After watching arch rival Toyota get all the glory during the past seven years for its push into gasoline-electric hybrids, General Motors Corp. now seems intent on catching up. The world’s largest automaker now has more hybrids in its lineups or on the way than Toyota does, with the latest two having been introduced at auto shows earlier this month.

These newest ones are the 2009 Chevrolet Silverado 1500 full-size pickup, unveiled in Los Angeles, and the Cadillac Escalade full-size sport utility vehicle, shown first in Miami, then in Los Angeles.

Equipped with GM’s new two-mode hybrid system, which is similar to the setup used by Toyota, these two new hybrids go on sale next year. The Escalade will arrive in the summer, and the Silverado in late fall.

They will join two other hybrid SUVs introduced at auto shows this year, the Chevrolet Tahoe and GMC Yukon. The Tahoe and Yukon are built on the same architecture as the Silverado and Escalade – GM’s newest full-size truck platform known as GMT900 – so extending the Tahoe/Yukon hybrid system to the pickup and Escalade was easy.

GM also has two hybrid cars and a compact SUV in its lineups for 2008, using the same two-mode technology found in the big trucks/SUVs. They are the 2008 Saturn Aura Green Line and Chevrolet Malibu Hybrid mid-size sedans and the Saturn Vue Green Line, a small crossover utility vehicle.

The Vue Green Line is built on the same architecture as the Chevrolet Equinox, Pontiac Torrent and Suzuki Grand Vitara. Although none of the others has a hybrid version yet, I do expect to see the Vue’s system extended to at least the Chevy and Pontiac models soon. It wouldn’t be difficult to add it to the Suzuki, which is built alongside the others at a plant in Canada, but that decision would be made by Suzuki, a GM partner that markets its vehicles through its own separate U.S. dealer network.

GMC’s Sierra pickup, which is a close sibling of the Silverado, eventually will get the same hybrid system used in the Chevy.

The Silverado hybrid will be offered only in the crew-cab body style and will be available with two- or four-wheel drive. It’s expected to have a cruising range of more than 500 miles, GM said during the Los Angeles introduction. It will be able to start out and drive up to 30 m.p.h. on electric power only; the electric motor also will add power during passing at highway speeds.

GM already had light-hybrid versions of the Silverado and Sierra on the market, using a system that boosted fuel economy by about 10 per cent to 12 per cent using a single electric motor in the transmission.

But the new two-mode system, with two electric motors in the transmission (one for propulsion, one for accessories and battery charging), will boost overall fuel economy of the pickups and large SUVs by 25 per cent to 30 per cent GM says.

The city mileage figure, 21 miles per US gallon for the two-wheel-drive GM SUVs, is a 50-per-cent improvement over that of gasoline-only versions and is on par with the EPA city ratings of popular four-cylinder mid-size sedans such as the Toyota Camry and Honda Accord. The highway mileage rating for the two-wheel-drive SUVs is 22, quite impressive for a full-size vehicle such as this. These ratings are expected to be the same for the Silverado and Sierra hybrids. Gasoline-only versions of the Tahoe, with the 5.3-litre V8 engine, are rated at 14 city/20 highway.

Hybrid versions of the big SUVs and pickups come with a 6.0-litre V8 engine that also features automatic cylinder deactivation to help boost highway fuel economy. This system, which cuts half the cylinders during highway cruising, also is featured on the 5.3-litre gasoline-only models of these vehicles, which accounts for the 20 m.p.g. highway rating.

The Malibu and Aura models are the first hybrid cars in GM’s lineup. I would expect GM to extend the technology to other cars, as well, including the Pontiac G6 midsize sedan and couple, which is built on the same architecture.

In the Malibu and Aura, the two-mode hybrid system boosts fuel economy to EPA ratings of 24 m.p.g. city/32 highway, up from 22/30 for the four-cylinder gasoline models and 18/29 for the base 3.5-litre V6 models. The 3.6-litre V6 models are rated at 17/26. Both the Aura and Malibu hybrids come with a four-cylinder gasoline engine coupled with the electric drive system.

Setting the hybrid prices at a premium of less than $3,000 US over the base prices of the gasoline models of the Aura and Malibu shows that GM is more serious about actually selling some of these cars than some other automakers have been with some of their hybrids, including Toyota and Honda.

Prices have not been announced yet for the hybrid versions of the Tahoe, Yukon, Escalade and Silverado, but GM says they will not be significantly higher than those of similarly equipped gasoline-only models.

Ford Motor Co. has followed the same philosophy as GM in pricing its model at a small premium over similar gasoline-only models. That’s the Ford Escape compact SUV, which entered its second generation for 2008.

The hybrid system uses a four-cylinder gasoline engine combined with an electric motor to give the Escape the power of a V6.