The comprehensive USA blog on automotive news.
Camry hybrid just can't compete
Sales of Toyota dropped from 17,504 hybrids in July to 15,444 hybrids in August, as the dropped from 14,102 sales in July, to 11,799 sales in August.
Despite some of the best lease deals ever on the Toyota Prius, hybrid sales continue to remain unimpressive.
Adding a new hybrid system to hybrids
Already a number of cars offer safety features that not only warn drivers of dangers, they actually take control of the vehicle to help prevent potential crashes.
Today, we call cars with two power sources , but in the very near future most cars will also have two drivers:? a computer and the actual driver.
That’s not just a hybrid hybrid, it’s a game-changer.
In fact, even full auto-pilot might be available sooner than expected. Already the technology has been proven in artificial environments and track courses, and viability in the real world cannot be far off.
suggests that quite soon all cars, regardless of weight and size, will be equally safe as new technologies enable cars – similar to some super chess program -? to analyze and to foresee potential dangers well before drivers and react independently of the driver.
Additionally, automakers are also quickly getting in the hybrid driver game. Just this week “in-vehicle Doppler radar to spot obstructions or traffic jams ahead,” and eventually result in “autonomous vehicles that can communicate with each other, traffic signals and buildings, pointing to a world where cars may actually drive themselves.”
But this is about more than just safety as one can easily imagine entirely new business models for personal transportation. Nonetheless, being able to make smaller and lighter cars, thanks to auto-drive safety features, could significantly increase fuel economy and extend EV range while increasing safety. Obviously, that alone offers game-changing potential, but auto-drive also changes everything about car expectations and ownership.
Cars could become simple time-shared transportation pods, for instance. Why care about horsepower or size when your transporation pod picks you up at your desired time, drives you to work along the safest and fastest route as you begin your work day, check Facebook, play games, or just take a nap – all for a fraction of the cost ownership.
Parking? Insurance? Maintenance? All included in the subscription. Suddenly, cars aren’t some ridiculously expensive ego-extension, instead, they are reduced to their basic purpose: transportation.
Besides, cars just don’t express today’s ego the way they did in the past. Today it’s all about social networks, and auto-drive transportation pods will offer a far better social networking experience than will self-driving everywhere – that’s soooo last century.
A sketchy hybrid idea
Honda has been awarded a new patent on some sketches that to the Skydeck MPV hybrid concept shown at last year’s Tokyo Auto Show, but there is no official word from Honda that plans for such a hybrid have moved beyond the conceptual stage.
Lately Honda’s have come up a little short, at least in terms of sales. Could a hybrid minivan reverse that trend?
A new smile for the Highlander
The 2011’s are coming, and that should mean some changes for a number of .
At the Moscow Auto Show Toyota is showing off an updated 2011 Toyota Highlander that includes updates that should make their way to America in all Highlander models, including the hybrid.
According to MotorTrend, “Visual changes include tweaked front and rear ends, with a restyled grille, headlights, taillights, and bumpers.”
With the US auto show circuit just around the corner, more news about the and many other hybrids will soon be revealed.
A Prius with a Hymotion plug-in hybrid conversion package.
“,” Ray Flesher recently told Denver 7 news about his recently converted plug-in .
But is his plug-in hybrid conversion really saving money?
The Hymotion plug-in hybrid kit for Mr. Flesher’s Toyota Prius cost $10,000, but tax credits in Colorado can reduce those costs by as much as $6000. Likewise, the increased Mr. Flesher’s fuel economy from a high of 52 mpg to 97 mpg.
So, is Mr. Flesher saving money if his conversion only cost $4000?
At 50 mpg, the average Prius driver spends about $800 per year on gas according to the government.? Doubling fuel economy should roughly half those fuel costs, plus there’s the extra savings in electricity versus gasoline. So let’s say fueling costs drop to just $300 per year – saving $500 per year. Wouldn’t that mean it would take 8 years to recover the costs of this conversion?
What about installation costs to have a third party install the Hymotion kit? Are they included?
Nevertheless, tax credits can’t last forever. Unfortunately, even if scale brings down costs by 60 percent – roughly about what battery experts claim should happen with manufacturing improvements over time – what percentage of consumers would be willing to pay for 8 years of gasoline up front so that they could start saving? money – as much as $500 per year – in 9 years?
Most consumers, I’d bet, might question whether the batteries will even last that long, or function as efficiently over the years. Sadly, for instance, after more than a decade of solid battery performance in more than 2.5 million Toyota , many consumers still believe the batteries regularly need to be replaced.
OK. It’s Friday. I didn’t sleep well last, so maybe I make a mistake with my calculations, but it seems pretty obvious to me that, even with massive tax credits, it’s still almost impossible to cost-effectively justify a plug-in conversion. So, where did I go wrong?