GM plans to vault ahead with electric car Chevrolet Volt

GM is the only automaker to have provided a timeline on production even though other companies, such as Ford Motor Co and Toyota, are working on similar technology.

"We have to reestablish GM's leadership and the Volt is, frankly, an effort to leapfrog anything that is done by any other competitor," Lutz said.

Unlike earlier gasoline-electric hybrids, which run on a system that twins battery power and a combustion engine, plug-ins are designed for short trips powered entirely by an electric motor and a battery charged through a socket at home.

Lutz said GM regrets its decision not to build a hybrid car when Toyota launched its game-changing Prius in 1997.

"We kind of lost the first couple of laps of the green car race," Lutz said, saying they couldn't go to GM's board "for a multihundred-million program that was going to lose money."

With the Prius, Toyota controls about 80 percent of the market for hybrids in the United States.