A decade ago, the automotive industry does not have hybrid on their vocabulary yet. This changed with Toyota’s introduction of the Prius. The main problem then, was that the Prius can’t take on too much load. In fact, one can barely see more than two people ride the Prius. Also, its towing capability is nowhere near those of Sport Utility Vehicles. Unfortunately, SUVs consume so much fuel. With the constant increase of fuel in the world market, auto manufacturers such as the Chevrolet have decided to come up with SUV hybrids as well. This is a concrete answer to the environmentalists who condemn SUVs for their apparent thirst for fuel. For this year, General Motors brings to us the two-mode hybrid system of the full-size Chevrolet Tahoe. With this introduction, GM has a good shot at taking the hybrid crown from Toyota.
The system was first utilized in huge diesel/electric buses, which were produced in cooperation with BMW as well as DaimlerChrysler. This hybrid version of the Tahoe is said to have improve fuel economy by 40 percent when driving in the city. According to the Mary Sipes, the vehicle line director for Full-size Truck Group, “This is a strategy we’ve had in place for quite some time. We’ve always had the means to make a one-off specialty vehicle, but we wanted a bigger footprint, something that could make a huge impact. That’s why we started with the GMT900 platform—we wanted to get big numbers on a big-volume product.”
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on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 at 2:21 am and is filed under Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid.
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