GM 2-Mode Hybrid Powertrain Wins 2009 Best New Green Technology Award
General Motors 2-mode Hybrid Powertrain was declared the inaugural winner of the 2009 Best New Green Technology award the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC). The award was announced today during a press conference at the Montreal International Auto Show.
"AJAC's Best New Green Technology award, presented by Shell Canada, was established to recognize innovative new developments in the auto industry that will be of benefit to the Canadian consumer," said Canadian Car of the Year and technology award chairman Richard Russell. "Virtually every manufacturer is working to reduce fuel consumption and exhaust emissions. We want to look at these efforts and award those we feel are worthy of recognition."
Russell further commented, "Continual development has made the modern passenger vehicle a very clean device. But we cannot let up on efforts to reduce the effect it has on the environment we will hand off to future generations."
All entries for this inaugural award were judged by a panel of AJAC members with specific technical qualifications who regularly report on industry engineering and technical trends. The panel chose GM's 2-Mode Hybrid Powertrain because until now, consumers looking for a fuel-efficient utility vehicle had to sacrifice a great deal of cargo-hauling and trailer-towing capacity. This was necessary because of the limited load capabilities of the transmission systems in most hybrid passenger vehicles. GM changed that with the introduction of a new electrically variable transmission (EVT) on Tahoe and Yukon Hybrids. It offers the best of both worlds - a hybrid system that blends continuously variable
operation (for low-load driving situations) with fixed-gear operation (for high-load conditions such as towing or highway driving). Used in concert with the Vortec 6.0L Gen IV V-8 engine with Active Fuel Management, this system provides excellent economy and full-size SUV passenger-carrying, cargo-hauling and trailer-towing capabilities. Furthermore, the EVT is designed to bolt directly to the standard four-wheel-drive transfer case allowing true four-wheel-drive capability.
AJAC's annual Canadian Car of the Year awards program was created in 1985 with the purpose of providing consumers with sound, comparative information on vehicles that are new to the market.
For that reason, the vote results that determined today's winners are available to consumers as a resource buying guide on the AJAC web site. Also available are the comparative test data derived from the journalists' extensive week long evaluation of over 170 new vehicles in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario in October. This annual event is known in the
industry as "TestFest". Shell Canada is the official fuel supplier of the event.
The rigorous TestFest evaluation program includes real world driving on public roads - exactly where consumers drive so that the test and vote results posted to the AJAC web site are directly relevant to potential car and truck buyers.
