Watch original video:

DETROIT — Just weeks after ending a year marked by frightful sales and a founded on bailout of General Motors and Chrysler, U.S. automakers Sunday touted new products with a focus on fuel efficiency that they say will help ensure their cars and trucks will roll off assembly lines for years to arrive.

Amid a crowd of manifold hundred cheering employees, dealers and retirees at the North American International Auto Show, General Motors announced plans to build a 40-mile-per-gallon minicar for the U.S. market and it unveiled an electric-powered Cadillac concept car.

Meanwhile, Chrysler’s chief executory told reporters that while its lock opener modern products won’t show up in dealer showrooms until next year, the automaker expects to survive 2009 and remain and independent house.

Ford uttered that by 2011, it will sell an electric car that be likely to go up to 100 miles on a isolated charge and it will propound plug-in versions of its gas-electric hybrid vehicles a year later.

And Toyota told The New York Times it plans to introduce its plug-in hybrid electric medium in late 2009, a year earlier than originally planned, and a year ahead of the Chevrolet Volt.

Late last month, the Bush administration approved $17.4 billion in short-term loans by reason of GM and Chrysler after the two automakers warned that they could run out of cash soon. Ford didn’t take any one ruling power money, saying it had access to enough credit.

GM CEO Rick Wagoner said the company’s restructuring plans submitted to Congress, which include concessions from the United Auto Workers union and other cost cuts, combined with GM’s lineup of novel products, will compel the company prosper when the worldwide auto emporium recovers.

“We’ll be in a position to run the business at break-even or profitable at a abundant, much smaller assiduity than frankly a year ago that we ever felt would be possible to deal with,” Wagoner said.

Chrysler’s Robert Nardelli said that while his body’session plan for new vehicles has a hole in it for 2009, the automaker will make it to 2010, when it plans to introduce an marked by electricity car and a subcompact. It also has a new 300 sedan, Charger performance car and Jeep Grand Cherokee in the works.

Many analysts take predicted, however, that Chrysler will be acquired by another automaker by next year, or sold in pieces by means of its majority owner Cerberus Capital Management.

Ford’s executive chairman, Bill Ford Jr., said the partnership is operating in succession four high-mileage electric vehicles to be introduced in the coming years.

Ford plans to have a battery-powered commercial van in continuance the market in 2010.

Original text: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2008616878_autoshow12.html?syndication=rss