In the late 1960s, General Motors Company directed its GM R&D and Pontiac divisions to develop concept mini-cars for urban drivers. GM developed the XP-883 an experimental

plug-in hybrid A plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) is a hybrid electric vehicle whose battery pack can be recharged by plugging a charging cable into an external electric power source, in addition to internally by its on-board internal combustion engin ...

car demonstrated by

General Motors The General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It is the largest automaker in the United States and ...

in 1969. Primarily intended as a commuter vehicle, the very small car had a fiberglass body with a design resembling the future Chevrolet Chevette. The two-door

hatchback A hatchback is a car body configuration with a rear door that swings upward to provide access to a cargo area. Hatchbacks may feature fold-down second row seating, where the interior can be reconfigured to prioritize passenger or cargo volume. ...

had seating for two adults and two children, though the children sat in rear-facing seats and would enter and exit through the tailgate. It was powered by the combination of a two-cylinder engine and a DC electric motor. Electricity was stored in six 12-volt batteries placed between the rear wheels. The related Pontiac concept was the

Pontiac X-4 Pontiac may refer to: *Pontiac (automobile), a car brand *Pontiac (Ottawa leader) ( – 1769), a Native American war chief Places and jurisdictions Canada * Pontiac, Quebec, a municipality **Apostolic Vicariate of Pontiac, now the Roman Catholic D ...

with a radical two stroke aircraft type radial engine. At , the engine was small enough to bypass laws of the day mandating emissions control devices. The batteries could be charged using a standard 115-volt wall outlet and could power the vehicle in all-electric mode during city driving. In hybrid mode, it had a maximum speed of , which could be reached in 28 seconds. A speed of could be attained in twelve seconds. The electric motor powered the car until it reached , at which point the gasoline engine would kick in when running in hybrid mode. At cruising speeds, the gasoline engine would normally provide all of the power. While the XP-883 was built using off-the-shelf technology, General Motors did not provide an electric car to consumers until about 25 years later, when the

GM EV1 The General Motors EV1 was an electric car produced and leased by General Motors from 1996 to 1999. It was the first mass-produced and purpose-designed electric vehicle of the modern era from a major automaker and the first GM car designed to ...

was made available for lease (at the same time the factory

Chevrolet S-10 EV The Chevrolet S-10 Electric was an American electric-powered vehicle built by Chevrolet. It was introduced in 1997, becoming the world's first electric pickup truck, updated in 1998, and then discontinued. It was an OEM BEV variant of Chevrolet' ...

was manufactured for sale as opposed to strictly for lease). GM's full hybrid system appeared first in their city buses and their first "mild" hybrid light vehicles, called BAS Hybrid, appeared in 2006 as a MY2007 Saturn Vue Green Line. A non-bus light vehicle version of GM's "Two-Mode" full hybrid system entered the market in 2008 in various MY2009 vehicles, for details see

Global Hybrid Cooperation Global Hybrid Cooperation, formerly Advanced Hybrid System 2 (AHS2), is a set of hybrid vehicle technologies jointly developed by General Motors, Daimler, and Chrysler LLC, with BMW joining in 2005. It uses 2 or 3 planetary gearsets in an automat ...

. In late 2010, GM introduced the original generation of the Chevrolet Volt, calling such a vehicle technology related to the pioneer XP-883 an EREV (Extended Range Electric Vehicle).

References

External links

Finkbuilt: Hybrid Car Ready in 1969
– ''Wired'' Blogs Autopia. {{DEFAULTSORT:General Motors XP-883 XP-883 Electric concept cars