GM made a hybrid in '69

I've been sitting on this one for a bit. I'm not sure what's tougher to acknowledge - that GM still doesn't have a worthy production hybrid car, or that they made a working concept of one decades before Honda and Toyota. Frustration aside, Finkbuilt came across an ancient Popular Science article that talks about GM's working XP-883 hybrid-drive commuter car. From a '69 issue of Popular Science...

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You may think this little hybrid is pretty far advanced, but the fact is that it could be built today.

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Even though the technology may have been available, it was far from meeting the expectations of the American consumer. It did zero to 40 in 12 seconds and reached its top speed of 60 in another 16. And the batteries, however adequate they might have been for the prototype, were far inferior to the NiMH batteries that make today's hybrid cars work. These and many others would probably be GM's excuses.

Nonetheless, GM doesn't seem to have any plans to offer a "from the ground up" hybrid car. Instead, they are offering hybrid drive as an option on many of their existing Silverado/ Sierra based trucks as well as the Saturn Vue. Much of these offerings, however, do not yield much of an increase in gas mileage, so they are not likely to sell as well as hybrid cars like the Prius and Civic. To curb the criticism for the time being, GM will talk more about hydrogen technology and how they'll allegedly be working real hard on that.

Illustration credit: Finkbuilt/ Popular Science