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Yesterday General Motors revealed that its Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid car would boast fuel consumption of 230 miles per gallon in city driving making it far more efficient than existing environmentally friendly cars. Fritz Henderson, GM’s chief executive, provided the estimate as part of a drive to burnish the car maker’s image and win back customers since its emergence from a court-supervised restructuring early last month. The Volt, due to go into production in late 2010, will be powered mainly by a battery pack with a 40-mile range. A small internal combustion engine will extend the range by recharging the battery while the car is in motion. The 230 mpg fuel-consumption figure is based on draft guidelines being developed by the US Environmental Protection Agency. Toyota’s Prius hatch-back, the top-selling hybrid, carries a fuel-economy rating of 48 mpg.

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Cars and light trucks will be required to meet a US fuel-economy average of 27.3 mpg for 2011 models, a 2 mpg increase from the previous year’s level, the Transportation Department said. The 8% gain announced today in Washington carries out a 2007 law intended to curb emissions and fuel use. The change, being put in place as General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC face possible bankruptcy, isn’t as aggressive as the 27.8 mpg target that President George W. Bush proposed in April 2008. “This isn’t going to be a stretch for them to meet this,” David Kelly, former acting head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration under Bush, said of automakers. New-car fuel economy already averaged 31.3 mpg by 2007, NHTSA said . Cars must average 30.2 mpg, up from 27.5 currently, under the rule.

Light trucks will average 24.1, up from 23.5 mpg for 2010 models. The December 2007 law called for vehicles to meet a 35 mpg standard by 2020 models, a 40 % increase from the average in 2008. “The bad news is that the 27.3 mpg standard means that they’ll have to make up for it in future years,” said Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign, a group in Washington that works for environmentally “clean” cars. “The goods news is that they have promised that they will.” President Barack Obama’s administration had a March 31 deadline for setting the standard, giving the industry about 18 months to prepare its 2011 models to meet the requirement. Bush never issued his proposed standard before he left office.

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