At the Chengdu Auto Forum, SAIC’s vice president, Mr. Xiao Guo Pu, announced that the Roewe 550 plugin sedan will launch in 2012. In a talk entitled ‘going greener and greener’ Mr Xiao announced SAIC’s plans for a greener line up of cars, of which the plugin 550 was a major feature.
Mr. Xiao claimed that SAIC are setting the standard for the electric car industry, and are working faster on the industrialization of hybrid and plugin electric vehicles and also carrying out research on hyrdogen fuel cells. Later this year we will see the launch of the Roewe 750 hybrid, which is also at work at the World Expo where SAIC delivered 1100 hybrid vehicles which are being used as service cars.
In 2012 Roewe will have launched the 550 plugin electric sedan and will also have another pure electric vehicle that they will launch. The 1100 cars delivered to the World Expo are a mixture of hybrid, pure electric and fuel cell vehicles, all of which are performing extremely well according to Mr. Xiao, with 97% being used on a daily basis and many of them working beyond the scope of their original limitations.
