Detroit, Mich. — Pres. Obama’s auto task force says GM’s plug-in electric car, the Chevy Volt, is a money-losing luxury for an automaker on the edge of bankruptcy. Yet GM continues to plow ahead with the project, even making plans to expand its plug-in offerings to three vehicles. Clueless? Maybe. Then again, the notably auto-expert-less task force has been in business less than three months, while GM has been fighting federal fuel-economy edicts for over 30 years.

Maybe old lions know a little something about how the game is played.

Indeed, the task force plays the simpleton when it reports that the Volt “will likely need substantial reductions in manufacturing cost in order to become commercially viable,” and in the very next graph declares that “absent the successful introduction of a number of new-generation nameplates, GM’s product portfolio is more vulnerable to CAFE standard increases than the portfolios of many of its competitors.”

To which a GM exec may shake his head and think: “Which is precisely what makes the Volt commercially viable.”

Early estimates of the Volt’s EPA mileage rating put it at a lofty 100 mpg, a figure more than 50 percent higher than the vaunted Toyota Prius hybrid and that — even at low sales volumes — would go a long way toward raising the overall average for its fleet at a time when Congress is irresponsibly mandating a 40 percent CAFE increase to 35 mpg by 2020.

That GM exec might also point out that the Toyota Prius isn’t “commercially viable” either (each model is still reportedly sold at a loss), but its very existence provides that company with a “halo effect” that enables it to avoid green scrutiny while it churns out larger, gas-guzzling vehicles like the Toyota Highlander that actually make money.

In a Washington where the administration’s task force pans plug-ins at the same time the administration’s Energy Department is dangling millions for plug-in development, GM is betting that political viability aids commercial viability.