The fleet of new cars and trucks sold to U.S. consumers averaged 21 miles per gallon in the 2008 model year, a modest increase over the previous year, with Honda and Hyundai having the most fuel-efficient fleets in America, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency reported Friday.
New vehicle fuel efficiency improved 2 percent in 2008 from 20.6 mpg for the 2007 model year. The government projected it will improve slightly to 21.1 mpg in the 2009 model year.
The EPA figures are based on real-world estimates for city and highway mileage found on window stickers at dealer showrooms, instead of mileage values developed through laboratory testing.
Honda Motor Co. led the industry in 2008 with 23.9 mpg, followed by Hyundai Motor Co. and its affiliate Kia Motors Corp. with 23.7 mpg, and Toyota Motor Corp. with 22.8 mpg.
Volkswagen AG's fleet averaged 22.3 mpg, followed by Nissan Motor Co. with 21.9 and BMW AG with 21.2.
General Motors Co. led U.S. automakers with 19.7 mpg, followed by Ford Motor Co. with 19.4 and Chrysler Group LLC with 19.3. The EPA projects Ford will increase its fuel efficiency by more than 1 mpg in the 2009 model year and overtake GM.
BMW's announcement this week that its ActiveHybrid X6 crossover utility vehicle will carry a U.S. sticker price of nearly $90,000 was disappointing, but even more disappointing is the fact that the model isn't alone among hybrids priced well out of reach of most people.
Toyota offers a Lexus LS 600h L for $107,300. The 7-Series Hybrid from BMW will surely be a six-figure car when it becomes available this spring. The Cadillac Escalade Hybrid starts at $73,425. The list is frustratingly long.
Our hawk-eyed colleagues at Edmunds' AutoObserver.com picked up on the trend and wrote about it in a piece that's as well written as it is informative. We encourage you to use your turn signal, pull to the side of the road and give it a read.
Mazda Motor Corp. was honored today with the 2009 Technology of the Year award from a non-profit coalition of Japan-based automotive critics and journalists for the automaker's i-stop idling stop-start system, which is a little perplexing.
A stop-start system automatically shuts down and restarts an automobile's internal combustion engine to reduce the amount of time the engine spends idling, thereby improving fuel economy. The technology isn't new. Daimler, Fiat, Toyota and other automakers have been putting it in some of its vehicles for a while.
So why exactly did the 2009 Automotive Researchers' and Journalists' Conference of Japan decide to recognize Madza's stop-start system now? It's a good question, one we've put to spokesmen for the conference and the automaker.
After waiting four hours for a response, we went ahead and posted this piece; we'll update if and when an explanation is offered.
In a statement issued to the media, Mazda wrote that its i-stop system is fitted to direct injection engines and uses combustion energy to restart the engine in just 0.35 seconds, about half the time necessary for most other competing systems. This might be why Mazda received the award, but it wasn't stated.
The i-stop system also suppresses noise and vibration as the engine shuts down and restarts, ensuring that drivers experience a natural driving feel with no sense of discomfort. Most other stop-start systems do that as well.
Norwegian electric-car maker Think has plans to launch its vehicles in the United States and has picked a site in Indiana for its U.S. manufacturing facility, Reuters news service reported Tuesday, citing a major investor in the company.
The exact location and other details will be announced in a few weeks, said Charles Gassenheimer, chairman and chief executive of lithium-ion battery maker Ener1 Inc, which has a 31 percent stake in Think and has had financial problems of its own.
Think had said previously it was exploring the opportunity to launch its vehicles in America and was considering opening a new U.S. manufacturing plant and technical center.
Gassenheimer declined to give more details on Think's plans in the American market, but said the carmaker has applied for a U.S. government loan under a program set up to encourage production of fuel-efficient vehicles.
The loan application is in the initial stages, Gassenheimer said in an interview with Reuters.
Ener1, which also has a battery supply agreement with Think, took a stake in the automaker this year after the Norwegian company went on a fund-raising round to save itself and exit bankruptcy-court protection.
U.S.-based Ener1 gave Think another lease on life by agreeing to invest about $18 million in three tranches and convert $3 million in debt into preferred shares of the automaker.
Perhaps fretting that the public had forgotten about their hydrogen ambitions, Japan's Big 3 automakers last week took to the streets with their most advanced hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles.
Over two days, driving teams steered a Toyota Highlander FCHV-adv, a Nissan X-Trail FCV, and a Honda FCX Clarity 707 miles from Tokyo to Fukuoka, with an overnight stop in Osaka.
Combined, the vehicles consumed 28.8 kilograms of hydrogen during their demonstration run. That equates to roughly 70 miles per gallon for those of you wondering how efficient these vehicles stack up when compared to gasoline-powered vehicles.
But given that none of the advanced-fuel vehicles seen here are available for purchase, mileage/fuel comparisons right now are strictly academic.
That said, although all three automakers are working on electric vehicles, Honda and Toyota continue to say that hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles offer the best long-term solution to today's climate-changing oil-burning street machines.
A recent study evaluating the effectiveness of this summer's cash-for-clunkers program concluded that cost U.S. taxpayers $3 billion and did more to help Japan's three largest automakers than it did the Detroit 3 of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler.
The Japanese companies accounted for only 8 percent of trade-ins but 41 percent of new-car purchases, according to the new study by the University of Michigan's Transportation Research Institute.
By contrast, 85 percent of the trade-ins were manufactured by the Detroit 3 while only 39 percent of the new purchases were GM, Ford or Chrysler vehicles.
Sixty-eight percent of consumers who traded in a Toyota, Honda or Nissan bought another from one of the same from one of the three Japanese automakers.
Specifically, those owners who traded in Hondas bought another Honda 30 percent of the time. Nissan owners bought new Nissans under the clunker program did so 19 percent of the time and motorists unloading Toyotas turned around and bought another Toyota 44 percent of the time.
By contrast, 43 percent of consumers who traded in a Detroit 3 vehicle bought another Detroit 3 vehicle. Chrysler owners bought new Chryslers in 11 percent of the cases, Ford in 24 percent and GM in 32 percent.
As for those who switched, Japan's Big 3 got 38 percent of consumers who traded in a Detroit Big 3 vehicle. Toyota did best, with 18 percent. The Detroit Big 3 got only 12 percent of consumers who traded in a Japan Big 3 vehicle. GM did best with 5.3 percent.
The study made no attempt to determine how much of the money stayed in the United States and how much went to Japan. It should, of course, be noted that many of the Japanese cars purchased as a result of the clunker program were undoubtedly made in the USA.
Toyota Motor Corp.'s made no secret of it desire to leverage its successful Prius into an entire line of cars - why not make good use of a name that's synonymous with 'hybrid' to so many people?
---------- Toyota's been toying with the idea of a Prius wagon for years, as shown by the Hybrid X Concept it debuted at the 2007 Geneva auto show. ----------
So its no surprise that a Japanese newspaper - the widely circulated Yomiuri - is reporting that the automaker plans to launch a Prius sport wagon or sport utility vehicle around the end of next year.
The timing seems spot-on. After all, the industry journal Automotive News reported way back in October of 2007 that Toyota planners had said the 2010 Prius sedan would be followed in a year or so by a wagon version.
That's the year Toyota actually showed us what a Prius wagon might look like with the unveiling of the Hybrid X Concept at the Geneva auto show.
Production would certainly be no stretch.
It doesn't sell any wagons in the U.S., but Toyota builds several for the home market that could provide underpinnings for a Prius hybrid version. A good argument can be built for considering the U.S.-market Venza(right) introduced this year to be a sporty wagon.
As for a Prius SUV - well, what's the Lexus RX 400h except a Prius SUV wrapped in a luxury body?
A little odd-sounding is the reported choice of a lithium-ion chemistry for the vehicle's batteries - top Toyota officials have been publicly proclaiming for months now that they don't believe lithium-ion batteries are sufficiently cheap or reliable yet for retail use.
But as we've come to see in the past two years, anything's possible and very little is improbable in the brave new automotive world. Prius does have a lithium-ion battery program with Panasonic and could be sitting on a reliability breakthrough it just doesn't want to acknowledge right now.
Spurred by factory incentives, replenished stocks and the relative freshness of several models, sales of hybrid-electric cars and SUVs soared in October, easily outperforming the market as a whole.
Compared to October '08 - a month with six fewer hybrid models available - sales of Ford, General Motors, Honda, Nissan and Toyota hybrids were up 12.1 percent, while sales of conventionally powered cars and trucks were flat.
The one-month picture was even rosier, as October hybrid sales jumped 22.5 percent from September's, versus a 12.1 percent hike in sales of conventional models.
Nissan, which has only one model - the Altima hybrid, - and sells it in just the nine states with the toughest emissions standards, was the only hybrid maker to record a sales decline for both periods, dropping 46 percent from a year earlier and 13 percent from September.
As with most hybrids - Toyota's Prius excepted - Nissan's actual numbers are quite small because of low sales volumes. October's sales drop represented just 46 fewer Altima hybrid sales than in September.
Toyota's redesigned 2010 Prius, sweetened by a small factory incentive, remained by far the segment leader, accounting for 55 percent of all hybrid sales for the month.
Just wondering here, but Toyota rarely doesn't do much anything unless it has a meaningful money-making or image-enhancing possibility attached.
The company showed a neat compressed natural gas hybrid Camry last year at the 2008 LA Auto show, and said it was just a study.
It sort of disappeared, but it now being resurrected- and redesigned as a cool, green surf buggy - as the Surfrider Foundation Camry CNG Hybrid concept for an environmental lifestyles display at Toyota's stand at the 2009 SEMA show in Las Vegas this week.
With all the talk about vast new natural gas resources (albeit obtainable through the controversial hydro-cracking method of fracturing gas-bearing shale with high-pressure injections of water in a process that can release toxic chemicals that affect drinking water in areas that don't pre-treat it ), we can't help but think Toyota might be a little more devoted to the idea of a CNG-electric hybrid than it has been letting on.
Automakers, Green Groups Debate Standards, California's Role at Los Angeles Hearing By Danny King, Contributor
California's efforts to continue imposing more stringent greenhouse gas standards than federal rules require continued coming under fire from industry groups Tuesday as the Environmental Protection Agency held the last of three hearings on implementing proposed national standards for average passenger vehicle fuel economy.
Federal officials are trying to determine how best to reach gas mileage and tailpipe-emissions standards within the next seven years that are about 30% more stringent than they are now.
California, which has authority to set its own standards, is in agreement with the federal proposals through 2016 but already has started working on tougher state standards for 2017 and beyond - a move that automakers oppose, claiming that separate state and federal rules will impose severe economic hardships on an already beleaguered industry.
Looking Forward
So while Tuesday's hearing ostensibly was about present regulations, many in the audience were more concerned with what happens eight years from now.
Consumer Reports readers have spoken - as the do this time every year -and come down hard in favor of hybrids as family cars.
---------- Toyota Prius rates tops among family cars for reliability in annual consumer survey. ----------
In the widely read magazine's annual rating of auto reliability, five of the eight most reliable 2009 model year family cars in the CR report use gas-electric powertrains.
In the order CR lists them, they are:
Toyota Prius, Ford Fusion hybrid, Mercury Milan hybrid, Nissan Altima hybrid, and Toyota Camry hybrid.
All five also are rated as CR recommended, meaning they scored well in the magazine's internal testing and driveability ratings as well as in the consumer-driven reliability survey.
We know that Toyota Motor Co., interested in all things renewable and sustainable, has an agricultural operation in Japan where it grows plants for use in the manufacture of bioplastics.
Now comes word that the giant automaker also has developed two new flowering species for the purpose of absorbing nitrogen oxides (NOx) from the atmosphere and lowering the temperature of the grounds surrounding its Prius factory, reducing the energy used to cool the building.
The "Toyota flowers" are derivatives of two existing plans - the cherry sage (left) and the gardenia.
Richard Blackburn, who tells the tale in Drive.com Australia, says the Toyota sage has leaves that absorb harmful gases such as NOx, while the Toyota gardenia has leaves that produce water vapor, which helps lower the ambient temperature.
When planted in large beds surrounding the Prius factory in Toyota City, the gardenias can make enough of a difference that the company can use less energy to run air conditioning to cool the factory.
Of course, Toyota already uses solar power for a lot of the plant's energy and has painted the exterior walls with a special paint that absorbs NOx and other gases.
Subaru, which is displayed a concept hybrid touring car at the Tokyo Auto Show this week, plans to have several hybrids in the market in the next few years, Fuji Heavy industries President Ikuo Mori told reporters at the show.
---------- Hybrid Tourer concept is Subaru's interpretation of a gas-electric car. The grille, at least, is likely to see production - on other Subaru models if not on this gull-winged four-seater. ----------
Fuji is Subaru's parent company.
Mori declined to say whether the hybrid would be based on the "Subaru Hybrid Tourer" concept at the show and wouldn't say whether it would be a model developed with technology partner Toyota, or would use a design and a hybrid system of Fuji's own making.
The Tourer concept uses a Fuji-developed system that mates Subaru's 2.0-liter horizontally opposed "Boxer" engine with a pair of electric motors.
But Subaru is expected to launch a hybrid version of its redesigned Legacy in Japan in 2011, using technology licensed from Toyota - Fuji's largest shareholder.
A Legacy hybrid could easily make its way to the U.S.
Ignored in all the hybrid talk was the fact that Subaru also has recently unleashed a battery-electric version of its boxy Stella subcompact. Although mainly used for testing purposes, the Stella EV is likely to lead to a retail model and that could lead to an EV for at least limited sales over here in the states that have adopted California's zero emissions vehicle mandate.
The more, the merrier, we say.
How 'bout a hybrid WRX? Better yet, why not an all-electric WRX featuring independently driven electric wheel-motors in each hub?
The city of Boulder, Colo., and its power provider, Xcel Energy, have launched a long-term "smart grid" project and Toyota Motor Co. wants to be a player.
---------- Toyota's prototype Prius Plug In Hybrid pictured in Japan last year. ----------
The automaker and world's leading seller of gas-electric hybrid vehicles is announcing this afternoon that it will place 10 of its experimental Prius plug-in hybrids in service in Boulder next year as part of the project.
The Prius PHEVs are part of a fleet of 500 of the cars to be placed into service around the globe in 2010 as Toyota begins testing for possible retail sales of a hybird with extended all-electric range and rechargeable batteries.
First Smart Grid City
Xcel has begun what it calls the SmartGridCity project in Boulder, making the university city - already one of the greenest in the nation - into the world's first smart grid enabled municipality.
Toyota made it official today - the new Japan-only Sai hybrid goes on sale Dec. 7.
The gas-electric sedan, based on the Lexus HS 250h, will be priced at 3.38 million yen ($37,500), well above the Prius' starting price in Japan of just over 2 million yen ($22,000).
Toyota, which has benefited from Japanese government incentives aimed at increasing the number of fuel-efficient vehicles on the road, said it's goal is to sell 36,000 Sai sedans a year.
The new hybrid is rated at 54 miles per gallon in the Japanese combined city-highway test cycle, well below the new Prius' 90 mpg rating. (The U.S. rating for the near-identical Lexus HS 250h is 35 mpg while the 2010 Prius gets a 50 mpg EPA rating.)
The company hasn't said whether it intends to broaden Sai sales beyond Japan, but if there are U.S. plans it would have to come in at a much lower price as the Lexus version starts here at $35,075 and hasn't been a particularly hot seller.
U.S. Trails Asia, Europe in Providing Hydrogen Fueling Infrastructure, Automakers Warn
Automakers aiming to meet California's revised Zero Emission Vehicles mandate requirements have pushed the fuel-cell electric car much closer to reality than many realize, according to a report by Bloomberg news service.
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Rendering of advanced fuel station near Los Angeles International Airport touts hydrogen as the fuel of tomorrow. Automakers say that without more such stations, that vision won't be realized. ----------
Not only is the technology almost ready for prime time, reporter Alan Ohnsman found that automakers such as Toyota, Daimler, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Renault, Nissan and General Motors now believe they can bring fuel cell vehicles to market by 2015 with price premium of just $3,600 over the average price of a comparable midsized gasoline model.
But the technology and price breakthroughs won't mean much if the U.S. government's infrastructure priorities aren't altered to include encouragement of a hydrogen fueling system
If the U.S. doesn't get moving, it will fall behind Europe and Asia - where governments are actively promoting hydrogen fueling - in the race to replace oil as a motor vehicle fuel, GM and others warn.
Audi's A3 TDI diesel and Mercury's Milan Hybrid are two of the contenders in LA Auto Show's green car face-off.
It will be diesel vs. hybrid and luxe models vs.standards in Green Car of the Year judging for December's 2009 Los Angeles International Auto Show. The five finalists in the annual competition, announced today, are the Toyota Prius (left), Honda Insight (below, right) and Mercury Milan hybrids on the gas-electric side and the Audi A3 TDI and Volkswagen Golf TDI (below, left) on the diesel side.
Judges picked the VW Jetta TDI last year, so if either the Golf or A3 win it will be two-in a-row for the fuel that most Americans still equate with big-rigs and giant bulldozers. There could be sentiment of the small luxury-performance car, which would help the Audi, but the engine in both the A3 and the Golf is the same that won it for the Jetta TDI in 2008.
Our handicapper at Inside Line's Straightline blog seems to be betting on the redesigned 2010 Prius, reasoning that the Milan Hybrid doesn't stand much of a chance because its twin, the Ford Fusion Hybrid, was nominated but didn't win last year, and that the judges will be loathe to salute diesel for a second consecutive year.
That leaves the Honda Insight and Toyota Prius, and the Pruis is the greener of the two by dint of its greater fuel economy.
Judging from the amount of copy they fed us in advance, Toyota is a whole lot prouder of the rear-wheel drive "Toyobaru" sports coupe it is showing at this month's 2009 Tokyo Auto Show than of the FT-EV II electric city car concept (above) that also will be there.
But an electric city concept there will be - based off the hot-selling toyota iQ micro-mini and an "upgrade" of the FT-EV city car concept that debuted in January at the Detroit Auto Show.
Toyota's not let much out about the new city EV, but what we can tell you is that that it has a lithium-ion battery pack installed under the floor that can deliver about 56 miles on a single charge and a top speed of 62 miles an hour (that's a nice round 100 kilometers an hour in metrics.)
There are no brake, clutch or accelerator pedals - it's all operated by hand with the levers on a futuristic steering wheel, although "control apparatus" might be a better way of describing it.
