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April 24, 2007
GM discontinues the parallel hybrid Silverado and Sierra trucks
A few years back General Motors silently introduced the PHT versions of the Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra pickups. The parallel hybrid trucks (PHT) had GM's first cut at a mild hybrid system. Unfortunately, they never provided much fuel economy benefit only giving about 2mpg more than a standard truck. Like the system used on the Saturn Vue and Aura, it can't move the vehicle on battery power alone.The roughly 3,000 examples that were sold mostly went to fleet users such as contractors. The biggest draw of the motor/generator was actually the ability to use the system as a 2400W generator at any time. The trucks each had four 120V AC outlets which were handy for plugging in tools and other equipment. The electricity could be generated while the trucks were left idling, which obviously wouldn't seem to provide much environmental benefit unless compared to carrying around an extra generator which would likely be a lot noisier and dirtier than the truck engine.
Thank goodness it's gone!! Anytime a right winger wanted to talk about hybrids this was the go to hybrid of choice for them to complain about. The never ending snark was starting to get annoying. This was a crappy American mild hybrid, it's no comparison to a Prius or even a Honda Civic. It was merely a regular car with a built in generator and nothing else, stop pretending it was a significant contribution to the hybrid model. I'm glad to see organizations like Hybrid Watch not even listing these, as what can only be described as extremely mild hybrids, as hybrids at all. It's just an attempt by short sighted American producers to try to give themselves the air of technological innovation that they long since abandoned fifty years ago, all while trying to undermine real companies to help save America from the impending Oil Crisis. Ford is the only American automaker that even tried to build a Hybrid and they ended up just buying the first generation hybrid technology from Toyota so they could actually get it to work.
Read more over at Green Congress.
Posted by Jamison at April 24, 2007 3:15 PM
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