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"GM Offers Overnight Test Drives   General Motors is promoting overnight test drives to car and truck shoppers, the Detroit News reported.   The offer will last from April 15 through July 31 and will apply to nearly every GM model, except the H1, , SSR and , the AP said, citing company officials.   &amp;quot;We want to tell our quality story,&amp;quot; spokeswoman Marcia McGee told the Detroit News. &amp;quot;We think a lot of people out there, for one reason or another, don&amp;#039;t consider GM cars. We want them to see how our quality&amp;#039;s improved.&amp;quot;   To be eligible for the 24-hour drive, testers must leave their current vehicle at the dealership and must have insurance and a valid driver&amp;#039;s license. The test drive is limited to 100 miles and the vehicle must remain in the dealer&amp;#039;s state.   Gas Price Seen Heading Downward   Gasoline prices will continue to decline through the summer, the Associated Press reported, citing an Energy Department forecast.   The department&amp;#039;s summer energy forecast said gasoline prices likely would average $1.56 a gallon during the vacation driving season.   The report by DOE&amp;#039;s Energy Information Administration said prices will differ across the country, noting that gas prices in California, for example, are expected to be about 50 cents a gallon higher than the national average.   The report said the gasoline price drop reflected the significant decline in crude-oil prices during recent weeks. The price of crude, which hit a high of nearly $40 a barrel on Feb. 27, was around $28 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Monday.   GM Pulls the Plug on Electric Car Program   General Motors experiment with electric cars in California has come to an end, the Associated Press reported.   In response to a 1990 rule by the California Air Resources Board which mandated that 10 percent of an automakers future sales in the state be comprised of &amp;quot;zero emission&amp;quot; cars, GM spent a reported $1 billion on an electric car program that ultimately yielded the EV1, a futuristic looking electric car that GM leased to customers in the Southwest. Of the more than 1,000 two-seater EV1 cars built by GM, only about 375 are still on the road, the story said, and GM plans to have them off the road by the end of next year.   Some of the off-lease EV1s will go to museums and universities for preservation, others to a research lab in New York, some will be &amp;quot;cannibalizing&amp;quot; for parts and the rest will be scrapped.   Electric cars once created a lot of interest but they were short circuited in the marketplace by their limited range, about 100 miles, lengthy recharge requirements and high cost.   California is poised to make changes in its rules that reflect that electric cars are a commercial failure and will promote more promising technologies such as low-polluting gas-powered vehicles, gas-electric hybrids and fuel cell cars, the story said.   Airbags Continue to Injure Children   Children exposed to deployed air bags were twice as likely to suffer a significant injury than those not exposed, the Detroit News reported, citing crash data collected by State Farm Insurance and evaluated by child safety researchers.   One out of every seven children exposed to an air bag suffered a significant injury, said the interim report. And the number of children exposed to deployed air bags doubled by the end of 2002, compared with early 1999, because older cars were replaced on the nation&amp;#039;s roadways by those equipped with passenger-side air bags, the crash data showed.   The research also shows an increased risk of upper-extremity fractures, such as forearm, finger, hand and clavicle, for children in car seats who are exposed to air bags compared with those restrained only by a seat belt.   The study reinforced child safety advocates&amp;#039; promotion of the use of booster seats for older kids, the story said. It found that no children between 4 and 8 years old who were in booster seats suffered abdominal injuries. And children that age who wore seat belts were 3.5 times more likely to suffer an abdominal injury compared with kids in boosters. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a9493/gm-offers-overnight-test-drives/>