The reason for the lack of foot controls? Toyota has envisioned a day when radio signals, perhaps from cables embedded in the road, will guide cars and this equips the concept with an "auto mode" for those city commutes when you'd rather spend the time reading the morning paper.
We can also say that it seats four people despite an overall length of just 107 inches long, and those people would climb in through a pair of sliding doors (one on each side).
And that's about it -except that Toyota hopes to have a real battery-electric city car in the market by 2012.
As for that 'Toyobaru" that's stealing the little EV concept's thunder - it's the FT-86 (left), fruit of a collaboration between Toyota and Subaru, in which Toyota now holds a stake. It is intended to replace the MR 2 as Toyota's fun car, will use Subaru's 2.0-liter horizontally opposed, flat-four engine, reportedly handles like a dream and is due to hit the streets in late 2011. You can read more about it on Inside Line.
A Florida company that already has won a judgment against Toyota in a hybrid technology patent infringement case, will get a hearing before the U.S. International Trade Commission on its claim that the company's newer hybrids continue to infringe on the same patent.
And whereas the federal court that found for Paice LLC in the earlier Toyota patent infringement case refused to grant the company's request to bar Toyota from selling its Prius, Highlander and Lexus RX 400 hybrids in the U.S., the trade commission's only power, should it also find for Paice, is to block Toyota's imports.
The cash for clunkers frenzy that pulled many hybrid shoppers into the market earlier than they'd intended in July and August caused a big letdown in September as sales of gas-electric cars and trucks, which had been rising steadily all year, plunged 48.4 percent.
Only 19,977 hybrids were sold in September, down from 38,701 in August. The sales slide was the first in several months and was worse that that of the far larger conventional vehicle segment, which dropped by 40.9 percent from August.
Falling sales of the Toyota Prius - they were down 42 percent for the month - contributed heavily to the numeric decline although almost every hybrid model lost ground.
On a month over month basis there were no corporate winners in the hybrid segment as even Toyota - the industry leader with three out of every four hybrid sales - saw a 39.7 percent decline in its Toyota and Lexus hybrids.
And that was the segment's best performance.
Lots of Losers
Nissan, which has been on a tear with its single offering, the Altima hybrid sedan (helped by generous incentives in recent moths), saw its hybrid sales plunge 89.1 percent in September; Honda, the number two hybrid company, saw sales fall 61.6 percent; Ford, which had been rising since the March introduction of its Fusion hybrid sedan, was off 54.5 percent, and GM's hybrid sales fell by 40.8 percent.
Compared to sales at the end of the third-quarter last year- when the financial industry collapse began and the bottom fell out of the auto market, the picture was a little better as hybrid sales last month were down just 4.1 percent from September '08.
In contrast, conventional car sales fell 22.5 percent in the September-September comparison.
Despite reports that Toyota intends to spread its Prius nameplate across multiple models, including a Subaru, the Japanese automaker announced today that its only other dedicated hybrid will debut at the Tokyo Auto Show later this month without the P word anywhere on it.
As we reported previously, the SAI (an artist's rendition of which is shown here) is a medium-size sedan based on the Lexus HS250h hybrid.
The SAI's starting price will likely fall between the HS250h's $41,751 and the new Prius hatchback's $21,668. The sedan will reportedly go on sale in Japan later this month.
The Lexus has a 2.4-liter gasoline engine, more powerful than the Prius's 1.8-liter power plant. It is less efficient, too. The EPA rates the HS250h's fuel economy at 35 mpg in combined city-highway driving, compared with 50 mpg for the new 2010 Prius.
There's no word yet on the SIA's fuel efficiency, nor is Toyota saying where it intends to offer the vehicle, although we assume it will be available in the U.S., which is the world's largest automotive market behind China.
It's no secret that Subaru is working on a hybrid, using technology licensed from Toyota Motor Corp., which has acquired a 16 percent stake in Subaru over the past year largely to tap into the lithium-ion battery development work being done by the all-wheel-drive specialist's parent, Fuji Heavy industries.
But now there's rumor circulating that the new Subaru hybrid, when it gets here, will be called the Subaru Prius as part of an effort by Toyota to broaden use of the Prius name and further ensure that it is synonymous with "hybrid" the world over.
Discussion with a posting yesterday evening on PriusChat.com by someone claiming to be a Subaru salesman who said he recently attended a corporate briefing on the new hybrid at which the "Subaru Prius" name was used.
It might have been used as a tongue-in-cheek reference to Subaru's intent to license Toyota hybrid technology for its upcoming hybrid vehicle, but we though it highly unusual that Toyota would let such a valuable brand name out of the Toyota fold.
Our own Subaru sources say they hadn't heard of a Subaru Prius, and now John Hanson, head of Toyota's U.S. environmental products communications team, tells us that there's no way anyone but Toyota will be able to use the Prius name.
"Absolutely not. That's a model reserved exclusively for Toyota," Hanson said.
After wavering awhile, Mazda has decided to jump into America's rapidly growing small-car segment with the company's fuel-efficient Mazda2 model.
----------
Right, the current Mazda2. The U.S. version will debut in L.A. in December. ----------
The five-door hatchback, which is currently sold in Europe, will begin appearing in U.S. showrooms during the fall of 2010, company officials told Mazda dealers at the automaker's annual meeting this week.
The vehicle will share a platform as the Ford Fiesta, which is scheduled to launch in America next summer. In addition to the Fiesta, the Honda Fit, Toyota Yaris and Chevrolet Aveo will provide the Mazda2 with some stiff competition.
The U.S.-spec Mazda2 will be unveiled at the Los Angeles auto show in December. The current version of the Mazda2 has been on sale in Europe and Japan since 2007. In Japan, it is known as the Demio.
In Europe, the Mazda2 is offered with several gasoline and diesel engines. The U.S. edition will feature only a gasoline-powered, 1.5-liter four-cylinder.
That version in Europe delivers 103 horsepower and 101 pounds-feet of torque. It propels the Mazda2 from 0 to 62 miles per hour in 10.4 seconds while delivering 41 miles per gallon in Europe's combined driving cycle test; in the more real-world American combined driving cycle test, fuel economy should be 35-38 mpg.
The Mazda2 is offered as both a three- and five-door in Europe, but only the five-door will be available in the U.S. It comes only with a five-speed manual transmission in Europe, but the U.S. version will be available with a five-speed automatic.
Mazda would not disclose U.S. pricing, but in the U.K. it's priced around $16,750 not including taxes and fees. A Mazda source said the U.S. version will be priced somewhat lower.
Shakespeare wrote that for Juliet in his lyrical tale of star-crossed lovers, but Toyota dealers are -- in their own words -- saying the very same today.
That's because the Prius name possesses magical sales powers for the Japanese automaker. As a result, it has decided to sprinkle the name across more hybrid models in its U.S. lineup to boost their sales.
At a meeting in Las Vegas earlier this week of the 60 largest Toyota dealers in the U.S., Toyota executives announced the name Prius would be attached to "a family of models" using similar hybrid powertrains, veteran Toyota dealer Earl Stewart said.
"The Highlander hybrid and Camry hybrid do OK, but calling it 'Synergy Drive' never resonated with consumers," Stewart sad. "But they can make hay on the Prius name. It's a magic name. If somebody says 'I drive a Prius,' everybody knows what he means."
Romeo couldn't have said it better.
Toyota will have a range of Prius hybrid models "but Prius won't be a separate sub-brand like Scion," Stewart said.
A Thorny Issue
Separately, Toyota is launching a $1 billion fourth-quarter marketing campaign, its biggest ever for that period, to boost weak U.S. sales.
Toyota today continued to release a slow trickle of information concerning its all-new Auris HSD Full Hybrid Concept, which debuted this week at the Frankfurt Motor Show.
In addition to details about the car that we've previously reported, now know this concept vehicle with an absurdly long name uses the same Hybrid Synergy Drive technology that can be found in the new Prius.
In other words, it's also equipped with a 1.8-liter gasoline engine working with an electric motor and an engine stop-start system to help cut emissions and improve fuel economy.
The Auris HSD produces 97 horsepower, accelerates from 0-62 miles per hour in about 10 seconds, and has carbon dioxide emissions of less than 100 grams per kilometer.
The Auris HSD differentiate itself from the standard Auris in many ways. Its front end styling is entirely fresh, headlights, hood, bumper and grille. Various aerodynamic tweaks and special badging also set it apart from the regular Auris.
Although Toyota has included "Concept" in the car's name, a new Auris hybrid looking identical or nearly identical to the one shown here is scheduled to enter production next summer and begin shipping toward the end of the year.
Toyota Motor Corp. is sticking with nickel as the preferred battery material for most of its hybrid vehicles after three years of secretly testing Prius hatchbacks with lithium-ion packs, Bloomberg reported today.
Toyota last month ended road tests of 126 Priuses in the U.S., Japan and Europe that began in 2006, Jana Hartline, a company spokeswoman said in an interview with the news service. Details of the program, in which the cars' nickel metal hydride batteries were replaced with more expensive lithium models, weren't released.
Automakers are introducing models all or partly powered by lithium-ion batteries holding twice the energy of nickel packs. While Toyota's lithium version performed well and gave "small" fuel-economy gains because of lighter weight, nickel is favored for conventional, mass-market hybrids for its cost, said Kazuo Tojima, the carmaker's senior staff engineer for batteries.
Lithium's "durability, stability and safety are assured," the company's tests showed, Tojima told Bloomberg.
The tests appear to be among the most thorough done by companies planning to introduce the batteries, said Menahem Anderman, president of consulting firm Advanced Automotive Batteries in Oregon House, California.
"We now know that a lithium-ion battery can work; that's not really the question," he said. "Cost is critical, and we still don't know enough about long-term durability."
Hyundai Motors' ix-Metro Hybrid city car is one of several dozen 'green' cars and concepts debuting at Frankfurt show.
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
This week's Frankfurt Auto Show promises to be the greenest major auto show to date - a showcase for fuel efficiency improvements and alternative powertrains that are coming to the forefront as the mainstream auto industry finally begins coming to grips with the need to begin weaning itself - and us - from petroleum.
Toyota today provided more details regarding the Auris HSD Full Hybrid Concept it will debut at the Frankfurt Motor Show next week, including word that the vehicle marks a milestone in Toyota's plan to deploy full hybrid technology across the automaker's entire European model line-up.
"Full hybrid" means the car can be propelled by gasoline engine alone, electric motor alone or a combination of both. Most hybrids cannot do this.
Earlier this month we reported that, according to Toyota, the Auris hybrid uses 19 percent less fuel and emits 17 percent less climate-changing carbon dioxide than the standard Auris. We can now report that the five-door hatchback is slated to go on sale in Europe starting the second half of 2010, but there's no word on plans to send the car to North America.
In a statement, Toyota reported that the hybrid "marks a significant milestone in Toyota's plan to equip its mainstream European models with full hybrid technology. Toyota is committed to making the environmental benefits of its Hybrid Synergy Drive (HSD) accessible to a wider customer base and it is on track to offer a hybrid version of every model in its range by the early 2020s."
A five-door hatchback is the best selling type of car in Europe and consequently the installation of HSD in Auris is the logical first step in deploying full hybrid technology across Toyota's entire European model line-up.
By introducing the Auris concept, Toyota also aims to shift customer perceptions of hybrid technology. The obvious advantages are improved fuel efficiency and low CO2 emissions, but the automaker said customers will also experience smooth and sophisticated driving unlike any other family hatchback, thanks to the everyday usability, comfort and quietness of the Toyota full hybrid powertrain.
The Auris concept will be built by Toyota Motor Manufacturing UK at the Burnaston factory, near Derby. The manufacturer's suggested price for the vehicle has not been revealed.
In addition to changes to the Auris's powertrain for the concept car, Toyota says subtle changes have been made to Auris's styling to improve aerodynamic efficiency. The front end is designed to optimize airflow and so help maximize fuel efficiency. The front and rear bumper corners have flat surfaces, a feature that not only accentuates the car's wide and solid stance, but also smooths the flow of air over the vehicle's flanks, minimizing turbulence and drag.
Perhaps motivated by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu's proposal last May to slash more than $100 million in federal funding for hydrogen-vehicle research, nine major automakers today issued a joint statement announcing that they had signed a letter of understanding to develop and launch fuel-cell electric vehicles.
---------- A trio of Ford FCEVs get pumped up. ----------
FCEVs use an on-board fuel cell stack to convert hydrogen and oxygen to electricity that powers an electric drive system.
Today's announcement came one day after Chu said in an interview that he will no longer seek to eliminate federal funding for the R&D of hydrogen cars, but instead will work with lawmakers to ensure the money is "invested wisely."
The automakers' announcement states that they "strongly anticipate that from 2015 onwards a quite significant number of electric vehicles with fuel cell could be commercialized. This number is aimed at a few hundred thousand units over life cycle on a worldwide basis."
It continued: "As every vehicle manufacturer will implement its own specific production and commercial strategies as well as timelines, commercialization of electric vehicles with fuel cells may occur earlier than in the above-mentioned expected year."
Beyond those statements, the announcement -- signed by Daimler, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Renault, Nissan and Toyota -- offered little more information regarding the automakers' plans.
Toyota Motor Europe announced today that cumulative hybrid sales in Europe have topped the 200,000 mark, with 50 percent of the sales recorded in the last 24 months.
TME has sold a total of 202,126 Toyota and Lexus hybrids since introducing Europe's first commercial hybrid in 2000, the company said in a statement.
"The breakthrough result coincides with news that Toyota has sold over 2 million hybrids globally since launching the world's first mass-produced hybrid, Prius, in 1997 to critical acclaim," the company said.
Moveoever, Edmunds.com data put Toyota hybrid sales in the U.S. through August of this year at 1,106,203 vehicles sold, accounting for a 73 percent share of the U.S. hybrid market and a 0.6 percent share of the overall U.S. passenger vehicle market (cars and trucks combined).
Prius accounted for 768,638 sales, or 69.5 percent, of Toyota's total U.S. hybrid sales. The popular model accounted for 50.8 percent of the overall U.S. hybrid market and 0.45 percent of the overall U.S. passenger car market.
Toyota has a global target of 1 million hybrid sales per year by the early 2010s, with European sales representing up to 10 percent of this target.
In July, TME announced that it would manufacture a hybrid version of its C-segment hatchback, Auris, in the United Kingdom from mid-2010. That would mark what Toyota referred to today as "a critical first step" in the company's plans to offer a hybrid version of every model in the early 2020s.
Toyota Motor Corp. faces a patent-infringement claim that may result in a U.S. import ban on its Prius and other hybrid models, the Bloomberg news service reported today.
Closely held Paice LLC filed a complaint today with the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington, claiming Toyota is infringing its patents. It seeks an order to ban imports of products using its inventions.
Even if Paice were to prevail, Toyota would likely be able to keep selling its hybrids while it mounted a lengthy and vigorous challenge to the decision.
Paice won a jury verdict in 2005 that the Prius, Toyota Highlander and Lexus RX400h hybrid vehicles used Paice inventions related to drivetrains, Bloomberg reported. The new ITC complaint claims the hybrid Camry, third-generation Prius, Lexus HS250h and Lexus RX450h infringe the same patent.
In the complaint, Paice said Toyota is precluded from arguing that the additional vehicles don't infringe the patent or challenging its validity because of the 2005 verdict, which was upheld on appeal. The drivetrains of the vehicles in the ITC case "are materially the same" as those in the Lexus and Highlander vehicles in the civil case, Paice said in the complaint.
That same patent will be at the center of another trial set to begin Oct. 1 in federal court in Marshall, Texas, involving the Toyota Camry. Paice claims the Camry also infringes two other patents. A second case, also pending in Marshall, involves claims of infringement of another patent by the Highlander and Lexus models.
The commission in Washington is set up to protect U.S. market from unfair trade practices, including patent infringement. If it agrees to investigate Paice's claims, the investigation could be completed in about 15 months. It has the power to order U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials to block infringing products from entering the country.
Back in March, Jim Press, vice chairman and president of Chrysler, was quoted in a Business Week report as saying, "The Japanese government paid for 100 percent of the development of the battery and hybrid system that went into the Toyota Prius."
Toyota quickly denied the allegation, stating that it got no such help in developing the gasoline-electric hybrid vehicle.
Well, it took the Japanese government more than five months to respond, but today it announced that Press (pictured) was wrong.
Sosuke Tanaka, an official at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, said today that Toyota had not received financial aid from the government in developing the Prius, according to ministry records.
"Toyota developed its own technology," Tanaka said in an interview with The New York Times. "So please talk to Toyota about research and development."
Chrysler defended Press, who worked at Toyota for 37 years before joining Chrysler in September 2007.
On its media blog, Chrysler said Press "was not speaking negatively of Toyota" but "referenced the close cooperation between the Japanese government and Japanese industry."
Chrysler said Press would like to see similar cooperation between government and industry in the U.S.
Didn't the U.S. government just save Chrysler's trunk, so to speak? For a second time? Jim Press, this would be a good time to reflect on the proverb, Those who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
China's moves to tighten control on the mining and export of a class of metal ores called rare earth are aimed at attracting high-tech manufacturing to Inner Mongolia, and not at dominating the market, The Wall Street Journal reported today, citing a senior Chinese official.
---------- The rare-earth element lanthanum, right, is used in the manufacture of hybrid-car batteries. ----------
As we reported earlier this week, a number of those rare metals are used to make the high-power, lightweight magnets for electric motors of hybrid cars, such as the Toyota Prius, Honda Insight and Ford Fusion. Others are major ingredients for batteries used in hybrid cars.
Wednesday's comments by Zhao Shuanglin, vice chairman of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, appear aimed at quelling concerns that China is trying to dominate the global market for rare-earth resources.
China produces more than 90 percent of the world's output of the metals. Recent steps by Beijing toward tightening export restrictions have sparked concern in other countries.
There also appear to be concerns about China's investment in rare-earth producers in other countries.
In Australia, the government has delayed yet again consideration of a $210 million investment by China Nonferrous Metal Mining Group Co. in Lynas Corp., an investment that would give the Chinese company a majority stake in the biggest new rare-earth mine currently under development.
Lynas, which unveiled the planned investment in early May, said Wednesday a 30-day review period by the Australian government's foreign investment review board had again been reset so that the board has until early October to consider the deal.
Nissan Altima hybrid was one of the stars of August, more than tripling sales for the month despite limited availability.
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
The federal Cash for Clunkers program may have been good for conventional cars in August, but monthly sales performance was a letdown for hybrids after an explosive July.
