I am or have been the owner (mainly though work) of 6 Hybrid or Alt Fuel vehicles and I have a few thoughts for GM which might help them out going forward.

First off the Hybird Silverado is a great vehicle. I have two of them and have had a total of 45,000 trouble free miles since February 17th of 2011. The proof of this is my person truck which I bought used - the sales manager of the multi brand dealership I bought it from used it as his personal truck. He could have chosen any of a hundred vehicles but the Hybrid Silverado had the best ride and features. This brings me to my first point -

You don't market your hybrids at all. I have only had one person approach me to say they had heard of the Hybrid before. I have ad dozens of Silverdo owners ask me about it and more than a few who would have bought one if they had know about it - this brings up point number 2

You don't make your dealers sell or support the hardware. My local Chevy dealer refused to sell us Silverado Hybrids - I had to go out of the area to buy them. In addition my local chevy dealer always try's to add on extra charges for service 'because it's a hybrid.' I now take to the local GMC dealer who treats it like any other truck - no extra charges ever. When Ford brought out the Hybrid Escape (which I bought and drove to 130,000 miles) they FORCED all of their dealers to sell and support it and they made sure they did not rip of customers with excessive fees on the service end. Toyota did the exact same thing (they don't need to now). GM seems to let their dealers misbehave and trash the product and the customers - this is not a strategy that will lead to success.

Like other Hybrid manufactures you load the vehicles up with too much bling - I know the hybrid adds cost to the vehicle, but I would much rather just pay the extra cost upfront than get fancy seats and power ashtrays (which are maint problems later). I am a government fleet customer - build me a no frills Hybrid please. I can get a bare bones Natural Gas F-250 truck from Ford (via an upfitter) for less money than I can get a Chevy Hybrid 1500. Ford did this with the Escape Hybrid with much success the Feds bought thousands of them. I am buying a powertrain not a showhorse.

In short - market your product, control your dealers and build a fleet version.

By the way the Volt is nice - but at 6'6" I would rather drive a Prius.

I will let other folks chime in .

 

Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback about the hybrid vehicles, cdbrow1. We great appreciate you.

Michelle, GM Customer Service assisting Katie

 

after owning the escalade hybrid, I will not drive anything else.

 

I have an 08 yukon hybrid and it has been almost flawless. It is THE perfect combination of performance, luxury, size, and economy.
G.M. never really went after the "greenies" and I still get the "i never knew they MADE a hybrid" from a lot of people. Everyone I talk to is impressed with it and after a test drive they are usually blown away.
I think that pricing was the other fatal flaw as people are not comfortable spending that kind of money on an "experimental" vehicle. I try to point out to them that the technology has been in use for years but still get the "how much do the batteries cost to replace" question. Well I can't answer that one as it has a 100,000 mile drive train warranty and I have never heard of any failures of the system. Even after the 100k is reached it will be far less expensive (IF you ever needed to do it at all) to replace a battery pack rather than buy a new car.
Its to bad GM threw in the towel on this as I love mine.

 

I own a 2008 Yukon,I drove and worked on one in hybrid training.When I got home from training I went looking to buy one in 2009,very difficult to find. I own an auto repair business and work on hybrids,most people that see my Yukon at work indicate to me they never knew GM made Hybrid trucks. I can't understand why GM never marketed such a wonderful vehicle. Is it true GM stopped making the 2 mode,if so,what a mistake ?

 

i think it's a combination of factors that ultimately called for the demise of the current hybrid... remember that this was released 5+ yrs ago and during that time, the global economy went thru a major crisis which severely impacted the major US auto companies and took GM from #1 to #2. let's not also forget the gas prices and the value reset consumers had to adjust to.

the product is obviously grade A. i love mine! takes a bit of digging to "get it" and for me it was my uncle's purchase back in 2008 that caught my attention.

 

Good stuff

http://m.automobilemag.com/features/...y_of_the_year/