Will General Motors produce a Chevy Volt for retail sale by 1 August 2009?

afloat in a cantankerous economy, but Wayne Alexander has his hands full keeping up with demand for his cars. Alexander converts gas-powered vehicles to all-electric systems in his south-central Kansas garage, where business is booming and backed up.

is unacceptable,' Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said last week. 'We need a business model based on cars of the future, and we already know what that future is: the plug-in hybrid electric car.' But the car company Schumer and other lawmakers envision

with an energy policy. They took action on their own by driving less and switching to more fuel-efficient cars. The results are dramatic, but also problematic. The good news is that gasoline consumption has fallen compared with a year earlier in every

When Robert A. Lutz, vice chairman of General Motors, introduced a new wrinkle in hybrid electric cars to the automotive press at the 2007 Detroit auto show, he deftly offered a fuel-economy rating sure to grab headlines: 150

showrooms until late 2010. But it is already straining under the weight of an entire company. Executives at General Motors, the largest and apparently the most imperiled of the three American car companies, are using the Volt as the centerpiece of their