty in being anything but a second or third car.

Clearly, at least for me, the low range and the long charging time were going to be issues. Moving on ...

The Volt

The Volt gets us away from the issue of range because it is a Plug-in hybrid (PHEV). With the gas engine as a backup waiting for the battery to run out of juice, you can have your cake and eat it too. Be green for the first 35 miles and forget the range anxiety on longer trips.

But at $33,000 for the car ($42,000 base plus CA tax minus the tax credits), this is still one expensive car. The EPA tells us that once you run out of juice, the car is rated at 37 mpg. So my daily commute of 70 miles would consist of the first 35 miles on the battery and the next 35 miles on gas.

Without nitpicking, I would use 1 gallon of gas a day. This costs me, as of today, $4.

I also need to charge the battery (12.9 kWh) at 12 cents a kWh, which means I will spend an additional $1.55 for the electricity.

Total cost $5.55 per day. Right now I spend $11.20 a day. I will save about $1,400 every year when using the Volt.

My Subaru cost me $21,000 to buy. With this yearly savings I should get cost parity in ... around 8-9 years. This does not include any of the time-value-of-money calculations, which would push this out more.

I'm sort of throwing numbers here without seriously checking into them, but suffice to say, it's not an inexpensive car.

Beyond Economics

But it's not all about economics, is it? Being green has never been cheap (although the corollary does not hold. Meaning, if you are cheap, you can actually pass that off as being green!).

The first blog post I made on This Week in Batteries concluded that I could not afford the Volt. Gas prices were at $3 at that time. At $4 the Volt still not inexpensive, but it's getting to the point where one can start to think about this.

The future is uncertain (unless you are the Wall street-type and can pretend that drawing a trend line on past data to predict future is worth $1 million a year in compensation!) and we don't know where gas prices are headed. But there are a few things we can conclude.

First, at present-day battery prices and energy densities, EVs don't make much sense economically. They are too limiting in range for use as a primary (or even a secondary car). If you get the range up by packing in more batteries it gets more expensive and you lost a bunch of trunk space to fit the batteries. I would say that we need to triple the energy density of batteries and cut the price by a factor of 4 before we can get serious about this (but you can argue with me on this one).

Second, a plug-in hybrid makes a lot of sense, but you will need to pay for the dual power sources. If you can cut the battery costs by a factor of 2 and maintain the tax credits, the concept becomes economical.

I heard that, apparently, gas consumption would reduce by 70-80 percent if we convert all cars to PHEVs. I, for one, would ask if we even need to work on a pure battery electric vehicle. Maybe the focus of all our efforts should be on getting a PHEV on the road at an economical price.

Irrespective of your views of how the world should operate, I think it is important for us to understand whether or not batteries can actually be made any better. I shall use this as a launching point to talk about a few issues over the next few months including why we all use lithium batteries today, and what I think will happen to battery energy densities over the next few years. I also think its important for us to appreicate what the theoretical limits are in batteries so that we can temper our expectations.

In the meantime, I'm starting to think about test-driving the Volt. But the dealership tells me that I have to put a deposit down to test drive the car. Maybe I'll pretend to be a journalist working for GigaOm to see if that gets met anywhere!

CRUZE A LONG-OVERDUE REPLACEMENT FOR COBALT, CAVALIER

By Bob English, Globe & Mail - Chevrolet's new compact Cruze isn't revolutionary, a world beater or an industry game changer, but it is likely more than enough car to make the brand - which celebrates its 100th anniversary this year - a more serious threat in the Canadian market's small-car race.

It's not likely going to take the checkered flag, or even knock one of the established front runners off the podium this year, but you can be sure the competition will be closely watching the momentum it appears to be gaining in the early going and pondering what terminal sales velocity it will achieve by year-end.

After all, the Chevrolet brand, despite the turmoil generated by parent General Motors' fiscal follies of the past couple of years, still managed a fifth-place overall finish in the passenger-car sales race last year, selling 25,967 of its compact Cobalt. And it wasn't a patch on the Cruze - just a half-hearted, long overdue (in 2005) replacement for the always mediocre and two-decades-old Cavalier. Which should have been terminated with extreme prejudice - mine anyway - long before.

Honda's Civic took the sales race prize last year selling 57,501 units, followed by the Mazda3 at 47,740, the Toyota Corolla with 38,680 and Hyundai's Elantra with 35,556.

But Cobalt sales indicate the Chevrolet bow-tie brand continues to resonate with many Canadian car buyers. And the Cruze, which went on sale late last year, appears to be capitalizing on that. In its first three months, it boosted GM Canada's compact sales volume 32 per cent.

Recently named the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada's Canadian Car of the Year, the most recent among a string of global laurels won since being introduced in 2009, won't hurt either. And it has already been atop one podium, winning the hard-fought World Touring Car Championship series last year. Too bad it's too small to run in NASCAR.

Unlike most GM small cars of the last half century, the Cruze is a truly global design that hasn't been dumbed down to a lowest common denominator of price, appeal and expectations like the dull drones that for too long tarnished GM's reputation.

Chevy dealers are currently offering four versions of the car, starting with a decently equipped LS (with a 1.8-litre four-cylinder and six-speed manual gearbox) for $14,995. Then there's a big jump in price and equipment level to the fuel-sipping and cleverly aero ECO and LT Turbo at $19,495 and then another to the high-zoot - auto transmission, auto air conditioning, Bluetooth, power driver's seat, info centre, Pioneer audio equipped and leather clad - $24,780 LTZ Turbo.