Oh, sales of gas-electric cars and SUVs were up last month - a 9.2 percent gain from July, but that pales by comparison to the 35 percent gain the segment recorded in July over June and doesn't stand up well, either, against the 26.6% August increase posted by conventionally powered vehicles (cars and trucks except hybrids).
Overall, however, August 2009 hybrid sales of 38,701 gas-electric cars, SUVS and pickups were up 48.6 percent from 26,044 in August '08 - a significant gain explained in large part by the addition of half a dozen new hybrid models, including the Honda Insight, Ford Fusion and Lexus HS250, that weren't available a year earlier.
Toyota will unveil a gasoline-electric hybrid concept of it Auris compact car as well as a Prius Plug-In Hybrid Concept at the Frankfurt Motor Show, the automaker announced today.
Toyota said the Auris HSD Full Hybrid Concept (right) is a step forward in the company's plan to expand its hybrid lineup. The world's largest automaker will begin production of the Auris hybrid at its factory near Derby, about 120 miles north of London, starting mid-2010.
Toyota said the Auris hybrid uses 19 percent less fuel and emits 17 percent less climate-changing carbon dioxide than the standard version.
The company builds most of its hybrid vehicles in Japan, but also produces a small number of Prius hybrids in China and the Camry hybrid in the United States.
In July, Toyota President Akio Toyoda said the carmaker would shift its focus in the diesel-heavy European market to hybrid vehicles as part of a new effort to use its resources more selectively.
Toyota Europe CEO Tadashi Arashima said making hybrids in Europe would help ensure that full hybrids "become more accessible to a wider range of customers."
Toyota has a goal of selling at least 1 million hybrid vehicles a year within the next few years.
Toyota also will give its Prius Plug-In Hybrid Concept a world debut in Frankfurt. The low-emissions car is based on the new, third-generation Prius.
An artist's rendering of the Prius Plug-In Hybrid Concept appears at left. A photo of the vehicle has yet to be released.
The carmaker said it will offer 150 of the fuel-efficient Prius Plug-In Hybrid Concepts to fleet customers to test next year.
The Toyota Prius hybrid automobile is popular for its fuel efficiency, but its electric motor and battery guzzle rare earth metals, a little-known class of elements found in a wide range of gadgets and consumer goods.
.......... Neodymium: A key component of EV motors. ..........
That makes Toyota's market-leading gasoline-electric hybrid car and other similar vehicles vulnerable to a supply crunch predicted by experts as China, the world's dominant rare earths producer, limits exports while global demand swells, Reuters news agency reported today.
Worldwide demand for rare earths, covering 15 entries on the periodic table of elements, is expected to exceed supply by some 40,000 tons annually in several years unless major new production sources are developed. One promising U.S. source is a rare earths mine slated to reopen in California by 2012.
Among the rare metals that would be most affected in a shortage is neodymium, the key component of an alloy used to make the high-power, lightweight magnets for electric motors of hybrid cars, such as the Prius, Honda Insight and Ford Fusion Focus, as well as in generators for wind turbines.
Close cousins terbium and dysprosium are added in smaller amounts to the alloy to preserve neodymium's magnetic properties at high temperatures, Reuters reported. Yet another rare earth metal, lanthanum, is a major ingredient for hybrid car batteries.
Toyota has 70 percent of the U.S. market for vehicles powered by a combination of an internal-combustion engine and electric motor. The Prius is its No. 1 hybrid seller.
Reuters reported that Jack Lifton, an independent commodities consultant and strategic metals expert, calls the Prius "the biggest user of rare earths of any object in the world."
Each electric Prius motor requires 2.2 pounds of neodymium, and each battery uses 22 to 33 pounds of lanthanum. That number will nearly double under Toyota's plans to boost the car's fuel economy, he said.
An airline pilots union is calling for a government ban on shipments of lithium batteries aboard passenger and all-cargo planes after a series of fires in recent years involving aircraft.
This development might have an adverse affect on electric vehicles and most hybrid vehicles because lithium batteries are widely regarded as the best type to propel the vehicles.
At the very least, reports of a link between lithium batteries and fires aboard aircraft won't help public perception that such batteries are safe.
In statement released Tuesday, the Air Line Pilots Association said that federal regulators have been slow to act on the issue and that "the evidence of a clear and present danger is mounting."
The ban would not apply to devices containing batteries brought aboard by passengers, but as you can read in the adjacent boxed text, there has been at least one instance of a passenger reporting that his laptop computer was emitting smoke.
Since March of last year, six fires have been reported on board passenger and cargo jets linked to lithium-based batteries, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. None of the incidents resulted in deaths or serious injuries.
In a recent letter sent to Cynthia Douglass, acting deputy administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, Captain John Prater, head of the pilots' union, pointed to three recent incidents as proof positive of the urgent need to prohibit lithium-battery shipments.
During just the past two months, fire, smoke, or evidence of fire associated with battery shipments has occurred aboard three separate U.S. airliners, he wrote in the letter.
The incidents, which took place in Minneapolis/Saint Paul, Minnesota, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and Honolulu, Hawaii, were similar to a 2006 battery fire aboard a DC-8 in Philadelphia, he wrote.
In a positive development for American autoworkers, Toyota Motor Corp. has decided to shift more production of its fuel-efficient four-cylinder engines from Japan to Alabama.
---------- Right, the 4-cylinder engine that appears in the 2010 Camry. Below, an information box about that engine. Click on the box to enlarge it. ----------
The company announced that it will spend $147 million to add 216,000 four-bangers a year to engine production at Huntsville, where it already makes V-6 and V-8 light-truck engines. As part of the expansion, Toyota will hire 240 workers.
The four-cylinder engines will go into Toyota Camrys built in Princeton, Indiana, and RAV4s built in Woodstock, Ontario. The engines for those models have been coming from Japan.
The Huntsville plant was built to produce V-8 engines for full-sized Toyota Sequoia SUVs and Tundra pickups. The collapse of those segments prompted the company to merge two V-8 engine lines at Huntsville, leaving part of the plant unused.
Both Toyota and Nissan Motor Co. have struggled to free up North American capacity for smaller engines as consumers have shifted to more fuel-efficient vehicles.
Toyota recently boosted four-cylinder Camry engine production at Georgetown, Kentucky, by making layout changes to an existing assembly area.
The new investment at Huntsville also will require Toyota's Bodine Aluminum Inc. subsidiary to expand output of engine heads and blocks at Troy, Missouri.
Toyota said that Bodine will spend $25 million and hire about 60 employees as a result.
Honda Motor Co. plans to develop an electric car to debut in the U.S. market by around 2015 as tighter environmental regulations push demand for zero-emissions vehicles, the Nikkei business journal reported Saturday.
---------- 2015 wouldn't mark the first year a Honda electric vehicle appeared in the U.S. Right, the Honda CUV-4 test EV in California two decades ago. It led to the Honda EV Plus, below, shown at a line-off ceremony in Japan in 1996. ----------
A spokesperson for the company, Japan's No. 2 automaker, said it was developing an electric vehicle but had not decided when to launch it.
The company would not comment on a Nikkei report, published without attribution to any sources, that a prototype of the car would be unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show in October.
The vehicle is expected to be about the size of a minicar, the Nikkei said.
Nissan Motor Co., Japan's third biggest automaker, unveiled its electric car "Leaf" earlier this month with plans to begin selling it in the United States, Japan and Europe towards the end of 2010.
Other major automakers such as Toyota and Volkswagen have also announced plans to launch electric cars in the next few years.
Tesla Motors, a small California electric-vehicle maker, has sold more than 700 highway-capable EVs since it began producing them last year.
Toyota Motor Corp plans to release within this year a new medium-sized hybrid sedan, the SAI, that is bigger than the current best-selling Prius as it seeks to expand its lineup of electric-gas hybrids, sources familiar with the matter said Friday.
The SAI will be positioned as a Toyota brand-version of the luxury Lexus HS250h hybrid sedan released in mid-July. It will have the same basic structure but different exterior and interior designs, the sources said, according to a report in tomorrow's Japan Today.
The SAI's starting price is expected to fall between the HS250h's $41,751 and the new Prius' $21,668, the sources said.
Toyota also plans to release a cheaper compact hybrid based on its Vitz model with better fuel efficiency than the new Prius and a minivan-type hybrid as early as in 2011.
Toyota Motor Corp. has developed a new technology that may dramatically boost the storage capacity of lithium-ion batteries and thus open the door to more practical electric vehicles, according to a Japanese press report.
The advance - the fabrication of single crystals of lithium cobalt oxide - grew out of joint research with Japan's Tohoku University, Toyota spokesman Paul Nolasco said.
The new technology is a step toward creating a more powerful battery, but Nolasco declined to estimate the potential increase in a battery's storage capacity or an electric vehicle's range.
Japan's Nikkei business newspaper said the technique eventually would allow lithium-ion batteries to store 10 times the energy of current ones. The development would roughly translate into a tenfold increase in driving range, the newspaper said.
The greater storage capacity could also enable Toyota to reduce the size, weight and possibly the cost of the battery pack.
Lithium-ion batteries are seen as key to the mass marketing of electric vehicles because they are lighter and more powerful than the nickel-metal hydride batteries now used in hybrid cars.
Yet Toyota has largely steered clear of electric vehicles, arguing that the current generation of lithium-ion batteries is still too weak to provide a sufficient range for all-electric drivetrains.
The cathodes of Toyota's current lithium-ion batteries are typically made from a polycrystalline form of lithium cobalt oxide that connected with grains of graphite, the Nikkei said.
By using a single crystal form, however, Toyota can use less graphite and create more room for the storage of the lithium ions that create the electrical charge.
The newspaper said it will take another decade to develop a cathode that contains no graphite and that version should be able to store 10 times today's electrical charge.
The New York Times is reporting today something we've been saying for months: That Toyota, maker of the mighty Prius hybrid and the No. 1 automaker worldwide by volume of units sold, is falling behind in the race to bring all-electric vehicles to market.
---------- Right, Toyota sold the RAV4 EV sport ute from 1997-2203. ----------
The article notes that Mitsubishi Motors has begun leasing its i-MiEV and that Nissan is set to leave its EV next year. But when oh when is Toyota's? 2012 is the answer the automaker gives.
The article quotes Masatami Takimoto, Toyota's executive vice president, as saying earlier this year that the electric car's "time is not here."
Electric cars "face many challenges," he said, adding that "to commercialize pure EV's, we need a battery that far exceeds the current technology."
Predictably, the Times reporter turned to EV proponents and analysts who have no experience running an automaker, let alone one that manufactured and sold an all-electric SUV from 1997-2003; that would be Toyota's RAV4 EV, many of which are still going strong and enjoy great popularity with their owners.
Which isn't to say the analysts weren't good for some interesting speculation.
"In a world where vehicles run on electrons rather than hydrocarbons, the automakers will have to reinvent their businesses," Russell Hensley, an analyst at the consulting company McKinsey, told clients in a recent report, the Times reported.
The newspaper also quoted analysts as saying that Toyota would like to profit all it can from the current technology before shifting to a new one - which makes sense, doesn't it? - especially because the company is facing a second down year after a loss last year of about $4.4 billion.
Toyota Motor Corp. will buy hybrid-car batteries from Sanyo Electric Co. as the automaker struggles to meet growing demand for the fuel-sipping vehicles due to a shortage of battery supply, Reuters news service reported today, citing an unidentified source familiar with the matter.
Toyota now procures its batteries from Panasonic EV Energy Co, a joint venture with Panasonic Corp. Panasonic plans to take control of Sanyo and is awaiting regulatory approval.
Demand for gasoline-electric vehicles has surged in Japan, helped by tax breaks and subsidies under a government initiative to promote fuel-efficient automobiles, but Toyota has said production of its hybrids is being held back by a supply bottleneck for batteries.
Its Prius hybrid was Japan's best-selling car in July for a second straight month, but customers placing orders have to wait about eight months before delivery.
Toyota also said this week that it had received about 10,000 orders for the Lexus HS250h sedan, the premium brand's first dedicated hybrid car, in its first month of sale in Japan. It aims to sell an average 500 units a month.
Toyota, the world's biggest automaker, will first use Sanyo's lithium-ion batteries from around 2011, said the source, who confirmed a report in the Nikkei business daily and spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is not yet public.
Toyota will first procure about 10,000 battery units per year from Sanyo, the world's biggest rechargeable battery maker, the source said. Toyota aims to sell at least 1 million hybrid vehicles a year in the early 2010s.
A Toyota spokeswoman said nothing had been decided about procuring lithium-ion batteries from Sanyo. A Sanyo spokesman declined comment, citing company policy on deals with potential and existing customers.
Toyota Improves Batteries
In a related development, Toyota announced that has developed a new technology that may dramatically boost the storage capacity of lithium-ion batteries and thus open the door to more practical electric vehicles.
Suzuki, which said last month that it would start selling its all-wheel-drive sports sedan in the U.S. by the end of the year, may unveil a gas-electric hybrid version in the country as soon as 2011, the Japanese newspaper Nikkei reported Sunday.
The carmaker, which would follow fellow Japanese carmakers Toyota and Honda into the hybrid vehicle market, will use a powertrain it's developing with General Motors for the hybrid version of its Kizashi, Suzuki's first mid-sized sedan, Nikkei reported.
The hybrid will get about 20 percent better gas mileage than its gas-powered equivalent, which will be powered by a 2.4-liter inline four-cylinder engine, according to Nikkei.
Suzuki, which announced late last month that it would begin selling the gasoline-powered version of the Kizashi in North America this winter, also said it would make a hybrid version of the sedan, although it declined at the time to estimate when the hybrid would be available.
American Suzuki Motors Corp. spokesman Jeff Holland declined to comment on the Nikkei report.
GM, which first invested in Suzuki in 1981 and owned as much as 20 percent of the company in 2001, sold its remaining 3 percent of the company last year. Suzuki sold about 26,000 vehicles in the U.S. from the start of this year through July, down 60 percent from a year earlier.
In an uncharacteristically succinct statement issued today, Lexus announced that it will introduce a premium compact concept at the Frankfurt Motor Show on September 15th and it unveiled an official sketch of the car.
"The concept will demonstrate a mix of technical innovation and ground-breaking design that promises to raise the bar in the premium compact segment," the statement said, adding that further information about the unnamed vehicle won't be available until the show.
That said, we have to assume that by "technical innovation and ground-breaking design" the new model will feature some of green innovations found in Lexus's low-emissions, fuel-efficient hybrid models.
Among those innovations: A rear-wheel-drive hybrid powertrain featuring a 3.5-liter V6 gasoline-fuel internal combustion engine mated to a high-output electric motor.
The vehicle, which will likely represent Toyota's effort to compete with Audi's A3 and BMW's 1 series cars in Europe, might be destined for U.S. showrooms.
Unfortunately, that bit of wishful thinking won't likely be confirmed or denied before the Frankfurt show.
Toyota Motor Corp. plans to launch a hybrid vehicle that is cheaper and more fuel efficient than the Toyota Prius as early as 2011, a Japanese newspaper reported today.
---------- Right, the 2010 Toyota Yaris. ----------
The car will share key parts with the Toyota's Yaris and will get double the fuel economy of the Yaris, The Yomiuri Shimbun reported. It will be sold in the United States, Japan and Europe.
The vehicle would be priced around 1.5 million yen ($15,650) and deliver 94 miles per gallon, the newspaper said, without revealing how it got the information.
"The 'ultra-fuel-efficient' car will surpass in terms of fuel efficiency the latest model of Toyota's top hybrid car, the Prius," the newspaper reported. "The envisaged model will be the world's most fuel-efficient mass-produced hybrid car, whose main power source is gasoline."
Toyota spokeswoman Yoshie Matsuura said she could not discuss future product plans. But Toyota is known to be planning a small, inexpensive Yaris-based hybrid to compete with Honda Motor Co.'s plans for a hybrid version of the Fit/Jazz
The current Prius gets about 89 miles per gallon under a Japanese mileage test that is not comparable to U.S. or European tests.
The Honda Insight and Toyota Prius hybrids received "top safety pick" labels from the non-profit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, bolstering sales prospects for two of the industry's most fuel-efficient vehicles.
---------- Right, the Honda Insight dummy's position in relation to the steering wheel and instrument panel after the crash test indicates that his survival space was maintained well. ----------
Today's designations for the 2010 Insight and Prius along with the non-hybrid Kia Soul mean about a third of the small cars tested by the non-profit insurance group carry its highest rating.
Vehicles with that label have posted "good" scores in front, side and rear crash tests. Top safety picks also must have electronic stability control.
"The latest results show that consumers who want good fuel economy can also get a high level of safety," said institute spokesman Russ Rader. "Because there are so many small cars that test well, there's no reason to settle for a small car with less-than-stellar safety ratings."
The insurance group's side test simulates a collision with an SUV or pickup truck moving at 31 mph. The frontal trials mimic 40 mph offset crashes with vehicles of the same weight as the test car. The institute also simulates a stationary vehicle's being rear-ended by a vehicle going 20 mph.
Today's top-safety-pick designations for the Prius, Insight and Soul put the number of top-rated small cars at 10, out of the 27 the group has tested. Other small cars with the rating are the 2009 Subaru Impreza, 2009 Scion xB, four-door 2009 Honda Civic, 2009 Mitsubishi Lancer, 2009 Volkswagen Rabbit, 2010 Toyota Corolla and two-door 2009 Ford Focus.
In April, the insurance group said the Toyota Yaris, Honda Fit and Smart ForTwo minicars performed poorly in frontal crash tests with mid-sized vehicles. Upon impact, the three cars all collapsed into the space around the driver dummy.
The fuel economy rule of thumb used to be that a full hybrid like the Toyota Prius was great for city driving but not so much better than other cars on the highway; that smaller cars were more fuel efficient than larger cars, and that diesels kicked butt in mileage contests.
Edmunds.com's crack(ed) team of testers set out last month to see if that's all still true with the new crop of cars and came to some surprising conclusions in what is becoming our annual Fuel Sipper Smackdown.
Over two days and 700-plus miles of driving, from Southern California to and around Las Vegas and then back, the team put the 2010 Ford Fusion hybrid, 2010 Honda Insight, 2009 Mini, 2010 Toyota Prius and 2009 Volkswagen Jetta TDI through a series of driving conditions, tracked fuel costs and computer CO2 output.
You can read the results here, and watch the video, above, for a 5-minute summary, but we'll give you the boil-down now:
Smart is reportedly working on a radical design for a new three-seater sports car that will form part of a new model assault, as well as a more conventional four-seat car to be produced in co-operation with Renault.
