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General Motors is getting short-circuited among its hybrid offerings. Thankfully, its the batteries which it did not produce, relying on third-party vendors.
The faulty batteries only affect the hybrid Saturn offerings, namely the Vue and Aura Green Line. The repercussions of the need to replace the faulty batteries, however, could be seen in the delayed launch of both Chevrolet's Malibu hybrid and the 2008 hybrid offerings of Saturn themselves.
Talk about bad timing. The ever-rising price of gas has a led to a demand for the fuel efficiency that a hybrid can offer, a demand that GM has been unable to capitalize upon having had to replace around 9,000 battery packs. Though it is unknown the extent of sales lost to both the production stoppages of the batteries to repair the problem and to the reputation of the brands, there's no doubt that sales were lost, even if they didn't amount to the equivalent of 9,000 battery packs.
Our take? GM stated that these things happen with new technologies. Unfortunately we, don't remember a problem of the same extent with the original Prius. Perhaps we, too, have succumbed to the stereotypes of Toyota reliability
via Auto Week
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