GM Will Spend $250 Million on Green Tech Center in China
By John O'Dell October 29, 2007 General Motors Corp., as we've said before, sees China as a great place to try new automotive technologies.The country is just learning to drive, doesn't have much of an automotive infrastructure and has a communist government that, for better or worse, can make things happen. So where better to push for a real hydrogen highway, or mass introduction of plug-in hybrids, hydrogen fuel-cell and battery-electric cars and trucks?
Underscoring its belief that the Middle Kingdom is, indeed, the new automotive frontier, GM today said it will establish a $250 million alternative fuels research center in Shanghai to help speed development of alternatives to the gasoline internal combustion engine.
"We believe China has the potential to become a leader in the adoption of alternative propulsion systems," GM Chief Executive Rick Wagoner said during a Beijing press conference... The new GM center will assist China "as it undertakes one of the most rapid technological transformations in world history," he said. The new research center will work on alternative fuels, energy efficiency technologies and advanced propulsion systems such as fuel cells and plug-in hybrid vehicles.
Wagoner said that while it would focus on the growing Chinese market it also would export technologies it develops to other markets.
There's a lot of government interest in China in "working with auto manufacturers to bring those [advanced technologies] to market as quickly as possible," Wagoner said.
GM said it also will spend $5 million to set up an automotive energy research center in Beijing with Tsinghua University and Shanghai Automotive Industries Corp.
Shanghai Automotive is one of GM's partners in China, where the Detroit-based automaker holds a nearly 12 percent share of the passenger vehicle and truck and bus market.
GM and other auto companies sold 7.2 million motor vehicles in China last year, including 3.8 million passenger cars.
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Hi John, could you in the future add an entry in this blog about global warming and how CO2 and other pollutants contribute to it? I've just had a healthy and lively debate with opfreak about this on "United States of Amnesia" on the SMART STRATEGIES FOR SMART CAR BUYERS blog and I feel it would be good to know what you think of the issue.
Thanks.
Here we go again. GM is selling out the American people and there job's to China who are communist's right(I thought we didn't like them)?It's amazing when you throw in some slave labor and no watchdog group's how fast the big 3 import our job's oversea's.Well I guess people don't really care,I mean almost all of our product's are made from over there anyway's,including our lead based toy's.
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