In the late 1960s, General Motors Company directed its GM R&D and Pontiac divisions to develop concept mini-cars for urban drivers. GM developed the XP-883 an experimental

plug-in hybrid A plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) or simply plug-in hybrid is a type of hybrid electric vehicle equipped with a rechargeable battery pack that can be directly replenished via a charging cable plugged into an external electric power so ...

car demonstrated by

General Motors General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. The company is most known for owning and manufacturing f ...

in 1969. Primarily intended as a commuter vehicle, the very small car had a

fiberglass Fiberglass (American English) or fibreglass (English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English) is a common type of fibre-reinforced plastic, fiber-reinforced plastic using glass fiber. The fibers may be randomly arranged, flattened i ...

body with a design resembling the future

Chevrolet Chevette The Chevrolet Chevette is a front-engine, rear-drive subcompact manufactured and marketed by Chevrolet for model years 1976–1987 as a three-door or five-door hatchback. Introduced in North America in September 1975, the Chevette superseded ...

. The two-door

hatchback A hatchback is a car body style, car body configuration with a rear door that swings upward to provide access to the main interior of the car as a cargo area rather than just to a separated trunk. Hatchbacks may feature fold-down second-row sea ...

had seating for two adults and two children, though the children sat in rear-facing seats and would enter and exit through the tailgate. It was powered by the combination of a two-cylinder engine and a DC

electric motor An electric motor is a machine that converts electrical energy into mechanical energy. Most electric motors operate through the interaction between the motor's magnetic field and electric current in a electromagnetic coil, wire winding to gene ...

plus batteries. Electricity was stored in six 12-volt batteries placed between the rear wheels. The related Pontiac concept was the Pontiac X-4 with a radical two stroke aircraft type radial engine. At , the engine was small enough to bypass laws of the day mandating emissions control devices. The batteries could be charged using a standard 115-volt wall outlet and could power the vehicle in all-electric mode during city driving. In hybrid mode, it had a maximum speed of , which could be reached in 28 seconds. A speed of could be attained in twelve seconds. The electric motor powered the car until it reached , at which point the gasoline engine would kick in when running in hybrid mode. At cruising speeds, the gasoline engine would normally provide all of the power. While the XP-883 was built using off-the-shelf technology, General Motors did not provide an electric car to consumers until about 25 years later, when the GM EV1 was made available for lease (at the same time the factory Chevrolet S-10 EV was manufactured for sale as opposed to strictly for lease). GM's full hybrid system appeared first in their city buses and their first "mild" hybrid light vehicles, called

BAS Hybrid BAS (belted alternator starter) is a category of automotive parallel hybrid technology that uses an electric motor to contribute power to the internal combustion engine's crankshaft via a serpentine belt. By mounting this motor generator unit in t ...

, appeared in 2006 as a MY2007 Saturn Vue Green Line. A non-bus light vehicle version of GM's "Two-Mode" full hybrid system entered the market in 2008 in various MY2009 vehicles, for details see Global Hybrid Cooperation. In late 2010, GM introduced the original generation of the

Chevrolet Volt The Chevrolet Volt is an electric vehicle car that was manufactured by General Motors, and also marketed in rebadged variants as the Holden Volt in Australia and New Zealand and the Buick Velite 5 in China, and with a different fascia as the ...

, calling such a vehicle technology related to the pioneer XP-883 an EREV (Extended Range Electric Vehicle).

References

External links

Finkbuilt: Hybrid Car Ready in 1969
– ''Wired'' Blogs Autopia. {{DEFAULTSORT:General Motors XP-883 XP-883 Electric concept cars