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Holden chairman and managing director Mark Reuss has revealed the company will manufacture its locally-built range with 85 per cent ethanol-compatible engines.
"I've always said we'll take leadership on ethanol and we're going to provide the vehicles to do that,” he says.
Reuss points out GM already has Saab BioPower E85 vehicles in the market, but there was more required to stimulate infrastructure, fuel production and policy in Australia.
"We're committing to have locally-built Holdens running E85 by 2010 — ethanol is a renewable fuel and the costs are relatively small to modify existing technologies to make it viable," he says.
A version of the VE Commodore Omega V6 is already exported to Brazil and certified to run on up to a 25 per cent ethanol blend.
He refuses to confirm any plans to build a small car at the Elizabeth plant but believes one could be competitively manufactured there.
"We've got some great global platforms within GM that are very, very competitive,” Reuss says.
"It's something we'd love to do and, you know, we've looked at it — we're just not in a position to say whether we are or aren't doing it.”
Reuss is confident the GM global platforms could be used by Holden in an economically viable way to produce a competitive vehicle.
"It could be done in Australia in a cost-competitive way — that's why we design the global platform, it's not just for a single country," he says.
Reuss has also put an end to speculation about the Chevrolet Volt electric car's brand badge when it arrives in Australia in 2012.
"There was a lot of speculation as to what brand that car would be, it will have the lion on the front of it, it be the Holden Volt and that's very exciting for us," he says.
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