17.09.2007

Opel has green outlook with scrappage programme



A hybrid version of the Opel Corsa made its world debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show last week. The new variant of the popular supermini is powered by a 1.3 litre diesel engine mated to an electric motor to give lower emissions and higher fuel economy. It looked ready for the showroom, but officially is only a prototype. So when is it going on sale? Jonathan Browning is GM Europe’s vice-president of sales, marketing and Aftersales commented: “Hybrids are an important step on the path, but we’re working on the balance between proving the technology and gauging what is an attractive consumer proposition.

Right now, it’s still extremely marginal in terms of trading a regular diesel internal combustion engine for a hybrid. We don’t see an immediate need to have a large scale presence with hybrids.” Browning said GM’s current focus was on the E-Flex, the basic vehicle architecture on which the Volt and Flextreme eco-friendly concept cars have been built. The company has committed to getting E-Flex vehicles to market by 2010 or 2011. “We think the step to widespread adoption of hybrids will come with the step to something like E-Flex, rather than the intervening executions of a hybrid. There are hybrids in the global GM portfolio, but the question is at what time does it make sense to try to get widespread adoption of those in Europe.”

He was also keen to highlight GM’s other environmental initiatives, such as its scrappage programme. Launched on 5 June in the UK and three other European countries, it sees customer incentives of up to £1,000 discount on the greenest new cars if an older vehicle is traded in and sent to the breaker’s yard at the same time. So far, almost 20,000 ‘dirty’ vehicles have been taken off the continent’s roads in this way, and the scheme is being rolled out in more EU countries soon.www.autotrade.ie has requested from Opel Ireland information concerning the Republic - if and when the scrappage scheme will be launched here? We await a reply and will post the details immediately.

“Focusing on things like the scrappage scheme and our E85 bioethanol cars shows there’s a much broader context to the environmental strategy than saying hybrid is the solution, which it blatantly isn’t,” added Browning. 

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