GM To Offer Best In Class Mileage With Cruze

GM has just announced it will produce a new high volume compact car here in the States. The Cruze, as it will be named, will equal or best the hybrid Prius, 45MPG. And, it will do so with substantially less complication, no costly and environmentally toxic hybrid powertrain, substantially lower end of life disposal costs and theoretically substantially less warranty or repair costs. In other words, if quality standards are achieved, this is a far superior product than the current Prius in the economy segment. GM obviously has the option of hybrid-izing this car as well with its mild or full hybrid technology should the market demand it. I doubt current hybrid technology demand will develop. And, if GM is as close to HCCI as many rumblings now lead us to believe, we could see a relatively large footprint automobile, such as the Cruze, get upwards of 55 MPG within a short period of time. No expensive or complicated hybrid technology required. While the Volt gets all of the attention in the press, this is the key platform to GM's success in the North American high mileage space. The Volt's technology and complexity are too expensive to position it as a high volume vehicle.

The Cruze is a very smart design in a segment where style hasn't been an option from too many manufacturers. Corolla? Prius? Civic? Sentra? Not exactly design award winners. The Cruze looks Audi-ish from the front and side and BMW 3 Series-ish from behind.

GM has never built a world-class high mileage car in the U.S. Ever. A sad reality to the incompetence that has ruled GM for decades. GM has often said it was too expensive to build a world-class compact car here and make money doing it. Anyone who understands Toyota's Production System, the benchmark for lean manufacturing excellence, realizes this is ridiculous gruel of incompetent management.

The Cruze will replace the Cobalt which has an average selling price of about $13,000. The Prius and Civic, by comparison, have average selling prices of $19,000 or higher. GM is leaving at least $6,000 on the table with every Cobalt they sell because of an inferior quality - be it product quality, manufacturing quality, design quality or any other measurement of quality. I would assume the Cruze will be priced near $20,000. If GM can't make money on a high volume compact car selling for $20,000, then monkeys are running the zoo.