Holden is due to start marketing the Volt, presumably under its own badge, in Australia and New Zealand early in the next decade.
“The development of the Volt remains on schedule despite the ongoing talks in Washington DC,” General Motors spokesman, Jon Lauckner, wrote last week on the GM FastLane blog.
Those talks last weekend resulted in the Bush Administration announcing a $US17 million bridging finance package for Chevy’s parent company, General Motors, and rival marque Chrysler.
“(The Volt) is one of the highest, if not the highest, priority programmes in the company and that hasn’t changed, nor has the commitment of resources to fund it,” Lauckkner said.
“In fact, with the successful completion of each development activity, we have more confidence than ever the Volt will start production as planned in late 2010.”
Lauckner says GM has already finalised the engineering for final prototypes and will begin testing them in July, 2009.
He says the temporary suspension of some work at the new Flint, Michigan, plant that will build the Volt engine “has no impact on our production timing for the Volt.”
Meanwhile, rumours are building that GM will unveil a Cadillac luxury version of the Volt at next month’s Detroit motor show.
GM product guru, Bob Lutz, has already said Cadillac needs to make a dramatic environmental statement and there’s room for an electric-powered vehicle in its line-up.
He has also said a small to midsize crossover would be a logical future use of the technology. Cadillac gets one of those, the SRX based on the Provoq concept, next year.