According to an Automotive News Europe report (subscription required), Mercedes is developing the three-seater partly in reaction to Toyota's iQ, which has gained plaudits as a fashionable and innovative urban city car.
The model has been conceived as a sportier alternative to Smart's upright second-generation ForTwo model, although the ForTwo will be retained in the Smart model line-up.
The model is likely to take the "ForThree" nameplate, although nothing has yet been decided by Smart's owner, the Mercedes-Benz Car Group.
Plans for the car were uncovered in European patent-application sketches (pictured, click to enlarge) obtained by Automotive News Europe sister publication AutoWeek.
The new three-seater model will draw heavily on the architecture and basic layout of the famous McLaren F1 supercar, which had a central driving position flanked on either side by two passenger seats.
The model is also likely to contain a number of innovative packaging concepts to accommodate three people in what will is likely to be a highly compact passenger car. These include a swivelling seat base as well as a transverse runner within the floor that allows the driver's seat to be adjusted out towards the door.
Although the patent applications do not mention the new car's proposed mechanical package, Mercedes is well advanced on a new line-up of modular three-cylinder gasoline and diesel engines as large as 1.4 liters.
Let the rest of the world talk about batteries, Toyota Motor Co. wants us to know its got fuel-cell electric vehicles and that it believes they're a viable technology.
The automaker said this morning that in a real-world driving test of a pair of its second-generation Toyota Highlander fuel cell vehicles, they averaged 431 miles on Southern California roads on their approximately 6-kilogram tanks of compressed hydrogen gas .
Average fuel economy was 68.3 miles per kilogram - the hydrogen equivalent of a gallon of gasoline. That's more than 2.5 times the fuel economy of the 2010 Toyota Highlander gas-electric hybrid.
Toyota previously had estimated the second-generation Highlander fuel cell SUV's range at 516 miles. But that was based on an estimate derived from a Japanese fuel economy test cycle that has much lower top speeds and acceleration rates than used in the U.S. test, said Toyota spokeswoman Jana Hartline.
The public is invited to attend two major plug-in electric vehicle events in California in coming days.
The more newsworthy of the two will likely be the Plug-In 2009 Exposition held at the Long Beach Convention Center. It's there that green-car reporters from around the world will descend for more than three days of speeches, discussions and demonstrations revolving around plug-in electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.
The public is invited to attend a slice of the event - from 5:30 to 9 p.m. on Tuesday, Aug. 11. The public portion will consist of vehicle displays (Chevy Volt, Ford 550 plug-in hybrid truck, Ford Escape plug-in hybrid, and a plug-in Toyota Prius to name a few), followed by a panel discussion.
Panelists will include: Peter Horton, writer/director, "Grey's Anatomy" and "The Philanthropist"; Bill Nye, "The Science Guy"; Chris Paine, director, "Who Killed the Electric Car?" and "Revenge of the Electric Car"; Chelsea Sexton, founder, The Lightning Rod Foundation and a former General Motors EV1 specialist.
Cost is $10 and tickets can be purchased at the door. Visit the Plug In 2009 Website for additional information.
The lovelier of the two events will be the 2nd Annual Benefit Party for Plug In America, a respected nonprofit organization that promotes PEVs and PHEVs, held this coming Sunday from 4 p.m. till 8 p.m. at the Thomas Fogarty Winery in Woodside.
Among the vehicles on hand will be the pre-production Aptera 2e, a Tesla Roadster, a BMW Mini E, a Tango, a Tzero, an A123 Hymotion Prius conversion, electric motorcycles from Mission Motors and Zero Motorcycles, plus some one-off conversions and plenty of RAV4 EVs.
The event, titled "Plug-Ins, Pinots and Progress," will make for an excellent and informative afternoon-evening and, as benefits often do, will contain a spectacular auctions portion. Among the items that will be going to the block: a week's stay at a Hawaiian resort for 2-3 people, a Zero X electric motorcycle, and an A123/Hymotion L5 Plug-in Conversion Module (a $10,000 value) for all you Prius owners.
Bids can be submitted online. Tickets to the event start at $120. Visit the Plug In America Website for more information.
A battery bottleneck is hurting efforts to boost output of the Prius to meet booming demand for the hybrid, and the problem will likely persist into next year, according to a senior Toyota official.
"The new Prius model has been excessively popular, inconveniencing some of our customers, and the factories are working overtime at full capacity," Takahiko Ijichi, Toyota senior managing director, said Tuesday at the company's quarterly earnings announcement.
"Unfortunately, the batteries are not catching up with demand. Production of the batteries needs to be increased in order for our production to go up."
Toyota has an annual Prius capacity of 500,000 cars. Panasonic EV Energy Co., which makes the nickel-metal hydride batteries for the gasoline-electric hybrid car, can't churn out more than that right now, Ijichi said.
The third-generation Prius hybrid is a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy year for the world's biggest automaker. The car is facing months-long waiting lists at dealerships and is easily outselling Honda's rival Insight hybrid in Europe and the United States.
The success of the Prius in Japan is one reason Toyota says it will post its first domestic sales increase in five years.
"The new Prius model is selling quite well," Ijichi said.
Toyota's Perennial Best-Seller Records 48% Sales Jump For Month; Honda Hybrids Flat
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
If Cash for Clunkers lit a fire under July's auto dales in the general market, it apparently set off a rocket booster under the hybrid market.
---------- It was blue skies for Toyota as its 2010 Prius rebounded in July. -----------
Sales of gas-electric cars, SUVs and trucks were up an impressive 35 percent in July - for the month and from a year earlier. Almost all hybrid cars best the 22 mph minimum combined EPA mileage that qualifies a vehicle to be purchased using a cash for clunkers voucher. By comparison, sales of conventional new vehicles rose 15.4 percent for the month and were down 13 percent from July '08.
The explosive performance was led almost single-handedly by Toyota's 2010 Prius, which saw its first full month of sales with an adequate supply on hand at dealerships.
"I think hybrids are benefiting from the buzz of new models such as the 2010 Prius and Honda Insight and fresh models in segments other than compact car, as well as from Cash for Clunkers," said Edmunds.com industry analyst Jessica Caldwell.
If C4C Comes Back, Tech Premium For Many Could Be Offset; Manufacturer Rebates Would Do Same
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
Got a gas guzzler that would qualify under the cash for clunkers program for a federal credit toward a new, more efficient car or truck? (That's if we still have a cash for clunkers program when the dust settles from Thursday's reveation that the programs's initial funding apparently has run dry.)
The situation's up in the air right now, but if you are in the mood to keep doing research, or perhaps have had the car-buying impulse jump-started and have decided to take the plunge - clunker incentive or no - this is a good time to look at hybrids and diesels.
----------
2009 Camry Hybrid has lowest technology premium, $239.
----------
If Congress keeps cash for clunkers going, or automakers step up with bigger incentives of their own to keep the market moving, the credits - ranging in the C4C program from $3,500 to $4,500 depending on the fuel economy of the new car or truck - could help make a previously unaffordable hybrid or clean diesel a lot more compatible with your budget.
Honda had hopes its retooled Insight (right
) would eventually overtake the Toyota Prius as America's top-selling hybrid when it began selling the model last March.
But four months after entering the U.S. market, it's not even a close race.
Nationwide, Americans bought 2,079 Insights in June, bringing total sales of the streamlined hatchback since March to 7,524. At that rate, Honda will sell less than a third of its goal of 90,000 in the first 12 months.
By comparison, the higher-priced Prius was snapped up by 12,998 drivers last month. Since March, Toyota has sold 40,398 of the gas sippers.
And reviews of the Insight have been dismal. Typical of them is last month's Consumer Reports review, which decided that the new Honda fell short in ride quality, handling, interior noise, acceleration, rear-seat access and visibility.
America's rejection of the fuel-efficient model must be all the more humbling because Honda was the first automaker to bring hybrids to the U.S. It did that a decade ago with an earlier version of the Insight.
And get this: The Ford Fusion Hybrid is selling as well as the Insight in the U.S. even though it costs nearly $10,000 more.
It'll be interesting to see how the Honda CR-Z -- the automaker's next hybrid -- competes when it comes to America next year. As a two-seat sport coupe, it will be entering one of the smallest-volume segments of the market.
New Gas-Electric Car Could Be Intended To Battle Honda Fit, CR-Z Hybrids Due in 2010
Toyota Motor Co. plans to launch a new small hybrid, based on the Yaris platform (it's the Vitz in Japan and Europe) and priced at under $16,000, according to a report in the Asahi newspaper.
---------- Toyota's Yaris could be the basis for a new small hybrid. ----------
The car, to be launched in late 2011, will be a unique model - not a hybridized Yaris/Vitz, the report says, and will be built in Japan and, possibly, Europe.
Toyota upheld its policy of not commenting on unauthorized reports of future products.
The idea isn't far-fetched. Toyota as said for years now that it plans to be able to offer a hybrid version of every vehicle in its lineup if it senses market demand.
A new subcompact Toyota hybrid would be just the ticket to battle rival Honda Motor Co., which has already said it will launch a hybrid version of its subcompact Fit (the Jazz in Europe) and a new hybrid sport car, the CR-Z, in late 2010.
"It is no surprise that Toyota is also looking to add this technology to the smaller end of its model range," IHS Global Insight said in a European analysts' report.
Above, a slide in a Ford presentation Tuesday spells out the new importance the automaker gives green cars.
By Scott Doggett, Contributor
In its bid to survive myriad threats in a volatile automotive industry, Ford Motor Co. is pulling out all the stops.
Perhaps that has never been more evident than it was Tuesday, when the century-old automaker hosted a 2010 model-year news conference and driving event at its sprawling Dearborn Development Center.
Led by Derrick Kuzak (left
), Ford's global product development chief, and Barb Samardzich (below
), head of Ford's global powertrain R&D efforts, the event offered a deep look into the verdant future of Detroit's healthiest automaker less than a month after it unveiled plans to spend $14 billion on advanced-technology vehicles.
The company's recently released EcoBoost engine forms the core of Ford's survival strategy, they said. The engine uses gasoline turbocharged direct-injection technology for, the company claims, up to 20 percent better fuel economy and 15 percent fewer greenhouse-gas emissions than like-sized regularly aspirated engines of similar horsepower.
EcoBoost V6 engines will debut in the 2010 model-year Ford Flex, Taurus SHO, Lincoln MKS and MKT; as we reported, the company provided details Tuesday regarding a four-cylinder version slated to appear in Fords starting next calendar year.
By 2012, Kuzak and Samardzich said, the company will produce a combined 750,000 EcoBoost V6 and I4 engines annually in the U.S. and 1.3 million globally.
The executives also said Ford will offer EcoBoost engines in 90 percent of its vehicles by 2013. It's clear from the figures that EcoBoost engines won't be an option, but rather will constitute the stock engines found in most of Ford's lineup less than five years from now.
And Hybrids!
But there's more to the green 2010 MY offerings from Ford than vehicles fitted with EcoBoost engines. Ford is also offering two new hybrids: the Ford Fusion Hybrid ($27,270 base) and the Mercury Milan Hybrid ($27,500 base), both of which impressed us with their acceleration and handling Tuesday on the development center's high-speed track.
Both hybrids average an EPA-rated 41 miles per gallon in the city - that's 8 mpg more than the 2010 Toyota Camry Hybrid, which starts at $26,150 - making them the most fuel-efficient midsize sedans currently available in America.
Speaking of Toyota: For the first time in the 28-year history of the Global Quality Research System, a study conducted quarterly by the independent RDA Group of Bloomfield, Michigan, Ford, Lincoln and Mercury vehicles recently obtained customer-satisfaction levels on par with the Japanese car maker's.
That's important, because it's one of a spate of recent internal and external studies that show a positive trend in the percentage of consumers with favorable opinions about Ford and growing numbers of consumers who are willing to consider purchasing a Ford product, thanks in no small part to improved fuel economy.
Avoided Bankruptcy
Of course, it also helps that Ford didn't just emerge from bankruptcy, as did Chrysler and General Motors. Those companies now have to win back consumer confidence, while Ford - though driving to improve its ratings - is starting form a much higher level.
The studies also show that vehicles such as the Fusion Hybrid (left, at Ford's Dearborn Development Center on Tuesday
) are bringing new customers to Ford: 54 percent of the hybrid's buyers thus far did not previously own Fords and 66 percent of those buyers are coming out of foreign vehicles, company spokesmen said.
That's crucial as Ford tries to win back some of the market share it's lost to Japanese and European automakers in recent years.
On that chord, it's worth noting that before he assumed his current position as Ford's head of global car development, Kuzak ran the automaker's European small-car operation for five years. People within and outside Ford who are familiar with Kuzak's European efforts say the man knows what Ford needs to do to compete with fuel-efficient subcompacts produced by Old World automakers.
That knowledge includes designing vehicles that not only get excellent mileage, but that are also a blast to drive. Quickness and major fun factor are characteristics Kuzak is constantly stressing to Ford engineers, they say.
EcoBoost Just a Start
But there's more to Ford's fuel-efficiency efforts than EcoBoost.
When you factor in the incremental fuel-saving gains Ford's made with electric power-assist steering (which reduces the load on the engine since a belt-driven power steering pump is no longer required), aerodynamic modifications, six-speed transmissions, reductions in electric-system loads via electric air-conditioners, minute transmission tweaks that reduce friction - and a host of other mileage-enhancers - the fuel-economy benefits of vehicles the automaker has in the works for the short term approach 40 percent.
"We are absolutely committed to delivering new products with the best fuel economy in every segment in which we compete," Samardzich said.
We look forward to posting more Ford green-car news from Tuesday's event later today.
Japanese industry daily Nikkan Jidosha Shimbun
reported today that Toyota has decided to produce a gasoline-electric version of its Auris hatchback (right
) at its British factory around 2012, in what would mark its first locally produced hybrid car in Europe.
Calls to Toyota for confirmation were not immediately returned.
The Auris, part of the popular Corolla series, was Toyota's third-best-selling model in Europe during the first five months of this year after the Yaris and Aygo subcompact models.
Toyota builds most of its hybrid vehicles in Japan, but also produces a small number of Prius cars in China and the Camry hybrid in Kentucky.
It is scheduled to begin production of the Camry Hybrid in Thailand later this month, and in Australia next year. The Prius is also planned for production at a new Mississippi plant but has been delayed due to the economic crisis.
Toyota Motor Corp. today launched its first dedicated hybrid model under the premium Lexus brand, saying it had received orders worth six months of targeted sales in Japan.
---------- Right, Lexus GM Mark Templin introduces the 2010 Lexus HS 250h at the Detroit Auto Show in January. ----------
The launch of the HS 250h sedan, which like the Prius is only available as a gasoline-electric hybrid, marks the latest push by the Japanese automaker to drive hybrids into the mainstream as governments worldwide tighten emissions and fuel-economy regulations while offering consumers incentives to purchase less-polluting cars.
Toyota said it has already received 3,000 orders for the vehicle in Japan and expects to sell an average of 500 of them each month domestically.
The model will be sold in the United States and Canada from September, Toyota said, adding that its plans to produce about 3,000 of the vehicle a month through the rest of the year.
Senior Managing Director Toshio Furutani said hybrids had become a major driver for the Lexus brand, which has struggled to sell in Japan since its domestic launch in 2005.
In the first six months of 2009, Lexus sales plunged 38 percent from the year-earlier period to 9,293 vehicles. About 30 percent of those were a hybrid, a Toyota spokesman said.
The HS 250h, powered by a 2.5-liter engine, starts at $42,460 in Japan, making it the cheapest model in the Lexus line-up and eligible for a maximum $2,870 in "eco-car" tax breaks. The HS 250h has listed mileage in Japan of 35 miles per gallon.
Toyota has a goal of selling at least 1 million hybrid vehicles a year within the next few years and has said it would offer the hybrid option on all of its models by around 2020.
UPDATE: But the automaker says it has no plans to bring Fit Hybrid to U.S.
Honda Motor Co. announced today that it plans to begin selling the sporty CR-Z hybrid (above
) in Japan this coming February and release a hybrid version of its popular Fit five-door subcompact (below
) domestically by the end of next year.
By "combining these two models with the currently available Insight and Civic Hybrid, Honda will further enhance its lineup of compact hybrid models, which leverage the unique characteristics of Honda's Integrated Motor Assist, including compact size, lightweight and high efficiency," the company said in a statement.
Honda spokesman Chris Martin told Green Car Advisor that the CR-Z "will come to the United States within the calendar year of 2010," but he would not be more specific. As for the Fit Hybrid, he said Honda currently does not have any plans to bring it to the U.S.
The CR-Z concept vehicle made its world debut at the 40th Tokyo Motor Show in 2007. The car, which takes its looks from the CRX-style three-door hatchback of the 1980s, will feature a hybrid system similar to the one found in the current range of Honda hybrids.
As for a hybrid version of the Fit, American Honda spokesman Sage Marie insisted last September
that it was years away. We're delighted that Honda gave that timeframe more thought.
Prices for the CR-Z and Fit Hybrid have not been announced, but the CR-Z is likely to be priced around $20,000 to compete effectively against Toyota's hybrid lineup and the hybrid Fit will likely come in much lower.
Toyota has long kept quiet about when it would turn its plug-in hybrid Prius from test car to retail vehicle.
But the Nikkei business newspaper now reports that the answer is 2012.
---------- Plug-in Priuses already are being tested in Europe. ----------
That, said the Japanese paper, is when Toyota will begin series production (the auto industry term for production for mass market sales) of the plug-in Prius models it will begin leasing late this year to select fleet customers for real-world testing late this year.
Nikkei, according to a report by Reuters news service, said Toyota plans to build 20,000-30,000 plug-in Priuses a year and intends to price them at about $48,000 -- twice the price of a conventional Prius hybrid and about $8,000 more than the Chevrolet Volt, which will hit the market at the tail end of 2010.
Nikkei did not identify the source of its information about Toyota's plug-in plans and pricing and a Toyota spokesman told Reuters the company would not comment on future product plans.
As Toyota engineers and executives have said in the past, the plug-in Prius is expected to deliver about 12 miles on all-electric range using the lithium-ion battery pack produced for Toyota by Panasonic EV energy Co, a joint venture of Toyota and Panasonic.
We're not sure if Nikkei has its facts straight on this one. Although Toyota is widely expected to launch retail sales of the plug-in hybrids by 2011, the pricing seems a bit high -- at least for the U.S. market where a plug-in Prius would compete directly with the Chevrolet Volt, which promises 40 miles of all-electric range for around $40,000 before a $7,500 federal tax credit.
