US car maker General Motors hopes that the internet will help the company to sell an additional 100,000 cars.

Potentially even more spectacular are the company's plans for its business to business web site TradeXchange, where it wants to increase turnover by 5,000% to $50bn this year.

On the consumer side, GM chairman John Smith said he would try to improve the firm's BuyPower web site and use it to drive prospective buyers to GM dealerships.

The GM web site currently gets 650,000 visits a months, and the firm hopes to increase this by 10 to 15 times within the next twelve months.

The BuyPower site tracks the inventory of GM dealers across the country. Potential buyers are then referred to the dealer's showroom and will be offered consumer credit through the GM's financial division.

Mr Smith said that he was "confident that this strategy will make us the industry leader in interacting with customers on the internet".

However, an extra 50,000 to 100,000 cars sold would increase GM sales by a mere 1%-2%.

Cars built to order

True interactivity, though, could give the firm the edge over its rivals.

Ultimately, GM wants to use the internet to allow customers to build their own cars and trucks.

They will be able to give GM the specifications for the car they want, and the company hopes to be able to deliver popular models within a day after the order has been posted on the web.

Less popular cars and trucks would take up to 10 days to make and deliver.

Mr Smith conceded that it would take "a lot of work" to provide this kind of functionality, but said the company had "a massive number of people devoted to this".

Business to business

But the real and immediate gains of moving to the internet will be realised in the business-to-business part of GM's e-commerce strategy.

Mr Smith expects that business done on its TradeXchange website for suppliers to grow from $1bn in 1999 to $50bn at the end of this year, an increase of 5,000%.

He said that other car makers were expected to join the systems this year.

GM makes about $87bn worth of purchases every year, and soon wants to move all its dealings with suppliers to the internet.