DETROIT -- A plug-in hybrid in two years? That's what General Motors hinted at with the introduction of the Saturn Vue Green Line Plug-In Hybrid at Detroit's auto show this week. It could be here in 2010, GM says, able to drive more than 30 miles on battery power exclusively before needing to switch to its gasoline engine. GM also showed off the Vue 2-Mode Hybrid that will ship at the end of this year. The current generation Vue is a capable mid-size SUV, unlike the uniformly mediocre first-generation Vue.

With the Plug-In Hybrid, you connect to a wall socket in your garage via a special adapter cable. A full charge takes four to five hours and might be less if you lay in 220-volt service. From there, you motor on for as many as 34 miles, then the gasoline engine kicks in, which powers the Vue and also recharges the battery in idle moments. The result is outrageously good composite gas mileage, 50 to 150 mpg, depending on how outrageously you calculate the low cost of electricity and how many trips GM thinks you make that are 34 miles or less. GM hints it could be ready in two years, or sometime in 2010. That assumes continuing breakthroughs in lithium ion battery technology. While not as sensational as the Chevy Volt concept car of the 2007 North American International Auto Show, the Vue is a more realistic potential production vehicle.

Closer to the present, and definitely on track, is the Vue Two-Mode Hybrid, that runs on battery, gasoline, or both. The battery pack is meant to drive the Vue off from a standstill and, if you're lucky, go a mile or two before the engine kicks in (sooner if you accelerate hard or get past 20 mph). I drove the same hybrid system in a vastly bigger vehicle, the GMC Yukon hybrid and got mileage in the low 20s; the Vue Hybrid will likely come in a half-ton under the 5,600 pounds of the Yukon Hybrid. Not as dramatic as some of the concept cars here at NAIAS 2008, but eminently more real-world.