The Ford Fusion (above) and Toyota Prius help propel hybrid sales gains despite weak economy and credit woes.
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
Led by strong showings from both third-generation Prius and the gas-electric version of Ford's Fusion, hybrid car sales in June were up 9 percent from a year earlier and rose 2 percent form May's tally to mark the sixth consecutive monthly increase in sales volume for the segment.
Hybrids, which gained traction from the June introduction of the new 2010 Prius and continued consumer interest in the well-reviewed Fusion hybrid that was introduced in March, outperformed the new-car market as a whole - which was down 28 percent from June of 2008 and off 7 percent from May.
It's too early to declare a recovery in the segment, but rising gasoline prices and renewed public awareness of the importance of improved fuel economy in addressing climate change issues seem to be underlying a gradual strengthening of market performance.
"The most important thing is that there have been a couple of new models that are putting some excitement into the segment, said Edmunds.com industry analyst Jessica Caldwell.
"Then there's all the news of government fuel efficiency and emissions initiatives, and some pretty generous incentives in a segment that really hasn't seen many incentives in the past."
Caldwell doesn't think gas prices were a significant factor in June's hybrid market, but says "they certainly are on people's radar, with a broad expectation that they'll keep going up."
Magazine says hybrid is the most disappointing Honda it has tested "in a long time."
By Scott Doggett, Contributor
The new Honda Insight posted a lackluster "Good" overall road-test score in Consumer Reports' testing for the August issue, and fell short in ride quality, handling, interior noise, acceleration, rear-seat access and visibility.
"The Insight is the most disappointing Honda Consumer Reports has tested in a long time," said David Champion, senior director of CR's Auto Test Center. "The Insight is a noisy, stiff-riding car with clumsy handling that is nothing like the Fit on which it is based. Also, Electronic Stability Control is only available on the highline EX version."
About the only thing CR seemed impressed with was the vehicle's fuel efficiency. The Insight achieved an excellent 38 miles per gallon overall in CR's fuel-economy tests.
In a ratings chart of small hatchbacks and wagons, the Insight was rated 21st out of 22 vehicles, with a road test score of 54 points. It was followed by the Dodge Caliber, which scored 49.
All vehicles in the test group are Recommended by Consumer Reports except for the Insight.
CR only recommends vehicles that have performed well in its tests, have at least average predicted reliability based on CR's Annual Car Reliability Survey of its more than 7 million print and Web subscribers, and performed at least adequately if crash-tested or included in a government rollover test.
Full tests and ratings of the test group appear in the August issue of Consumer Reports, which goes on sale June 30.
General Motors has announced its intention to abandon its 25-year-old California joint venture with Toyota -- a move the Japanese automaker said would add to its own financial woes -- and Bloomberg has reported that Toyota may produce a hybrid for GM.
Only two weeks ago, Bloomberg reported that GM and Toyota were considering possibly of building Prius hybrids together at an existing plant in Fremont, California.
But in a statement released Monday, GM said it will place its 50 percent ownership stake in New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. -- or NUMMI, the GM-Toyota joint venture that consists chiefly of the Fremont factory -- in the "old GM."
The "old GM" will contain parts of the company that will remain in bankruptcy after a "new GM" exits court protection.
GM filed for Chapter 11 protection on June 1 and plans for its profitable assets to emerge, possibly by the end of summer, as a "new GM" with about $50 billion in financing from the U.S. Treasury.
"After extensive analysis, GM and Toyota could not reach an agreement on a future product plan that made sense for all parties," Troy Clarke, GM's president of North American operations, said in statement.
"Accordingly, NUMMI will end production of vehicles for GM in August, and there are no future GM vehicles planned for the joint venture at this time."
Earlier this month, GM said that production of the Pontiac Vibe at the NUMMI plant would end in August as the Pontiac brand is being eliminated. Toyota builds the Corolla small car and the Tacoma pickup truck at the plant.
In a statement released Monday, Toyota said it was sorry GM was withdrawing from NUMMI, "ending a long, successful partnership spanning 25 years."
"Our hope was for the 50/50 joint venture to continue," the statement said. "While we respect this decision by GM, the economic and business environment surrounding Toyota is also extremely severe, and so this decision by GM makes the situation even more difficult for Toyota. We will consider alternatives by taking into account various factors."
Aston Martin Says It is Building a Commuter Concept Based -- Gasp! -- On Toyota's iQ
Aston Martin designers work on full-size clay model of Cygnet mini car concept. The designers' faces are deliberately blurred in this Aston Martin-supplied photo.
We're not sure if this is a validation of sorts for the idea that it finally is the right time for the small city car, but luxury performance carmaker Aston Martin is jumping on the bandwagon.
The marque famed for cars such as the DB5 that the fictional British intelligence agent James Bond made famous, and the new high-performance DBS, says it is developing a "luxury commuter car" concept based on Toyota's tiny IQ minicar.
It may not remain a concept for very long. Ulrich Bez, Aston Martin's chief executive, said in a statement released this morning that the "Cygnet," as the mini-Martin is being called, "could become reality in the not too distant future."
Aimed largely at Aston Martin owners who want something they can drive to work while leaving the big boy garaged until the weekend, the Aston Martin Cygnet would offer an "exclusive solution for urban travel in style and comfort," the company says.
It also would be "highly fuel-efficient," a clue that the tiny car would keep the IQ's tiny engine - the 1.3-liter, 70-horsepower, three-cylinder version in the production cars or the 1.4-liter, four-cylinder version shown in a Scion iQ concept -- could well be tuned by AM's engine people for better performance.
We wondered if the idea of a mini wearing the AM badge wasn't a bit silly, but Francesca Smith, the company's U.S. spokeswoman, said that it is being developed in response to requests from "many" existing Aston Martin customers.
Effort Comes as U.S. Plans to Drop Federal Funding For Fuel Cell Car Research
Japan's Internal Affairs Ministry, dismayed that its goal of having 50,000 hydrogen fuel cell cars on the roads by the spring of 2011 isn't going to be achieved, has called for new measures to promote use of the vehicles.
---------- A Toyota Highlander fuel-cell vehicle. ----------
The government, which set the present goal back in 2001, also is expected to release a new target, given that here were only 42 fuel-cell electric vehicles in operation in Japan at the end of the 2008 fiscal year last March.
Already in place, as of April, is an exemption for fuel cell vehicles and other "new-generation" cars and trucks, from Japan's expensive vehicle weight and new-vehicle purchase taxes.
The Japanese government has invested the equivalent of $205 million in fuel cell development in the past five years, and Japanese automakers Toyota and Honda are among the industry leaders in the technology.
Honda's FCX Clarity (left)
is the world's only purpose-built hydrogen fuel cell car.
It is a terribly expensive vehicle now (estimates of Honda's investment to build 200 of the cars range from $500,000 to $2 million per vehicle) because its body panels are all unique, requiring costly new tooling, and its power system is pretty much hand-built.
But Honda insiders say the car could be made affordable if there were sufficient demand to foster growth of a supplier industry to make fuel cells, batteries and other specialized components in volume.
We expect a lot of blogger activity today on this morning's "announcement" from Toyota that it hopes to roll out an updated fuel cell car by 2015, even though it isn't news.
---------
Toyota has several Highlander SUVs outfitted with fuel-cell electric drivetrains in testing now.
The real import of today's announcement at the company's annual shareholder meeting is that it comes just two days before Congress begins considering an Energy Department budget that would eliminate federal funding for automotive fuel cell research and development in the U.S.
So while Toyota - and Honda and South Korea's Hyundai and Germany's Daimler and Volkswagen - all continue pursing development of their fuel cell vehicles, doubtlessly with support from their governments, the Obama Administration wants to give up on the technology. That would leave Ford, GM and Chrysler to go it alone or drop their hydrogen fuel cell development programs after sending billions on them over the past decade.
Energy Secretary Steven Chu says he eliminated $100 million in previous budgets' funding for automotive-related hydrogen research because he and his advisers don't see an immediate return - that it will be a decade or more before there's sufficient hydrogen fueling infrastructure to make the vehicles viable.
The DOE instead will pursue funding development of plug-in electric cars.
We're all for battery-electric and plug-in hybrid cars and trucks, but we think the decision this early in the game to bet the farm on them while ruling out hydrogen fuel cells is short-sighted.
Toyota's reiteration of its commitment to the technology, and Honda's repeated comments that the future will be one in which a number of alternative fuels and powertrains are in play, ought to be seen as a warning sign.
It will be interesting, if Congress acquiesces now and allows the tap for hydrogen fuel cell research funding to be shut off, to listen to the criticism that will be heaped on U.S. automakers a decade or so from now when it becomes apparent that Japan has corned the market on the technology and we're once again left to play catch-up.
Is Toyota's Green Sheen Being Tarnished By Development Activity At Home?
Do as I say...
Toyota, noted for its environmental awareness and efforts, in the U.S. at least, to operate clean, green and sustainable facilities, has run afoul of the environmental community in Japan over its expansion plans.
----------
Rice growing near forested mountains in Japan.
----------
A new research center with more than 6 miles of test track and road courses that the automaker is planning in the country near its Toyota City headquarters threatens nesting areas of two endangered species of buzzards and the existence of nearly 700 acres of forests and 17th century rice paddies.
Toyota, which did not respond to Bloomberg's request for comment, had said previously that the R&D center would help speed development of its hybrid models as well as other fuel efficient vehicles.
But to build it on the selected site in Aichi Prefecture - already scaled back by a third to help appease critics - the automaker will be cutting down cedar forests, filling in 400-year-old rice paddies and apparently leveling a mountain top or two. The process will destroy habitat for a number of bird species, local activists told Bloomberg.
When Volkswagen came out with its "twincharger" 121-horsepower 1.4-liter engine a few years back, its goal was to combine the low-end power boost provided by a mechanically driven compressor (supercharging) with the higher-end increase provided by an exhaust turbocharger (turbocharging).
That would, they hoped as the engine was being developed, result in a clean-burning, fuel-efficient and yet fairly high-performance engine. The system (pictured; click on it to enlarge) would force more air into the cylinder, enabling more combustion and delivering more power.
The higher consumption of fuel would, they hoped, be more than offset by the overall decrease in fuel consumption that results from using a smaller engine.
And they were right. The 1.4-liter engine delivers torque corresponding to a 2.3-liter engine, but with 20 percent less fuel consumption and fewer emissions.
Today, VW secured overall honors at the 11th annual International Engine of the Year Award ceremony took place at Engine Expo 2009 in Stuttgart. It was the first time the company had won the accolade.
The winning engine, which beat both Toyota's and Honda's new electric-hybrid powerplants, was selected by 65 automotive writers from 32 countries across four continents.
The engine is offered across much of the VW model range, including the Golf, Scirocco and Eos, and is used to good effect by Seat in the Ibiza Cupra.
Dean Slavnich, editor of Engine Technology International and co-chairman of the International Engine of the Year Awards, described the engine as "a masterstroke of downsizing technology and a real engineering showcase. I have no doubt that this engine will become the template for a whole new generation of high efficiency, small capacity engines in the years to come."
But a spokesman for the automaker's production division denies the report.
By Scott Doggett, Contributor
Toyota is considering making Priuses at a California plant it shares with General Motors, not a factory in Mississippi where production of the popular hybrid had been planned, Bloomberg reported today, citing two unnamed sources.
But Mike Goss, external affairs manager with Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, or TEMA, said "we haven't changed our plans to build Prius in Mississippi. Nothing's changed."
TEMA is responsible for Toyota's engineering design, research, development and manufacturing activities in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. It operates 14 parts and vehicle manufacturing plants across North America.
The Bloomberg report stated that "given the time and cost to finish the half-built Mississippi facility, it may be easier to make the car at New United Motor Manufacturing," a 380-acre factory Toyota shares with GM in Fremont.
The news service attributed the information to "people who asked not to be identified because the discussions aren't public."
Goss denied that the $1.3 billion plant in Blue Springs, Mississippi, is half-built, stating instead that construction is completed.
"At this point, we've finished the building," he said.
Goss said "the Bloomberg story says something about 'unnamed sources,' but we have not changed our plans."
With Toyota's Prius proving strong competition to its recently released Insight hybrid, Honda says the automaker is weighing the possibility of introducing two hybrid cars that will be priced lower than the Insight (pictured
).
The low-emissions Insight, rated by the U.S. government as getting 41 miles per gallon in combined city and highway driving, is priced from $19,800 to $23,100. By comparison, Toyota's 2010 Prius, which averages 50 mpg, sells for $22,000 to $31,770.
As we reported Monday, Honda said first-year U.S. sales of the fuel-efficient gasoline-electric Insight appears likely to miss the automaker's target by at least 30 percent.
U.S. sales of the model, which first started appearing in American dealerships in March, had been expected to reach 90,000 vehicles by March of next year. That forecast has been revised to no more than 60,000 vehicles.
Earlier today, Honda President Takeo Fukui told the Asahi Shimbun newspaper that Japan's No. 2 carmaker by volume was considering adding the cheaper hybrids to an already announced line-up of hybrid vehicles, including the CR-Z hybrid coupe, and hybrid versions of Civic and Accord. Fukui did not reveal the timeframe for the launch.
This news follows the announcement last month that Honda was expecting to launch a gasoline-electric hybrid version of its Fit B-segment model in fiscal year 2010/11. Since Honda launched its Insight it has enjoyed strong sales in Japan, despite declining demand for its other models.
However, the Insight has started facing strong competition from the Prius in Japan as well as in overseas markets, despite being cheaper than its rival model.
In April, Honda's Insight became the first hybrid ever to top Japan's monthly car sales list
, but first-year U.S. sales of the gasoline-electric car the model appears likely to miss the automaker's target by a wide margin.
In an interview with a Bloomberg News reporter last week, John Mendel, U.S. executive vice president for Japan's second-largest carmaker, said first-year American sales of the Insight may be no more than 60,000 vehicles.
U.S. sales of the model, which first started appearing in American dealerships in March, had been expected to reach 90,000 vehicles by March of next year.
Mendel attributed the disappointing sales to cheap gasoline, the economic slump and competition from Toyota Motor Corp.'s Prius hybrid. Gasoline prices in the U.S. have fallen 35 percent over the past year. Meanwhile, Toyota plans to cut the base price of its new Prius by $1,000 to compete more effectively with the Insight.
The Insight, rated by the U.S. government as getting 41 miles per gallon in combined city and highway driving, is priced from $19,800 to $23,100. By comparison, Toyota's 2010 Prius, which averages 50 mpg, sells for $22,000 to $31,770.
Like every other alternative fuel, hydrogen has its fans and foes, its pluses and minuses, its ups and, recently, its downs.
After being the favored ground transportation fuel of the future for most of the last eight years as the Bush administration pushed development of hydrogen fuel cells for automotive use, nature's most abundant - albeit hard to isolate - element has been cast aside by the Obama administration.
The new president's Nobel-winning energy secretary, Steven Chu, has proposed in his 2010 departmental budget to eliminate funding for automotive hydrogen programs - that's $100 million - and instead to focus hydrogen research on fuel cells to generate power for homes, businesses and other stationary power users.
For transportation, his choice of fuel research programs to back is no surprise, he's long been a supporter of biofuels and electric cars.
----------- Honda says its FCX Clarity (below, right) is production-ready, lacking only a fueling infrastructure and lower-priced components that can only come with increased production of such cars. ----------
That's got the hydrogen car crowd - and we confess to a great fondness for fuel cell vehicles ourselves - up in arms and questioning the validity of Chu's apparent decision to "pick winners" by concentrating DOE research finding on biofuels and battery-electric, or plug-in, cars while announcing that his team doesn't see any short-term chance for hydrogen to emerge as a widely available and used fuel.
But Chu, powerful as he is sitting atop the nation's official energy policy agency and operating with the endorsement and backing of the president, isn't all-powerful. He has to answer to Congress, and Congress is subject to lobbying.
So the pressure politics have begun.
Short-Sighted?
With DOE budget hearings about to start, the chairman of the Senate's energy and Water Appropriations Committee - the committee that sits in judgment over the energy Department budget - has come out swinging.
A fan of hydrogen, Sen. Byron Dorgan recently called the DOE's budget recommendation to eliminate automotive hydrogen research funding "a very short-sighted recommendation." Hydrogen and fuel cells "are part of this country's future," said the North Dakota Democrat.
Backing Dorgan in support of restoring at lest some hydrogen programs funding for automotive research are automakers with huge investments in the technology.
They include Toyota and Honda, no slouches when it comes to making informed choices about technologies, as well as Daimler and our own General Motors Corp.
(We say "our own" because as part of the taxpaying public, we now share ownership of the faltering car company with the rest of America.)
Unlikely Allies
GM, in case you've been living in a cave or up in space for the past few weeks, is in bankruptcy now and the government, as its majority owner, has a rather big stake in the company's survival and future success.
Granted, GM hasn't been all that great at picking the proper trends and technologies as it looked to the future.
But this time the General is on the same team as Toyota and Honda rather than turning up its nose and sniffing that the Japanese car companies don't know what they are talking about.
Banking on a recovering economy to help things along, Toyota Motor Corp. says it expects to sell 25,000 of its new dedicated Lexus hybrid (left) in the first 12 months it is on sale in the U.S.,
The Lexus HS250 hybrid, scheduled to hit dealers' lots later this summer, is Toyota's first stab at a hybrid-only model for its luxury brand.
"More than 60 percent of entry luxury sedan buyers said they would consider hybrids, and this is a segment nobody's in right now," Mark Templin, group vice president of the Lexus Division for Toyota North America, said during an event in Rochester Hills, Mich., about 27 miles north of Detroit.
Templin didn't disclose pricing for the Lexus HS250, which he described as roomier, wider and longer than the 2010 Prius, with which it shares a platform. But we've previously estimated it at around $32,500, based on hints company executives made when unveiling the car at the Detroit auto show in January.
Ford Motor Co. this week delivered an Escape SUV plug-in hybrid electric vehicle to Canada's largest electricity producer, Hydro-Quebec, as part of the automaker's North American demonstration and research program on PHEVs.
Ford, in collaboration with the Electric Power Research Institute, which conducts research and development relating to the delivery and use of electricity for public good, is undertaking a three-year test program on the Escape PHEV designed to evaluate how the vehicle might best be integrated into existing electric grids.
In all, Ford will provide 21 vehicles for the real-world trials. EPRI has identified nine utilities across North America to test drive the vehicles and collect data on battery technology, vehicle systems, customer use and grid infrastructure. Hydro-Quebec is the only Canadian company participating in the North American program.