The Cruze's exterior sheet metal has been bent into an appealing enough form that manages to suggest substance - borne out by the thud doors make when they close - while not likely to frighten off any Corolla buyers who might stray into a Chevy dealership after being caught up in the Cruze buzz.

And the roomy-enough interior, which - as with all cars in this class is best suited to seat four - easily equals or betters rivals' efforts. It's well-laid-out in functional terms, the centre stack and integrated console look particularly good, and it's screwed together with some care from quality and nicely colour-co-ordinated materials, although the door caps are little scratchy-plasticky.

Seats do an okay job, it's adequately quiet at speed and, even in base form, offers a value-oriented tally of features, including no less than 10 airbags and top safety ratings.

The LS's 1.8-litre, 136-hp four-cylinder would have been perfectly adequate, but GM chose to go higher-tech with the rest of the range - employing a small-for-the-class 1.4 litre, but thanks to turbocharging, high-power density four-cylinder. An approach, incidentally, that Formula One racing is adopting for 2013 with new regulations requiring a 1.6-litre turbocharged four.

The Cruze's compact motor makes mid-compact-pack 138 hp and 145 lb-ft of torque available to drive the front wheels through a six-speed automatic. It feels smooth but sounds a little growl-y at around-town speeds, where the transmission's programming could perhaps be sharpened to produce quicker response and a livelier feeling. The turbo-boost generates plenty of flexible torque and overall performance is okay, but quick it isn't. Tightening the screw on the turbo a turn or two could cure that though. On the plus side, it's not thirsty, and runs happily on regular gas.

A pleasant surprise was handling that's at the high point on the small-car curve - although steering is a little light. On-ramps or country road corners are taken with little body roll or upset from bumps, and the brakes feel reassuringly powerful.

GM may have raised only its own bar with the Cruze, but the result is a small car that can now match chinups with the best of them.

2011 CHEVROLET TRAVERSE EARNS IIHS TOP SAFETY PICK

By General Motors of Canada - The 2011 Chevrolet Traverse today received a Top Safety Pick designation from the US Based Insurance Institute for Highway Safety for all models built after January.

"Car buyers shopping for safety get a big head start with vehicles earning our Top Safety Pick designation," said Institute president Adrian Lund. "This award highlights the elite group of vehicles that earn top Institute safety ratings across the board, and that have electronic stability control."

Vehicles named Top Safety Picks must achieve the highest possible IIHS ratings of "Good" in front, side, rear and rollover crash protection tests in addition to having electronic stability control. The Traverse earlier earned a 5-star overall vehicle score in the revised New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) run by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The 2011 Traverse represents Chevrolet's commitment to continuous safety - before, during and after a crash. Before a crash, active safety features like StabiliTrak electronic stability control, traction control and anti-lock brakes help drivers avoid crashes.

Technologies like rollover sensing, six standard air bags, front seat safety belt pretensioners and load limiters help protect occupants during a crash. Pretensioners reduce safety belt slack, and load limiters moderate the load of the safety belt on the occupant in a crash. Both safety belt technologies work together to help keep occupants in place during a crash.

After a crash, OnStar's Automatic Crash Response alerts first responders to get medical assistance on site as quickly as possible.

"The IIHS Top Safety Pick Award reinforces the already strong safety reputation of the Travers," said Rick Scheidt, vice president of Chevrolet Marketing. "Traverse is a well-equipped crossover that provides the people- and cargo-carrying capability typically found in larger SUVs - all delivered in a proven safe and efficient package."

Kelley Blue Book's kbb.com recently named the Traverse one of its Top 10 Family Cars for 2011. Vehicle safety was a key consideration in the assessment along with comfort, economy of operation, child-friendliness, purchase price and resale value.

2011 CHEVROLET TRAVERSE EARNS IIHS TOP SAFETY PICK

By General Motors of Canada - The 2011Chevrolet Traverse today received a Top Safety Pick designation from the US Based Insurance Institute for Highway Safety for all models built after January.

"Car buyers shopping for safety get a big head start with vehicles earning our Top Safety Pick designation," said Institute president Adrian Lund. "This award highlights the elite group of vehicles that earn top Institute safety ratings across the board, and that have electronic stability control.

"Vehicles named Top Safety Picks must achieve the highest possible IIHS ratings of "Good" in front, side, rear and rollover crash protection tests in addition to having electronic stability control. The Traverse earlier earned a 5-star overall vehicle score in the revised New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) run by the National Highway Safety Administration.

The 2011 Traverse represents Chevrolet's commitment to continuous safety - before, during and after a crash. Before a crash, active safety features like StabiliTrak electronic stability control, traction control and anti-lock brakes help drivers avoid crashes.

Technologies like rollover sensing, six standard air bags, front seat safety belt pretensioners and load limiters help protect occupants during a crash. Pretensioners reduce safety belt slack, and load limiters moderate the load of the safety belt on the occupant in a crash. Both safety belt technologies work together to help keep occupants in place during a crash.

After a crash, OnStar's Automotic Crash Response alerts first responders to get medical assistance on site as quickly as possible.

"The IIHS Top Safety Pick Award reinforces the already strong safety reputation of the Traverse," said Rick Scheidt, vice president of Chevrolet Marketing. "Traverse is a well-equipped crossover that provides the people- and cargo-carrying capability typically found in larger SUVs - all delivered in a proven safe and efficient package."

Kelley Blue Book's kbb.com recently named the Traverse one of its Top 10 Family Cars for 2011. Vehicle safety was a key consideration in the assessment along with comfort, economy of operation, child-friendliness, purchase price and resale value.