General Motors Green Car Advisor Blog on Edmunds' Inside Line

August 27, 2008

Flint Offers GM Millions in Tax Breaks for Locating Volt Engine Plant There

Flint, Michigan -- the city made famous by a Michael Moore documentary about the devastating financial and emotional hits the city suffered as General Motors laid off thousands of workers there while reaping record profits -- has agreed to give GM millions of dollars in tax incentives if the automaker builds an engine plant for the Chevrolet Volt in the poverty-sticken community.

GM asked for the tax breaks to help support its $359 million investment in a new plant where workers will build 1.4-liter turbo engines for the Volt plug-in hybrid, as well as GM's new compact car, the Chevy Cruze. The proposed 500,000-square-foot facility, which would be built near Flint Engine South and Flint Truck, would retain about 300 jobs.

The automaker plans to begin production of the Volt in late 2010.

GM's request for incentives, approved Monday by the Flint City Council, stirred unease among some residents in GM's birthplace, where thousands of jobs have been eliminated over the years.

"A lot of people still feel ... General Motors owes us more than just a couple hundred jobs," Councilman Jim Ananich said the other day, according to an article in The Detroit News. "But as competitive as the market is and the trouble General Motors is having, we have to help them with whatever we can do to keep them competitive."

The city extended an existing abatement of 100 percent of the personal property taxes until 2033 and granted GM a 50-percent, 15-year abatement of real property taxes.

The City Council also approved a GM redevelopment plan for the proposed engine plant that makes GM eligible for state tax credits. The automaker is further seeking billions of dollars in low-interest loans from Congress to develop fuel-efficient vehicles such as the Volt, and GM is lobbying Congress for a $7,000 federal tax rebate for Volt buyers.

The Census Bureau reported Tuesday that a whopping 35.5 percent of Flint residents live in poverty, with more than one in every three Flint residents out of work.

Scott Doggett, Contributor

Posted by: Permalink | Comments (0); Scott Doggett August 27, 2008, 6:30 PM
Categories:: Batteries, Chevrolet, Fuel Economy, General Motors, Hybrid, Plug-ins and Electric
Technorati Tags:: Chevrolet Volt

August 25, 2008

First Look: How To Fill A Hydrogen Fuel-Cell Car

By John O'Dell, Senior Editor

If the though of driving around with tanks of hydrogen pressurized to 5,000 pounds per square inch makes you nervous, consider this: Fire fighters routinely enter burning buildings with 4,500 psi air tanks strapped to their backs.

With those words of assurance, GM hydrogen specialist Alex Karos led us out to the fuel-cell Equinox for our first refueling lesson.

----------

GM's Alex Karos, center, explains working of hydrogen fuel nozzle while Edmunds editors Chris Walton (left) and Brian Moody (back to camera) look on.

----------

Yup, I've driven and blogged about the Chevrolet Equniox fuel-cell electric vehicle several times in the past year, even wrote our first-drive review of it for Inside Line. But I'd never actually pumped any of its hydrogen fuel.

Well, General Motors finally has a few Equinoxes (Equinoxii? Equinii?) in its long-term media fleet and has loaned one to the crew at Edmunds for the next week.

So you'll be reading a lot more about it in up coming reviews from staffers for both Edmunds.com and Edmunds Inside Line. We here at Green Car Advisor will provide links to the pieces as they appear so you'll not miss 'em.

Still A Gas

But while you're waiting, we though we'd try to give you a feel for a fueling process that could someday replace topping off the tank with a gas other than gasoline.

Right now it's a bit more difficult - requiring a greater degree of dexterity than pulling into your local service station for a tank of regular unleaded.

We did, actually, pull into a local service station, a Shell station on the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Federal Way in West Los Angeles. Shell recently installed a hydrogen pump there as part of program, backed by the feds, to help get people used to the idea of hydrogen as a fuel for passenger cars.

There are two big islands at the station, one with a bunch of gas pumps, the other with a gas pump and the new one labeled "Shell Hydrogen."

There were 10 of us from Edmunds gathered there the other morning, all aiming to drive the Equinox while we have it and all required to go through the brief fueling lesson so we could fill it up ourselves while out there on the road.