The standard Escape Hybrid is EPA rated at 34 miles per gallon in the city and 31 on the highway. However, the PHEV version can achieve up to 120 mpg during the first 30 miles following a recharge. After that, it behaves like a standard Escape Hybrid, consuming gasoline for energy.
The Ford Escape PHEV is a research vehicle that uses high voltage, lithium-ion batteries and common household current (120 volts) for charging. Full charge of the battery takes six to eight hours.
This week's annoucement came one week after Toyota announced that it would begin leasing 500 PHEVs globally by the end of this year as part of a test program, and less than three months since President Obama announced a $2.4-billion plug-in stimulus package to promote research into and develop of PHEVs.
Plug In Conversions Corp. has completed a breakthrough software upgrade to its plug-in conversion kit that for the first time will allow all-electric mode driving at speeds of up to 70 miles per hour in a converted Toyota Prius.
Previous Prius conversion kits have been limited by Toyota programming to a top speed of 34 mph in all-electric mode.
The software upgrade also will allow Prius drivers with PICC conversion kits to boost highway fuel efficiency to 170 miles per gallon until the rechargeable battery is depleted, as recently measured by Argonne National Laboratory.
Chicago-based Argonne reported even higher all-electric mileage in city driving tests of vehicles equipped with the software upgrade and PICC's nickel-metal hydride battery conversion kit.
"What we're essentially offering is all-electric performance for about 25 miles at highway speeds," PICC President Kim Adelman said Tuesday. "The car is no longer limited to 34 miles per hour, all-electric. This also allows a Prius to perform much like the Chevy Volt, but for a much lower cost."
Fuzzy Math
Not so fast. A 2010 Prius starts at $22,000. Add the cost of the conversion kit ($12,500) and the software upgrade ($2500) and the cost of this impressive Prius starts at $37,000.
The Volt, which won't be available for at least 18 months, is expected to carry a price of about $40,000 before a hefty $7,500 rebate from Uncle Sam, which would bring its price down to $32,500 - or $4,500 less than the modified Prius.
When GreenCarAdvisor reached Adelman by phone Tuesday afternoon to point out the discrepancy, he said that most Prius owners who convert their vehicles don't do so when they are new.
He said their Priuses are generally used and worth $14,000 to $15,000 at the time of conversion, but we don't see how that changes things if the owner paid $22,000 for it new. The car has depreciated, but the out-of-pocket expense remains the same.
Adelman also said he believed that the conversion kit will soon be eligible for a 10 percent rebate, which would reduce its price to $11,250. That would still make the converted Prius $3,250 more expensive than the Volt.
It's still 18 months before California's revised zero emissions vehicle requirements kick in, but the lobbying, has quietly begun.
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Cars such as this plugin Toyota Prius are needed to meet California ZEV mandate, but increase automakers' operating costs.
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Toyota Motor Co. will be most impacted by the rules requiring major antomakers to provide electric and plug-in vehicles for at least 3 percent of their sales in the state from 2012 through 2014, and in an interview with Bloomberg reporter Alan Ohnsman last week a Toyota insider said the company faces $1 billion in new costs to comply.
There's no overt complaining in the article, published today on Bloomberg.com, but Toyota's meassage is clear: $1 billion is a lot of money anytime, and is a particularly sizeable pile of cash to come up with in the midst of a recession that is hurting the entire auto industry including the world's biggest car company.
In addition Toyota, which has the biggest share of the California new-car makert, the mandate would apply to Honda Motor Co., Ford Motor Co., Nissan Motor Co. and pre-bankruptcy General Motors Corp, and Chrysler LLC.
The two domestics have said that major production cuts are part of their recovery plans and if their sales in California drop below 60,000 a year as a result, they would no longer be bound by the mandate
Toyota, according to Bloomgerg's calculations, would have to produce 16,000 plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles to by 2014 to comply with the rules, which require major automakers to make non-polluting vehicles equal at least 3 percent of their sales for the 3-year period.
Toyota Motor Corp. on Wednesday announced that it would begin leasing 500 plug-in hybrids based on the Prius model globally by the end of this year, primarily for government and corporate use.
Toyota, the world's biggest automaker, said in a statement it would lease 200 in Japan and 150 each in the United States and Europe, including 100 in France.
Plug-in hybrid cars can be cleaner than regular hybrids because they can be charged to run purely on electricity, but the need for more batteries makes them expensive. Many companies are working to bring the price of the batteries down, which in turn would reduce the price of the low-emissions, fuel-efficient vehicles.
Toyota's plug-in cars would be the brand's first to employ lithium-ion batteries, which are costly but can store more energy than nickel-metal hydride batteries used in most gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles.
Among other carmakers, bankrupt General Motors Corp. is planning to launch its much-hyped Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid next year.
In the statement, Toyota said it is developing a plug-in hybrid vehicle based on the third-generation Prius and capable of being recharged via external power sources such as household electrical outlets.
A plug-in hybrid vehicle typically operates as an electric vehicle when used for short distances and as a conventional hybrid vehicle when used for medium- to long-distance trips. This means it can be driven regardless of remaining battery power or the availability of a battery-charging infrastructure.
Sales of hybrid cars and trucks outperformed the market in May, giving lie to the belief, popular among mainstream industry analysts and pundits, that Americans are only interested in the gas-electric vehicles when fuel prices are stratospheric.
---------- 2009 Prius was top hybrid with best sales in 7 months. ----------
In a month when sales of non-hybrid vehicles rose 12.9 percent from the prior month, hybrid sales were up 18.2 percent. Incentives were applied liberally to hybrids and conventional vehicles alike during May, reducing the likelihood that cash-back offers or cheap interest rates unfairly boosted hybrid sales.
And while sales of both hybrids and conventional vehicles fell far short of matching year-earlier tallies, hybrid sales were off only 26.7 percent from May, 20008, compared to a 33.5 percent decline for non-hybrids.
At the same time, conventional small car sales fell short of overall market performance, indicating that shoppers had more than just fuel economy on their minds. The hybrid market may be benefiting from increased concern that fuel prices, which have been below $3 a gallon for nearly a year after approaching the $4-per-gallon mark last summer, are on the rise again and may be heading for new highs.
In all, dealers sold 25,693 hybrids last month, up from 21,735 in April but down from 35,042 in May 2008.
With the exception of Toyota's Camry hybrid, the top-selling Prius - which continues to dominate the U.S. hybrid market - and Honda's Civic hybrid, sales of individual models are low enough that it doesn't take much to cause a large jump in percent of increase or decline.
That said, Ford's new Fusion sedan hybrid scored an impressive 75 percent gain from April while sales of the Ford Escape SUV hybrid were up 62.2 percent for the same period.
Toyota Motor Corp., taken aback by the volume of advance orders in Japan for the 2010 Prius, had been considering cutting down initial shipments to the U.S, where the redesigned hybrid is scheduled to go on sale within days.
That plan was jettisoned, though, and Toyota now is increasing production at its two Prius plants instead.
"We don't want the North American market to be hurt," said John Hanson, head of environmental communications for Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. "We're upping production to protect allocations" for the U.S. and Europe while still satisfying home market demand.
Toyota, which launched the third-generation Prius in Japan earlier this month, had expected to sell 100,000 of the fuel-efficient hybrids there by December. Instead, its dealers took advance orders for 80,000 and have reportedly sold another 20,000 in the two weeks since the launch. That's 100,000 down with six months still to go.
The company is now pushing to increase annual Prius production to 500,000 cars -- up from 400,000 -- to keep adequate supplies flowing to all markets.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger joined the 2009 Hydrogen Road Tour today at Stop 6 of a 9-day, 28-stop, 1,700-mile road trip, telling a group of reporters at the site of the state's first integrated (H2 and gasoline) station that California remains committed to a future where hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles replace gassy rides regardless of what Washington does.
Speaking at a Shell station in West Los Angeles, Schwarzenegger reminded reporters that the California Air Resources Board, which sets vehicle-emissions standards for the state, recently passed a low-carbon fuel standard - the world's first such standard.
It will, he said, ensure that the cleanest fuels, including hydrogen, will always have a strong market in California.
"And the reason why this is so important is that on the federal level, they [politicians] make decisions based on where the oil price is. That means that sometimes the federal government, when the oil price goes up, they go in the direction of renewable energy and alternate fuels. And when the oil price goes down, they abandon those policies," the "Governator" said, his back to a row of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles made by Daimler, Honda, Toyota, KIA, Volkswagen and Nissan.
"Well we don't do that here in California. We only march in one direction and that is forward. And we're not going to slow down. In 2010, we will have seven new hydrogen refueling stations in California and we will invest another $40 million over the next two years in hydrogen stations."
The governor reminded the automotive press that 20 percent of the new vehicles sold in the United States are sold in California, which is home to 25 million cars and trucks. (Those vehicles, not incidentally, consume 50 million gallons of gasoline and diesel a day and produce 40 percent of the state's greenhouse gases.)
As a result of California's vehicle market share, and that fact that Washington often follows the state's lead regarding tailpipe-emissions regulations, automakers can count on there being a large market for hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles and companies considering investments in an H2-refueling infrastructure can rest assured there will be vehicles requiring the fuel, he said.
Toyota Motor Corp., which recently posted its first financial loss in decades, said U.S. consumer demand for plug-in hybrids may be limited by the vehicles' price, recharge time and battery durability - nevermind their popularity with President Obama.
Toyota estimates sales of hybrids that can be recharged at household outlets may be 50,000 vehicles a year at most and could be as few as 3,500, Bill Reinert, the automaker's U.S. national manager for advanced technology, told a National Academy of Sciences panel in Washington, D.C., Monday.
Sales of Toyota's Prius - the best-selling gasoline-electric hybrid on the road, and a vehicle Reinert helped design - were almost 159,000 last year.
A market for the plug-in hybrid electric vehicles "will emerge, but their success depends on advantages over existing hybrids," Reinert said. "There is a great deal of variation on how current PHEVs perform in real-world conditions."
Interest in plug-ins surged after gasoline prices reached record highs last year and Obama campaigned on a goal of getting 1 million such vehicles on U.S. roads by 2015. The Energy Department has said it plans to begin awarding a portion of $25 billion in low-cost federal loans to companies that build plug-ins and other fuel-efficient vehicles at U.S. factories.
Auto Industry Lines Up To Praise National Program Idea, Now the Hard Work Begins
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
The auto industry, tired of being seen as the bad guy whenever fuel economy and emissions regulation is on the table, is wasting no time lining up in support of tomorrow's White House announcement on development of a national carbon emissions and fuel efficiency program.
A cynic might think this doesn't bode well for the ultimate result of the rulemaking process that President Obama will outline at a press conference in Washington Tuesday morning: That the auto industry figures it has enough clout left to wring the life out of any effort to significantly improve fuel economy.
But we think it simply shows that an industry on life support and dependent on government largess here and overseas has finally read the writing on the wall and realizes that this is as good as it is ever going to get and that if it doesn't play ball it will have no say in the rules it eventually will have to live by.
Automakers also have been caught in a trap of their own making. They've been fighting California, the national leader in establishing greenhouse gas controls on motor vehicles, insisting that individual states shouldn't be able to set carbon emissions rules and that a national standard is needed.
Now the Obama administration has stepped to the table and said, as the president is wont to: "Okay, let's develop a national rule."
To oppose that would be political suicide.
In that vein, the two lobbying groups representing almost every car maker that does business in the U.S. have jumped on board and are voicing support for the so-called National Program for Autos.
Toyota rolled out the revamped Prius today, and the world's largest automaker said it already has 80,000 advance orders in Japan for the remodeled hybrid amid intensifying competition with Honda's rival offering, the Insight.
---------- Right, Toyota's Akio Toyoda speaks at the unveiling of the revamped Prius. ----------
That figure is remarkable, given that Toyota sold only 73,000 Priuses in Japan all last year.
Toyota said it aims to sell up to 400,000 units globally a year of the new Prius.
"We are resting the future of cars in this model," said incoming president Akio Toyoda, the grandson of the company's founder, who drove the new model onto a stage at a packed Tokyo showroom.
Both Toyoda's presence and the revamped Prius are symbolic of Toyota's pursuit of a turnaround from its worst annual loss since its 1937 founding.
The Prius, now in its third generation since its 1997 introduction, is the best-selling gas-electric hybrid in the world, racking up a cumulative 1.256 million units sold in more than 40 nations and regions.
But now Toyota faces a challenge from Honda, whose more cheaply priced Insight has sold briskly since it was introduced in Japan in February.
One week has nearly passed since Energy Secretary Stephen Chu proposed slashing more than $100 million from Uncle Sam's hydrogen research and development program, and all of us should still be mystified and bothered by his proposal.
In other words, Chu's litmus test for funding a technology that might avoid or at least delay the catastrophic effects of global warming is that the technology must be developed within, say, the lifetime of an old house cat.
If Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius applied the same rationale to drug research, she'd propose slashing federal funding for cancer, AIDS and influenza research, because cures for them are probably 20-plus years out. But tossing in the towel on those problems would be nutty, wouldn't it.
And just think where we'd be today if the Wright brothers, Ladislo Biro, Stephen Poplawski, Willis Carrier, Percy Spencer, and the banjo-playing, 3M engineer Richard Drew decided not to invent anything because it'll take too much time. We might never know airplanes, ball-point pens, kitchen blenders, air-conditioning, microwave ovens and, God forbid, Scotch tape.
Other things that took years to invent include: the telephone, the light bulb, the cotton gin, the sewing machine, the personal computer, television, the camera and, lest we forget, the automobile.
Shucks, a whole lot of things that shape the lives we lead today took a long time to develop.
Though he's best known for his screen exploits
, Tom Hanks also counts himself as a green car guy.
He still owns a Toyota RAV4 electric vehicle (like the one shown here) that has crossed 50,000 miles on the odometer. We know this courtesy of a letter that Hanks recently wrote to The New Yorker.
Hanks explains that he still has the car, which is driven daily (albeit by one of his employees) and that the vehicle still has its original battery.
Hanks wrote the letter to the editor to clear up a mistake made when Peter J. Boyer recently wrote about the country's financially troubled automobile industry. In his The New Yorker article (registration required), Boyer incorrectly stated that Hanks once owned a General Motors Corp. EV1.
Hanks said that there were no EV1s to be had in 2003 when he started looking for an electric car.
"Instead, I found what was purported to be the very last electric car available for sale in the state of California -- a Toyota EV," Hanks wrote. "It had four doors, a rear hatch, room for my family, including a dog in the back, power windows, A/C, a great sound system, and the fastest, most effective windshield defroster known to mankind. When the car companies collectively, and, to some, diabolically, decided to take these cars back, the electric vehicles disappeared. But not mine."
There was a bit of green news along with the river of red ink that Nissan Motor Co. reported earlier today in Tokyo.
---------- The Denki Cube, a concept Nissan EV. ----------
Nissan reported a $2.85 billion net loss for its fiscal fourth quarter ended March 31. The Japanese automobile company reported a full-year loss of $2.4 billion, down from a $4.9 billion profit for fiscal 2007.
Last week, Toyota Motor Co. reported a $4.5 billion loss, while Honda Motor Co. Ltd. posted a $1.4 billion profit.
"The global economic recession and financial crisis continue, but we are beginning to see some signs of improved access to credit, the impact of government stimulus packages and a gradual return in consumer confidence," Nissan President and CEO Carlos Ghosn said in a statement. "We remain cautious about the economic environment and fully focused on our company's recovery efforts."
Now for the green.
Nissan said that the tough times in the automobile world won't slow its plan to start building electric vehicles at its Oppama plant outside of Tokyo in the fall of 2010. The plant's initial production capacity will be 50,000 units, but that volume will "continuously increase for the start of EV mass-marketing in 2012," according to Nissan.
A little bit of news from Japan: Honda's Insight has become the first hybrid ever to top that nation's monthly car sales list.
The Japan Auto Dealers Assn. reported Monday that Honda dealers sold 10,481 Insights in April, making it the best-selling passenger vehicle in the country.
Honda's Fit subcompact was second with 9,443 sales, followed by Toyota's Vitz subcompact (it's the Yaris in the U.S.) with 6,341 sales and the Toyota Corolla with 6,341 sales.
April was not only the first time a hybrid has been the country's top seller, it is the first time since its February introduction in Japan that Insight sales have topped the 10,000 mark.
AS is the case in the U.S., sales of Toyota's aging Prius are slipping - badly in Japan with a 64 percent decline from April of '08 - as consumers wait for the introduction at the end of this month of the redesiogned and reengineered 2010 Prius.
That's helped Honda's smaller Insight jump to the top of the heap, as has the Insight's price, which at just about $19,500 U.S. (1.89 million yen) is almost $4,500 cheaper than the present generation Prius (2.33 million yen). In the U.S, the Insight launced in late March with a $20,470 base price.
Thje big price differential has led Toyota to green-light a stripped down version of the Prius that will be priced to compete with the Insight, and there's speculation in Japan that pricing for the 2010 Prius with a full standard equipment package will be about $1,500 (280,000 yen) less than the comparably equipped '09 model.
Toyota alrerady has said that in the U.S. it will launch the Prius at $22,000 plus delivery (which varies by region and can add $300 to $600 to the price), with a stripped "basic" model to foillow in the Fall at $21,000 plus delivery.
When the Obama Administration unveiled its proposed 2010 budget last week, Energy Secretary Stephen Chu had penciled in a proposal to cut more than $100 million from Uncle Sam's hydrogen research and development program.
Chu's rationale for cutting hydrogen funding by 59 percent to just $68 million? It's unlikely that the technology will become significant player during the next two decades.
In contrast, the California Fuel Cell Partnership in February predicted that 4,300 fuel-cell electric vehicles could be traveling California roads by 2014, and that the the hydrogen-powered fleet could grow to about 50,000 vehicles by 2017 as more manufacturers introduce their zero emission vehicles.
What's more, the partnership believes that, by 2017, Californians will be able to fuel their Honda FCX Clarity and other fuel cell vehicles at between 50 and 100 hydrogen refueling stations around the state.
'"Fuel cell vehicles and hydrogen stations are at the cusp of transition into the early commercial market," according to the organization's report that is titled "Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle and Station Deployment Plan: A Strategy for Meeting the Challenge Ahead."
So it's not surprising that the CaFCP, which counts auto manufacturers (including Toyota Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co. and General Motors Corp.), energy companies (Shell and Chevron), fuel cell technology companies (Proton Energy Systems) and government agencies (including the DoE, which is a dues-paying member!) on Friday called for Chu to reconsider the proposed budget cut.
"Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles have progressed to the point where some automakers are ready to begin early commercialization," said CaFCP Executive Director Catherine Dunwoody. "Stopping federal investment at this point is like a coach pulling back an Olympic athlete who has trained for years, just as the trials begin. We can't wait for the next round. We're ready to go."
Toyota reported its first financial loss in decades and is forecasting another hefty loss for this year, but the still world's largest automaker is protecting product development and R&D that pertains to small cars and advanced technologies, particularly those related to the environment and energy.
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Toyota says it won't abandon advanced vehicles such as this electric car concept.
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"We will maintain a high level of R&D in areas we consider indispensable to our future -- advanced, cutting-edge technologies in environment, energy and safety," Takahiko Ijichi, Toyota Motor Corp. senior managing director, said in a conference call Friday morning with analysts and media.
Ijichi said Toyota will continue work to cut costs in its development and production of compact vehicles and hybrids. The next-generation Toyota Corolla will be a model for such cost-cutting, he said. And lessons learned on the Corolla, which initially launches in Japan followed by the U.S. and Europe, will be transferred to all other Toyota and Lexus models.
He said Toyota is continuing cost reduction of its hybrid systems. He noted that size and weight reductions of the new third-generation Toyota Prius reduced costs by 30 percent compared with the second-generation model. Toyota has said it plans to introduce as many as 10 new hybrid models by 2010 and a battery-electric city car by 2012.
Not only will Toyota keep spending on green initiatives, it intends to accelerate development next-generation technologies in environment, energy and safety, with environmental goals topping its priorities list, Ijichi said.
Its goals include the commercialization of plug-in hybrids, mass-production of small battery-electric electric vehicles and the development of next-generation alternative fuel vehicles including fuel-cell electric cars and vehicles use biofuels.
(Note: Updated 5 p.m. 5/7/09 to include link to Hydrogen and Fuel Cell groups' joint statement.)
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
In a huge blow to backers of fuel-cell electric vehicles, the nation's top energy official said today he sees little promise of the technology becoming a significant player in the nation's transportation system within the next two decades.
---------- Honda's FCX Clarity, now being tested in Southern California, uses a hydrogen fuel cell to provide electric power. ----------
As a result, Energy Secretary Stephen Chu is proposing that more than $100 million be cut from the Energy Department hydrogen program in the 2010 budget the administration is submitting to Congress.
The proposed budget slashes hydrogen fuel cell spending by 59 percent to just $68 million and focuses on programs for stationary power generation rather than for transportation.
"We asked ourselves, 'Is it likely in the next 10 or 15, 20 years that we will covert to a hydrogen car economy?' The answer, we felt, was 'no,'" Chu said in a briefing today.
The National Hydrogen Association and the U.S. Fuel Cell Coalition quickly issued a joint statement criticizing the program cuts.
Hybrid sales in the U.S. rose in April for the fourth consecutive month and posted the highest monthly volume since October 2008.
---------- Honda's 2010 Insight was one of the bright spots in the U.S. hybrid market in April. ----------
The bump illustrates the influence that novelty and price still have on the market: Honda's new Insight, Ford's new Fusion and a heavily incentivized Honda Civic hybrid overcame slumping sales of many other gas-electric models to account for the gain.
But in a month when car and light truck sales overall still fell well below the one-million mark, the performance of the hybrid segment wasn't much to get excited about.
The month-over-month increase wasn't strong enough, for example, to put April's hybrid sales in contention with April 2008, when gasoline prices averaged above $3.50 a gallon, car buyers were scouring the market for fuel-efficient models and recession hadn't begun wreaking havoc with the economy.
A 2010 Toyota Camry Hybrid will serve as pace car for NASCAR's upcoming Coca-Cola 600.
On May 24, the 2010 Toyota Camry Hybrid will become the first hybrid vehicle to serve as the pace car for an entire NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race.
But it's also true that the first hybrid vehicle to serve as pace car for a NASCAR Cup race was a Ford Fusion Hybrid.
The distinction?
After serving as the pace car during the start of last November's Ford 400 NASCAR race at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Ford's hybrid pulled off of the track and was replaced by a gas-powered Fusion vehicle. Toyota's hybrid will stick around to serve as the pace, or safety car, for the duration of the Coca-Cola 600 at Lowes Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina.
So both hybrids can claim a bit of history.
(Not surprisingly, Ford Motor Co. and Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. have squared off in the past on green vehicle marketing issues.)
The Camry Hybrids (there will be two of them) serving as pace and safety cars during several upcoming NASCAR Cup races are described by company officials stock vehicles.
The Camry Hybrids were built at the Toyota manufacturing facility in Georgetown, Kentucky, and incorporate a 2.4-liter, four-cylinder engine that produces 187 horsepower (and 138 pound-feet of torque) and a 45-hp electric motor.
Like a kid with an overachieving cousin, the Honda Insight can't seem to escape the shadow of the Toyota Prius.
Since Honda started selling its new compact gas-electric hybrid (bottom, right) late last month, about 61 percent of the people who held online discussions about the car also mentioned the Prius (top, right), the Nielsen Co. reports in a comparison of recent Web chatter about the two hybrids.
In contrast, Nielsen found, only about 27 percent of the people who wrote about the 2010 Toyota Prius on the Web mentioned the competition.
And like that kid with the superstar cousin, the Insight often comes out second-best to the Prius in these on-line hybrid comparisons, at least when looks are considered.
There's a perception that the 2010 Honda Insight's design "is too similar to that of the Prius," the Nielsen report notes. The problem is that the similarity serves to highlight "the belief that the Prius is the gold standard to which all other hybrids must aspire," the report says.
Online discussions also showed the Insight to be more polarizing -- which also means less bland -- than the Prius.
Discussions generated a higher percentage of positive reviews for the Honda -- 31 percent liked it -- than for the Toyota -- 28 percent -- but the Insight also generated far more negative reviews than its rival -- 15 percent versus just 7 percent for the Prius.
More than half of all Prius chats were "neutral" on the car's merits versus a 38 percent neutral rating for the Insight, according to Nielsen, and 9 percent of Prius discussions gave the Toyota hybrid a mixed review, compared to 16 percent mixed reviews for the Honda.
Honda is looking to use the Insight's lower price -- the base model is $19,995, or about $1,000 cheaper than the no-frills version of the Prius -- to chip away at the leadership position Toyota has established in the hybrid market.
But Toyota, whose 2010 Prius is rated at 50 miles per gallon compared to 41 mpg for the Insight, has appeared to generate strong demand for the extensively redesigned hybrid, which will go on sale in the U.S. at the end of May.
Toyota reportedly is boosting production of the new Prius through next March by 25 percent to 50,000 cars a month because of better-than-expected pre-orders.
Perhaps most telling is the Nielsen finding that about 12 percent of those talking about the new Prius online say they are considering buying, while only about 7 percent of Insight discussions involve purchase intent.
Report Says Company Enthused by Large Volume of Advance Orders in Japan
Initial interest in Toyota's extensively redesigned 2010 Prius (left)
has persuaded the company to boost monthly production of the gas-electric hybrid by 25 percent, to 50,000 cars a month for the remainder of its fiscal 2009, Japan's Nikkei news is reporting.
The hike is significant because it comes at a time the global economy is in severe melt-down mode with sales of most new vehicles shrinking.
The apparent popularity of the new Prius, and the 2010 Insight hybrid from rival Honda Motor Co., point to consumers' willingness to commit to cars they perceive will save the money at the fuel pump - the new Prius is EPA rated at 50 miles a gallon and the Honda Insight at 41 mpg.
But both cars also are enjoying early sales successes because they are new.
Analysts at Global Insight consulting wonder in their intelligence briefing this morning whether the two Japanese automakers are seeing the start of ongoing demand, or simply enjoying a soon-to-burst bubble caused by new car excitement.
Nikkei, a subscription-only Japanese news service, reports that Toyota thinks demand will remain steady and now is eying Prius production of 500,000 cars in fiscal '09 (ending in March 2010) up from the previous expectation of 300,000.
The company, which began taking advance orders for the 2010 model earlier this month in Japan, had booked more than 40,000 by early last week and expects the total to top 60,000 by the time the car actually goes on sale this summer.
We expect the new Prius - and the 2010 Honda Insight (right)- to be hits in the U.S. as well, at least in their first year, due to relatively low pricing ($19,995 base for the Insight, $21,000 for the bare-bones "Level 1" Prius) and the likelihood that gasoline prices will start edging up this summer and could be back at or above $3 per gallon by year's end.
As the once-favored hydrogen highway becomes a mere side road on the route to oil independence with the Obama administration's push for rechargeable hybrid powertrains as the new favored alternative to the conventional gasoline engine, hydrogen pioneer Honda Motor Co. says it, too, will begin to pursue the way of the plug.
In an interview with Bloomberg news last week, Honda Motor Co. President Takeo Fukui said his company still sees hydrogen as the best long-term replacement for gasoline in the effort to slash automotive emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases tied to global arming.
Fukui, who is stepping down in June as part of Honda's regular executive shuffle, has in the past has been outspoken in his disdain for plug-in technology, calling it an unnecessary intermediate step form gasoline to pure electric power.
Honda has developed a hydrogen fuel-cell sedan, the FCX Clarity, that it leases to select customers in a Los Angeles-area test program, and isn't planning to abandon the effort.
But, Fukui said in a Bloomberg news wire article published this morning, the automaker also will accommodate the perceived preference of the U.S. government for plug-in hybrid-electric cars and trucks.
Unlike a conventional gas-electric hybrid that charges its batteries from on-board power sources such as regenerative braking, a plug-in hybrid gets its initial charge from the commercial grid, by "plugging in" to a wall socket or a special rapid-charging station
Plug-ins use larger battery pack than a conventional hybrids. They store enough power to permit the vehicle to be driven for an extended amount of time on all-electric drive before the grid charge is depleted and the gas engine kicks in.
Although others, including General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai and Volkswagen are developing fuel-cell vehicles, Honda has been the only major automaker championing hydrogen above other technologies and so far has stayed out of the rapidly developing race to bring plug-ins to market.
While federal support of hydrogen development has all-but evaporated in the U.S., the government is providing billions of dollars for battery development programs and for federal tax credits of up to $7,500 for purchasers of plug-ins.
Considering all the improvements from the first-generation model - including a 16-20 percent fuel economy gain - Toyota Motor Co. is providing luxe segment buyers a bit of a break with the upcoming 2010 Lexus RX450h (right)
hybrid crossover which it priced Thursday at a base of $41,660 for the front-wheel drive model and $43,250 for the all-wheel drive version.
The RX 450h pricing represents a 0.9 percent drop from the base price of $42,080 on the FWD 2008 RX 400h model, and a 0.5 percent dip from the base '08 AWD model's $43,480 sticker (Lexus also levies an $875 destination charge on all vehicles).
Lexus says the 2010 RX 450h goes on sale this summer, but has offered no firm date yet.
The updated crossover features a revamped version of the company's hybrid drive system, now rated at total output of 295 horsepower, up from 268 ponies in the '08 model - Lexus didn't release an '09 model of its hybrid crossover utility but simply carried the '08 over an additional year while readying the RX 450h as a replacement.
For 2010 there's a new 3.5-liter Atkinson-cycle V6 under the hood (the '08 uses a 3.3 liter Otto cycle gas engine - the difference in is the way the engine takes in air - the Atkinson cycle permits greater fuel efficiency but reduces the gas engine's power output, which is more than made up for in the hybrid by the additional displacement and the power boost from the electric motors).
In addition, the 2010 models' electric drive motors are lighter, smaller and more powerful than in the first-generation RX 400h, and fuel economy is way up thanks to widespread use of lighter materials.
Lexus, Toyota's luxury division, says the 2010 RX 450h front-wheel drive model has an EPA fuel economy rating of 32 miles per gallon in the city and 28 mpg on the highway for a combined rating of 30 miles per gallon. The all-wheel drive model has a city rating of 30 mpg and a highway rating 28 mpg for a combined fuel efficiency rating of 29 mpg.
That's a 20 percent improvement for the all-wheel drive model and a 16 percent improvement for the all-wheel drive hybrid - both '08 models had combined city/highway ratings of 25 mpg.
The automaker says the new RX 450h, despite it's power boost, will earn a SULEV (super ultra-low emissions vehicle) rating from California's tough air quality regulators, which means it automatically meets or betters the federal EPA 's strict Tier 2 Bin 3 standards.
A good deal for the country club set - save some green while driving green on the way to the greens.
The Wall Street Journal
(subscription required) reports that a Toyota Motor Corp. official believes that rising interest in fuel-efficient cars might require the automaker to speed up its original timetable for producing hybrid versions of all of its models by therend of the next decade.
The newspaper report includes this quote from Toyota Managing Officer Loei Saga: "I believe Toyota needs to accelerate the 2020 goal to hybridize all the Toyota models."
But the report also says that Saga made it clear that no decision has been made on speeding up the company's hybrid timetable.Saga also said, without elaboration, that Toyota plans to market a hybrid version of its RAV4 sport-utility vehicle "as soon as possible" in China.
Once that happens, Toyota is likely to produce versions for other markets, including the U.S.
The automaker has said for several years that it wants to be able to market hybrid versions of every model in its lineup - as it determines that there is a market for each model.
We've been trying for months now to get some face time with entrepreneur Shai Agassi, founder of EV charging infrastructure pioneer Better Place, so far to no avail.
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Exchanging large hybrid and EV battery packs such as this form a Ford electric vehicle test model, won't be easy, automakers say.
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We want to ask him about his business model and how he intends to get the world's contentious and competitive automakers to sign on to a plan that would make it possible for an independent such as Better Place to set up shops to easily and economically swap depleted battery packs for fresh ones in various brands of electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles.
It seems to us this would take a degree of cooperation and commonality (where to put the packs so they could be pulled and exchanged quickly would require some common design features, battery attachment points and even size and weight ranges) that automakers so far have been loath to agree to.
Our paths almost crossed this week as Agassi attended a forum on battery development near out home base in Southern California - unfortunately, though, we were on the other side of the country in Florida at an alternative fuels and vehicles conference.
But several major automakers were there, as part of a panel, and according to E&E News' coverage of the Fortune magazine-sponsored event, were pretty united in their opposition to the idea of swappable batteries.
While patting Agassi on the back for his vision - a network of roadside "service stations" where the fuel is electric and the main service the swapping of depleted batteries for fully charged ones - executives from Toyota Motor Co., BMW and Ford Motor Co. all were doubtful it would work.
E&E News reports that Bill Reinart, national manager of Toyota's advanced technology group, said lithium-ion batteries and the highly charged plugs that power are not designed for constant switching and that a number of safety hazards could be created
Tom Baloga, vice president of U.S. engineering at BMW, agreed, according o the report , explaining that constant damage to batteries is likely during switching.
"Anytime you have a rapid connect and disconnect, you have to think about stability," Baloga said. "We have to be concerned about that."
Baloga added that Better Place's battery swap model is worth studying, but raised the same concern we have with battery pack uniformity and whether a battery exchange station could afford to stock a variety of packs to meet the needs of motorists who, some day, might be driving a dozen or more makes and styles of electric vehicles.
We're talking about the need to stock lots of various designs of 400- to 1,000-pound assemblages that cost $5,000 to $25,000 each, not a bunch of 50-pound, $120 lead-acid batteries.
(Note: This post was updated at 2:35 p.m. to include information on the Prius I's equipment.)
The third-generation Toyota Prius will go on sale in late May with a base manufacturer's suggested retail price of $21,000. But Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. confirmed today that the lowest-cost Prius won't hit dealer showrooms until later this year.
The $21,000 base price is designed to help Toyota compete with the new Honda Insight hybrid that went on sale earlier this year with a $20,470 base price. That means the base model Prius I will cost about the same as a mid-level Insight.
Toyota is offering five levels of equipment combinations, but expects the $22,000 Prius II to be the most popular. "This model provides more than $2,000 added value, including the features most buyers want, at the same price as the current base model," said Bob Carter, group vice president and general manager of the Toyota Division.
Toyota's pricing doesn't include delivery, processing and handling fees, which may vary according to where they're being sold. Here is a look at what your money will buy:
The Prius I will have a base price of $21,000. The list of standard equipment will "be released at a later date," according to Toyota.USA Today is quoting a Toyota spokeswoman who says that the base model will lack such features as cruise control, a rear windshield wiper and an EV-only mode that keeps the car running on battery power for as long as possible. The Prius I also won't have the "touch-tracer" display that superimposes steering wheel buttons on the dashboard display.
The Prius II ($22,000) will include a 1.8-liter Atkinson cycle engine, all-season tires, alloy wheels and covers, the Smart Key and Push Button start systems, an AM/FM/MP3/CD player with six speakers, cruise control, seven airbags, four-wheel disc brakes and other goodies.
The Prius III ($23,000) adds a six-disc CD changer with eight speakers, integrated satellite radio capability and Bluetooth wireless.
The Prius IV ($25,800) offers a three-door Smart Key system, leather-trimmed interior, heated front seats with driver lumbar support, an ionizer and 17-inch alloy wheels.
The top-of-the-line Prius V ($27,270) adds LED headlamps with auto leveling and washers, upscale wheels and tires and integrated fog lamps.
A pair of green ideas are included in AAA's Top Ten automotive technology picks for 2009 and 2010 models. The nation's largest automobile club highlighted solar roof panels and eco-driving systems, two developments that we've written about in recent months.
Solar roof panels generate power that can be sent to the electric motors that drive the car, be used to power climate controls or simply be stored for future use. Fisker Automotive's Karma luxury hybrid sedan and the 2010 Toyota Prius both incorporate solar roof panels.
The Karma has 20 solar cells in series that convert sunlight into electrical energy. The Prius uses a solar roof to power a fan that draws cooler air into a parked car's interior. That reduces the load on the electrically-powered air conditioning system when the car starts up again.
AAA also listed "Green Driving Assistance," or the technology that helps drivers to obtain maximum fuel efficiency. (When Green Car Advisor wrote about these technologies, we used this headline: "Eco-Driving Systems: Now Your Car Can Gently Nag You Into Being More Fuel-Wise.")
The Ford Fusion hybrid, for example, uses a display screen (above) to show a plant that grows branches and leaves as a car is driven in a fuel-efficient manner. The plant withers as fuel-economy decreases.
Newspaper reports suggest that Toyota Motor Corp. could have about 40,000 pre-orders in hand come mid-May when its third-generation Toyota Prius hybrid goes on sale in Japan.
