RPT-FEATURE-Will Detroit's cash crisis kill the electric car?

But with Wagoner due in Washington this week to testify on the proposed bailout for U.S. automakers, GM dropped plans to make an announcement on the Volt's battery supplier at the Los Angeles auto show this week, people briefed on the automaker's plans have said.

Jacob Grose, an analyst with Lux Research who follows the alternative power and energy storage industry, said projects like the Volt could risk delays in the current economic climate.

"GM has pretty much bet the farm on the Chevy Volt and plug-in hybrids and certainly any major economic disruption to the company -- any kind of bankrutpcy filing or anything like that -- for even the most high priority launch as this is would clearly be, would push it back a couple of years," he said.

SHOW STEALERS

Nissan-Renault chief Carlos Ghosn is expected to use his keynote speech at the L.A. auto show to highlight Nissan's push toward more environmentally friendly cars, including plug-ins.

Hyundai Motor Co (005380.KS), meanwhile, will be showing off a prototype of its first hybrid for the U.S. market, using lithium-ion batteries from the same LG Chem (051910.KS) factory sources have said has been selected to supply the Volt.

Ron Cogan, editor of Green Car Journal, said Detroit automakers realize they have no alternative to pressing ahead with investment that promises to drive gains in fuel economy.

"The industry understands where the market is headed and that the greatest interest is in the vehicles with the best fuel efficiency," said Cogan, who presented the Green Car of the year award to GM's hybrid Chevy Tahoe last year.

Others are less certain Detroit can stay the course without a bailout tied directly to saving initiatives like the Volt.

Lyle Dennis, a New York neurologist who has emerged as the Volt's unofficial first fan and runs the GM-Volt.com Web site (gm-volt.com/), has organized a letter-writing campaign to urge lawmakers to help save GM -- and by extension the Volt.

"It just seems to me this could easily be the end of the Volt. There are certainly no guarantees," said Dennis. "I'm no fan of bailouts in general. But I don't see another way."

Environmental groups like the Sierra Club, meanwhile, are urging Congress to tie any aid to the automakers to requirements that they make cleaner vehicles and drop a legal challenge to California's new vehicle emissions standards.

"I think the temptation may be for the auto industry to say we can't accept any new requirements," said Eli Hopson of the Union of Concerned Scientists. "While that may get them through the next few months, I don't think it will get them through the next couple of years."

Paine said he remains uncertain of how his film will end, or even what it will be titled. He has tentatively called his follow-up "Revenge of the Electric Car" but realizes there may be a darker ending by 2010, when the film and the Volt are due.

"That's when will find out if it's really the revenge or the curse of the electric car," he said. (Reporting by Kevin Krolicki and Nichola Groom; Editing by Eddie Evans)