Remaking The Car

March 25, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

SHANGHAI

It’s not quite as foldable as the space vehicle that cartoon figure George Jetson pops into his briefcase as he bops into the office.

But the EN-V concept car, GM’s “automobile solution” for the future, just might fit into an apartment foyer.

General Motors and its Chinese partner, SAIC, will showcase the “Electric Networked-Vehicle,” launched Wednesday in their joint pavilion, at the Shanghai Expo that opens May 1 and runs for six months.

The EN-V, pronounced “envy,” is GM’s latest effort to burnish its credentials as a future-focused, environmentally friendly company and shed its image as the bastion of the gas guzzling Hummer. The automaker is in the process of winding down Hummer after a deal collapsed to sell it to a Chinese heavy-equipment maker.

GM is not alone in viewing China as the ultimate landscape for tiny urban vehicles. Daimler introduced its Smart ultracompact here in 2008, though few of them can be seen yet on Shanghai streets.

The two-wheel, two-seater EN-V, which looks something like an oversized vacuum cleaner, is not just about making vehicles small, lightweight and emission-free, the company says.

“What we’re talking about here is completely redoing the automobile,” says Michael Albano, director of product and technology communications at General Motors International Operations — its global headquarters for international business in Shanghai.

With the trunkless EN-V, GM has jettisoned the traditional “three box” system and gasoline-fueled engine in place of a pure-electric minivehicle meant strictly for city driving. Five fit in the parking space needed for one conventional vehicle, says Kevin Wale, president and managing director for GM China Group.

The 1.5 meter by 1.5 meter (about 5 foot by 5 foot) EN-V appears to build on GM’s earlier work with Segway Inc. in developing the PUMA, or Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility, vehicle. It will use the same types of battery cells as the Segway and the same battery supplier, Valence Technology Inc., said Christopher Borroni-Bird, GM’s director of advanced-technology vehicle concepts.

With the EN-V, GM proposes to reconstruct the automobile’s “DNA.”

The EN-V’s maximum speed of40 kilometers per hour (24 mph) — even now city roads average only 20 kilometers per hour (12 mph) and often less — and other high-tech features reduce the need for heavy, high-stress steel, bumpers, air bags and crumple zones, says Albano.