Opel Reopens Its Diesel-Hybrid File

Opel already has big plans for its restructuring, despite the minor issue of being short a few billion dollars. According to an interview with Opel boss Nick Reilly in the print edition of Auto Motor und Sport, only a billion Euros of the €3.3b Opel turnaround plan is going to be spent on restructuring. The rest will be spent on new products like a city car, a “mini offroader,” and new high-tech drivetrains. According to Autocar, one of those high-tech drivetrain options is a a pairing that several firms including VW and Peugeot-Citroen already looked into but have yet to bring to market out of concern for the high cost: the diesel-electric hybrid. GM Europe’s Advanced Powertrain Chief Engineer Maurizio Cisternino explains “if you want the best fuel consumption, you have to go with the diesel-electric hybrid.” But there’s a tiny problem: Cisternino wants to get diesel-hybrid prices down to a €1,000 premium over gas-electric hybrids, a goal Cisternino admits “does not work at the moment.” Now if only GM had some government investment in the technology…

Ironically, the US government did invest over a billion dollars into GM’s diesel-electric hybrid development some ten years ago, through the Project For A New Generation of Vehicles. The brief of the Clinton-era project was to create an 80 MPG car for American families at a price they could afford. Accordingly, GM, Ford and Chrysler each built prototypes using a diesel-electric powertrain. Unfortunately, the technoogy was so expensive, taxpayers got only a single prototype from each company for their billion dollar investment. And the money doesn’t appear to have brought GM any closer to making the diesel-hybrid promise a reality. So now GM is sinking more government-sourced cash into the dream of diesel-electric, developing a new 1.6 liter turbodiesel four-banger as well as a “special unit dedicated to diesel hybridization.” Of course for any of this to approach production-readiness, the European governments are going to have to underwrite Opel’s restructuring deal. Considering the American taxpayers have already paid their end of the diesel-electric hybrid development pricetag, this seems like the fair way to go.