DETROIT — When General Motors Co. decided to make a plug-in hybrid, there was lively private discussion whether the first model should be a Chevrolet or a Cadillac. The Chevrolet arguments won out and the Volt was born.

The Volt — the first car to mix all-electric capabilities with a gas engine to extend the range — has had a tough time, with disappointing sales and, for Republicans during the presidential campaign, as a symbol of the failings of President Barack Obama’s auto-industry bailout.

Now, GM has a second chance with Volt technology: the Cadillac ELR plug-in hybrid, revealed Tuesday at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

“GM is saying to the world we’re committed to this extended-range hybrid system,” said Larry Dominique, executive vice president of TrueCar. com, a website that tracks auto sales.

The Volt, chosen as 2011’s North American Car of the Year, succeeded in satisfying its customers, with 92 percent of survey respondents telling Consumer Reports they would buy one again — the second straight year it ranked highest. GM’s luxury brand Cadillac won its first such award Monday with its ATS sedan.

While the electric-drive Cadillac won’t go on sale until 2014 and first-year sales will likely be small, it’s important to Cadillac and to GM. It will help to freshen Cadillac’s image at a time when other luxury brands, which tend to have higher profit margins than less-expensive vehicles, have pushed Cadillac to the second tier.

“The ELR puts us in a position to be provocative, to be a technology leader, to offer something that is unique and exclusive, and those sound like attributes that go back to ‘Cadillac’ the adjective,” Bob Ferguson, the brand’s leader, said in an interview last week.

In addition, offering another model for sale can spread the costs of the technology over more vehicles and reduce the cost per car to accelerate the time to break even on the expensive technology.

The ELR will compete most directly with offerings from unprofitable luxury electric-car start-ups Tesla Motors Inc. and Fisker Automotive Inc., rather than Toyota Motor Corp.’s Lexus luxury hybrids, which are based on technology used in the popular Prius line. GM’s new car will land closer to Bayerische Motoren Werke AG’s BMW i3 electric model, set to go into production in the fourth quarter, and Volkswagen AG’s Porsche 918 Spyder, an $845,000 hybrid, coming later this year.

While GM hasn’t said what the ELR will cost, it will be more than the Volt. It will probably cost around $60,000 to $70,000, said a person familiar with the pricing who asked not to be identified revealing private plans.

The Volt went on sale in 2010 with the aim of putting GM’s Chevrolet on the forefront of “green” technology globally and taking on Toyota’s mass-market Prius hybrid, which starts at $24,200. GM originally aimed to sell 60,000 Volts worldwide last year before lowering the target to 35,000. In the U.S., it sold 23,461. GM hasn’t said how many it sold worldwide.

Part of Volt’s problem has been price. Starting at $39,145, the four-seat small car loaded up with pricey batteries is much more costly than a similar-size traditional compact, even with a $7,500 tax credit. The Toyota Corolla, for example, starts at $16,230. The best deal on a Volt has been through a lease, with monthly payments currently advertised at $329 on Chevrolet’s website.

That’s one of the arguments for why offering Volt as a Cadillac may have helped. Cadillac buyers expect to pay more than Chevrolet buyers, and luxury buyers are also attracted to the latest in technology, such as the Volt’s unique powertrain system.

“The demographics of the electric-car buyer are really more in line with Cadillac than Chevrolet,” said Rebecca Lindland, an industry analyst with IHS Automotive.

Compared with buyers of mainstream models, luxury buyers more often finance the purchase with a lease, which often requires a smaller down payment or lower monthly bill. About 38 percent of Cadillac sales last year in the U.S. were leases, while Chevrolet had only 12 percent, according to Edmunds.com. Of GM’s U.S. Volt sales last year, 46 percent were leases, Edmunds said.

Since the days of Henry Leland, who founded Cadillac more than 110 years ago, the brand prided itself on having some of the auto industry’s innovations. Electric starters, power steering and mass-produced V-8 engines were first in Cadillac cars before costs came down and spread to cheaper vehicles. Volt technology would have been another in the list.

Ferguson acknowledged that’d he heard the arguments before that Cadillac should have gone first. Another GM executive, Ed Welburn, the company’s design chief, confirmed it was part of the early development discussions.

If the model was just for the U.S., then the arguments for selling the technology under a Cadillac badge first would be right, said Bob Lutz, the former GM vice chairman, who led development of the Volt.

“But Chevrolet was/is GM’s global brand, and we wanted global distribution,” he said in an e-mail message. “A Cadillac-branded Volt would have had almost zero potential in Europe, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Australia and Asia.”

Business, Pages 23 on 01/16/2013