The Chevy Cruze
America’s largest auto maker is going green bigtime these days. Amid rumors of bankruptcy and sagging stock prices earlier this year, GM made a bold move, announcing the installation of a solar roof on its factory in Zaragoza, Spain.
Early in August, GM decided to bring its going green philosophy home to the USA by installing solar panels on the roof of its White Marsh, Maryland transmission assembly plant. The move will generate 1.2 megawatts of power and cut the plant’s electricity bill by 20 percent by 2009. The system will use more than 8700 individual solar panels and will cover approximately 300,000 square feet, making it the largest solar power installation on the East Coast.
The deal is a win/win for both GM and SunEdison, which will finance, install, operate and maintain the system and will make money by keeping some of the electricity generated. The solar panel roof will cost GM nothing. Now, this is thinking outside the box and I, for one, hope more big corporations will consider going green with partnerships of this sort.
GM’s green thinking extends beyond plants to cars. Currently it is working on the next generation of small, fuel-efficient vehicles such as the Chevy Cruze, a conventional small car that could get around 45 mpg and the much publicized Chevy Volt, a new all electric vehicle.
Not bad for a company that almost lost its shirt by betting the farm on gas guzzling trucks and SUV’s, and is still trying to unload its Hummer division.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:42 am
I think this is what the company needs to do to become competitive in this new market. Hopefully they come out with some cars that are low priced and get good gas mileage so they can compete with some of those foreign powerhouses.
September 16th, 2008 at 5:11 pm
It would be nice to see GM get back on the road again–the green road that is:-)