Reuters cites two newspaper stories as stating that Japanese dealers already have booked more than 20,000 pre-orders. One of the newspapers also quotes an unnamed Toyota official as predicting that pre-sale orders will reach 40,000.
Toyota officials in Japan declined to confirm the reports. In the U.S., a Toyota spokesman told Green Car Advisor that dealers take pre-orders, but that the automaker doesn't track that data.
Prius and Insight pre-orders, whether in Japan or the U.S. are taking on added significance given the head-on sales collision coming as Honda Motor Co. continues to roll out its new Insight hybrid and dealers ready showrooms for the third-generation Toyota Prius.
The Insight hybrid overtook Prius in Japanese domestic sales when it went on sale in February. The model drew 18,000 orders during the month to beat out Prius.
Global Insight, an economic forecasting company, believes that the first month of Prius sales will "easily surpass" the Honda Insight's initial monthly sales figure. Global Insight reports that Toyota "will undoubtedly be helped by its brand name and support for this type of powertrain from the Japanese government in the form of tax reductions."
And the winner is: Honda FCX Clarity, the 2009 World Green Car.
The announcement was made this morning at the New York Auto Show. The FCX Clarity beat out the Mitsubishi i-MiEV and the Toyota iQ. The top three finishers were culled from a list of 22 contenders that were nominated by 59 judges in 25 countries.
Here is some of what the judges had to say about the car:
"The FCX Clarity is an utterly real, hydrogen-fueled luxury sedan that provides the amenities people expect in a premium car with 430 km (267 miles) range, fuel consumption of about 3.3 litres/100 km (72 mpg U.S.) equivalent and zero tailpipe emissions. While there is only so much the automotive industry can do when it comes to this technology - governments need to come onboard to help create a true refuelling infrastructure - Honda must be credited for taking a bold step in leasing FCX Clarity to customers in California for $600 (U.S.) per month.There's still a long way to go before fuel-cell cars will become a commercial success, but hats off to Honda for continuing to advance this expensive technology during a time when every cent counts."
To be eligible, vehicles had to be available in at least one major market during 2008. The field included production models and experimental prototypes with near-future applications. Judging criteria included fuel economy, emissions and overall environmental impact.
It's no secret, hybrids haven't been doing well lately, on dealers' lots, in the media, or in a lot of political arguments. Sales data that comes in on a monthly basis shows hybrid sales sinking faster than auto sales as a whole. And there's nothing pretty about auto sales as a whole.
Indeed, looking at March's tally shows that the 21,433 hybrid cars and trucks sold in the U.S. last month represents a 43.9 percent drop from hybrid sales in March of 2008, while sales of all other types of new passenger vehicles, on a March-vs-March basis, were off "just" 36.5 percent.
So, the argument goes, hybrids can't hold their own, they cost too much and people don't really want them.
---------- Nissan Altima hybrid was one of only two models posting a first quarter gain. ----------
But we've never been big on the idea that a trend can be made, or broken, in a single month.
One could also argue, for instance, that March hybrid sales were up substantially from February and recovered more than did all other segments combined.
On a sales-per-day basis, to account for the shorter February selling period, March hybrid sales were up 20.9 percent, versus an 11.6 percent increase from February in sales of other types of new cars and trucks.
Does that mean that March sales show that people have changed their minds and are flocking to hybrids in droves?
Toyota Motor Corp. says it will try to compete directly with rival Honda Motor Co.'s new Insight hybrid in the Japanese market by introducing a downscale base model of its 2010 Toyota Prius hybrid priced at the U.S. equivalent of $20,750 -- about the same as a midlevel 2010 Honda Insight.
---------- 2010 Toyota Prius (top) versus 2010 Honda Insight (bottom) is shaping up as the industry's first hybrid price war. ----------
The company has not made a formal announcement of the strategy, but has told Japan's Toyota dealers what to expect, according to a report in the trade journal Automotive News
.
In the U.S., as Green Car Advisorpreviously has reported, Toyota will launch the 2010 Prius in late May or early June without a base model, adding it sometime in the third quarter.
That model will let Toyota in the U.S. replicate the Japanese strategy: It will have less standard equipment than other 2010 Prius models and is expected to be priced several thousand dollars less to compete with the smaller Insight.
Toyota hasn't announced U.S. pricing for the new Prius, but the "Level 2" model that will serve as the price leader at launch is expected to come in at about $23,500-$24,000. Honda launched the 2010 Insight in the U.S. last month with a base price of $20,470, versus the 2009 Prius' base price of $22,720.
Toyota executives previously had maintained that they did not consider the Insight a direct competitor because the Honda hybrid, while also seating five, is a compact while the five-passenger Prius is a midsize car. The Insight also delivers less fuel economy, with an EPA combined city-highway rating of 41 miles per gallon versus the 2010 Prius' 50 mpg rating.
Pressure from Toyota dealers who fear losing hybrid customers to Honda is believed to have influenced the decision to add a cut-rate model to the Prius lineup.
In Japan -- but not in the U.S. -- Toyota also will continue selling the second-generation ('09) Prius, heavily stripped down, as an inexpensive, fuel-efficient car for commercial and government fleets.
Note: The quote about Ford and Honda in the third paragraph was from an article in The Los Angeles Times, and was incorrectly attributed to Rush Limbaugh.
The gospel according to Rush Limbaugh now includes another chapter in what we'll call the green car conspiracy.
Here (from a transcript on the Excellence in Broadcasting network Web site) is what Limbaugh had to say on Tuesday about why vehicle manufacturers are scrambling to design and produce fuel-efficient, cleaner vehicles:
"The Ford and Honda hybrids due out this month are among dozens planned for the coming years as automakers try to meet new fuel-efficiency standards and please politicians overseeing the industry's multibillion-dollar bailout."
(That's probably news to Ford, which has just said 'no' to bailouts, and Honda, which doesn't qualify. And it might be news to the million motorists worldwide who've purchased Priuses and prodded Ford to introduce the Fusion Hybrid (left) and Honda to market the Insight Hybrid.)
And why are the auto companies kowtowing? Because the president is in cahoots with environmentalists who stay awake nights trying to figure out how to get us back to the good, old days when a gallon of gas cost more than $4.
Ah, but the evil-doers in Washington, D.C. (and their cronies in Sacramento) can't fool steely-eyed consumers when it comes to hybrids.
"Nobody's buying 'em," Limbaugh said. "Nobody wants them! The manufacturers are making them in droves to satisfy Obama! Sorry for yelling. Nobody wants them!"
(As of March 30, Americans had purchased 1.3 million hybrids since the first one -- a two-seat Honda Insight -- was sold in December 1999. Hybrids accounted for 2.51 percent of the market in March. That's the fourth-best monthly market-share showing ever, even with the lower gasoline prices. To be fair, though, hybrid sales did fall by 44 percent in March from a year earlier, and that's a worse showing than the 37 percent drop in the overall market.)
Taxi owners and drivers didn't really know what to expect early in 2005 when 10 Ford Escape Hybrids joined San Francisco's taxi fleet.
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A doorman at the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in San Francisco with a Ford Escape Hybrid
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Neither, for that matter, did Ford Motor Co.
"We didn't do anything special to these cars to get them ready to be used as taxis," said Gil Portalatin, Ford's hybrid systems application manager. "They just drove them off of the dealer lot."
Doubters undoubtedly expected an "aha" moment or two as the hybrids took to the mean streets of San Francisco.
But the vehicles and their hybrid technology seem to have met the challenge of hustling fares and their luggage around town. More than a dozen Ford Escape Hybrids that joined the San Francisco taxi fleet now are approaching retirement -- but only because city regulations require vehicles to be taken out of service when their odometers hit 300,000 miles.
What's more, Portalatin expects the retired vehicles to resurface in other California cities and towns that don't set odometer limits.
Toyota Motor Corp. on Thursday confirmed that the current Prius model will continue to be sold in Japan even after the new, 2010 Prius (left) goes on sale in May.
The Insight's sales price in Japan starts at 1.89 million yen ($19,000), while the third-generation Prius will start at 2.3 million yen ($22,000).
Japanese media accounts have Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe confirming that the older model, which is smaller and somewhat cheaper, will remain on the market in Japan.
Japanese media reports also suggest that Toyota is planning a Yaris-based hybrid that would serve as another lower-cost alternative to the Insight. The Nikkei newspaper on Wednesday quoted a Toyota engineer as saying "we are developing a low-priced hybrid like Honda's Insight."
Don't look for the second-generation Prius to remain on the market in the U.S. Toyota earlier said that motorists on this side of the Pacific Ocean will get the third-generation model.
The embargo's lifted now and word about the 2010 Prius -- from the drivers' points of view -- will be all over the Web this morning.
Edmunds is offering you two pieces, a full test-drive by Inside Line Senior Editor Erin Riches, and an Edmunds.com consumer road test review by yours truly.
We've also got here for you a tale of how Green Car Advisor and a bunch of other journalists may have utterly ruined the Prius' image in what has been prime country for the hybrid.
As part of the press introduction, held at the end of February in Northern California's famed Napa Valley wine region, Toyota challenged reporters to take on a 33.8-mile Prius fuel economy route to see if we could beat the 62.9 miles per gallon average that Prius Chief Engineer Akihiko Otsuka managed.
I was in the first wave of about 30 journalists, teamed two to a car, and at various times during the day each of us attempted the feat.
My partner and I took off from the hotel Toyota was using at about 3 p.m., me behind the wheel, he with one eye on the Prius' instantaneous fuel economy gauge and the other on road and traffic conditions.
We figured that the intent was to drive in a fairly normal mode -- Otsuka hadn't said anything about pushing the car down the highway, or tucking in behind big rigs to gain a few feet per gallon by drafting.
Porsche Cars North America (PCNA) has added a 327-module solar panel array on the roof of its Porsche Logistics facility in Ontario, California. On a typically sunny Southern California day the installation will generate 135,000 kilowatt hours of electricity, which is enough to cover 30 percent of daily energy consumption at the facility that has about 44 employees.
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Porsche has installed a solar electric assembly atop its logistics facility in Ontario, California.
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The installation, which cost just under $1 million, will cut carbon dioxide emissions by more than 50,000 pounds annually, said Tony Fouladpour, a spokesman for Atlanta-based PCNA, which is the exclusive importer of Porsche sports cars and sport-utility vehicles for the United States.
"It is a fairly significant move for us," Fouladpour said. "We have the capability of supplying more power but we've not made a decision yet on expanding it." Porsche did not receive government assistance for the module, Fouladpour said.
Porsche isn't the only car company looking to turn sunshine into electricity. Last year we reported on two massive solar projects undertaken by Toyota and General Motors.
Toyota has installed 10,000 photovoltaic modules atop its sprawling auto parts distribution center in Ontario. The installation that covers 242,000 square feet of the building's roof can produce 2.3 megawatts of electricity daily -- enough to supply 3.7 million kilowatt hours, or 60 percent of the building's power needs
AutoPacific projects a significant increase in sales of compact and mid-size cars, with compacts the volume leader.
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
Automakers, most of them anyway, have been telling American consumers for years that they didn't want small cars, the bigger was better, and safer, and sexier and more fun to drive.
That, said the likes of Ford, GM, Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Chrysler, is why they weren't making them - that and the problems they had making small cars that could compete in price and quality with those coming over from Japan.
After a while, even the Japanese pretty much gave up on small cars, shifting their attention to the big SUVs, pickups and luxury and quasi-luxe sedans that the American public had been persuaded were safer and brought more status to the table than compacts.
That started changing as fuel prices began soaring a few years ago, and the pace of change has accelerated as the economy has sunk into a deep recession.
Compacts have replaced mid-sized cars as the volume leader in new car sales, and many analysts believe that's not going to change even when the economy turns around.
California-based AutoPacific, for instance, is projecting that compact sales volume will grow much faster than mid-size volume through 2010 and then maintain an annual lead of 250,000 or so sales over midsized cars well into the next decade.
Edmunds.com analyst Jessica Caldwell agrees, adding that while fuel economy and lower purchase prices are a big reason for the growth in the segment, today's compacts also come loaded with standard equipment and options packages that were unheard of in the segment a few years ago.
Redefining Small
But wait!
There's a complication in the small car vs midsized car analysis, and a reason other than economy that American car buyers have begun favoring compacts.
"Today's compacts are as big as yesterday's midsized cars," says Dan Hall, AutoPacific's marketing vice president.
"While today's Honda Civic is definitely smaller than an Accord, it is about the same size as a mid-'90s Honda Accord," says Ed Kim, AutoPacific's industry analysis director.
The wheelbase of the present-generation Civic - the area in which the passenger cabin fits - is less than half-an-inch smaller than the 1997 Accord. Overall lengths of today's compacts are shorter than previous-generation mid-sized cars, but that's mainly because design changes have made engine compartments and trunk overhangs much shorter.
It's not so much that we've overcome our national preference for mid-sized cars and begun gravitation to the small car, Kim says, its just that the nomenclature has changed.
The future drove by me the other day and I almost missed it.
I was leaving one of the look-alike office buildings clustered around the Hyatt hotel in Irvine, Calif., on Friday the 13th when it suddenly dawned on me that a steady stream of very quiet vehicles was rolling past.
In green-conscious Southern California it's not at all unusual to see a couple of Priuses pass by in quick succession. But half-a dozen of them? Immediately followed by a half dozen or so spanking new 2010 Honda Insights?
In the time it took me to drop my packages and flip open the cell phone to snap a picture the parade had passed me by, so no photo.
But I asked around and discovered that the parade of cars rolling by with just their electric motors humming was no coincidence.
Behind closed doors in one of the hotel's first-floor meeting rooms , Honda dealers were being schooled on the company's new hybrid, which officially goes on sale Tuesday.
And out on the street they were being schooled in the differences between the 2010 Insight and the hybrid segment's sales leader, Toyota's Prius (which has its own debut, the all-new 2010 Prius, set for June).
Honda has said that it plans to highlight the Insight's proprietary technology and styling and not worry much about the Prius. But it seemed clear that Honda wanted to give its dealers an insight into both cars.
What's that line about keeping your friends close and your enemies closer?
We've never been enamored of the California legislation that opened its carpool lanes to solo drivers of certain high fuel-economy hybrids and clean-burning natural gas vehicles.
(Not that our principled stand is enough to stop Green Car Advisor's senior editor from driving solo in the HOV lanes when he's in Edmunds.com's state-credentialed, natural-gas burning Honda Civic GX.)
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States with carpool lanes usually require vehicles to have two or more occupants, unless vehicle is a 45-mpg hybrid or a specially designated clean-air vehicle.
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So we were planning a modest celebration for New Year's Day in 2011 when the special dispensation was set to expire and carpool lanes were to be handed back to carpoolers. Something along the lines of a mass chuckle as solo greenies sadly rejoined drivers of fuel-guzzling sedans, sport utilities and pick-up trucks that never escaped the hoi polloi lanes.
Imagine our disappointment then upon learning that California Assemblyman Ted Lieu (D, Torrance) has introduced legislation to extend the HOV Lane special dispensation to 2016. His bill, AB 1500 could surface in a committee hearing as early as March 30.
We think it's a bad idea to breathe new life into a bad idea.
Toyota said today that it will add about 100 "next-generation" plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles (PHEVs) to road trials already underway in France. The expanded fleet is designed to test what Toyota described as an "innovative charging infrastructure."
---------- Toyota is testing lithium-ion battery packs in fleets of plug-in Priuses but still isn't sure of the technology. ----------
Today's announcement builds upon an existing PHEV fleet that Toyota established in France in 2007. Toyota expanded the program
to the United Kingdom in 2008 and plans to add plug-in fleet tests later this year in the U.S. and Asia.
The vehicles that will be leased to various companies in the Strasbourg region incorporate a Toyota hybrid technology that includes lithium-ion batteries that can be recharged using standard electrical plugs.
The cars can achieve substantial fuel savings over the conventional hybrid Prius and can run on electric power alone at higher speeds and for longer distances.
Auto company marketing mavens have good reason to keep their ears close to the blogs these days.
---------- Give us a Prius without the expensive hybrid system, one blogger suggests. ----------
Those who have been following the chatter on Edmunds.com's hybrid forum in recent weeks have heard from car enthusiasts who fret that, during a gritty recession, many consumers can't afford the steep premium it takes to drive home in a really green machine that returns 40 miles or more per gallon.
These hybrid-savvy consumers maintain that a hefty percentage of car buyers would be content with a more-affordable, conventionally powered car, no matter its slightly lighter shade of green, if it could provide fuel economy in the 40 mpg-range. The discussions, not surprisingly, focus on the Toyota Prius and the Ford Fusion Hybrid. Both have been in the news a lot lately.
One blogger praised the Prius for its miserly ways. But then he complained that, with a $22,720 starting price it is "too expensive for a lot of people. Many people just don't have money to burn ... Most just want a cheaper car that performs better...."
The blogger suggested that Toyota offer a non-hybrid Prius - for the aerodynamic body style, no doubt - that eschews the batteries and electric motors that add to the weight and cost, but incorporate such fuel-efficient technology as direct injection, proper engine sizing, six-speed automatic transmissions and start/stop technology.
(Actually, beefier batteries are required for stop/start systems, which shut the gas engine down when the car comes to a stop and instantly restart it when pressure on the brake pedal is released. The gas engines also require some extra engineering to work that way. Nothing that improves fuel economy comes cheaply.)
Some of the online chatterers sound as if they're standing on a grassy knoll outside of Ford's headquarters and aiming a parabolic microphone at the building.
It's not easy being green, particularly when vehicle manufacturers worldwide are singing the blues and clamoring for sales-tax breaks to help move less-expensive conventionally-powered cars and trucks off of dealer lots.
---------- Green cars like BYD Autos' plug-in hybrid aren't moving well in China's slow economy. ----------
That's true even in China, one of the world's largest car markets.
Their country remains an attractive long-term market for new-energy vehicles but at present, Chinese consumers are hard-pressed to pay a premium for a green car.
Chinese automakers, though, are scrambling to produce advanced technology cars and trucks in the wake of a central government edict that calls for 60,000 green vehicles to be on the roads by 2012. To help move them off dealers' lots, Beijing is offering subsidies of up to $36,500 to consumers in big cities who buy hybrid, electric cars and fuel-cell vehicles.
The subsidies were created because although the Toyota Prius, Honda Civic Hybrid and the domestically produced BYD F3DM are on sale, Chinese consumers bought fewer than 1,000 hybrids in 2008. To put that figure into context, consider that Toyota's combined U.S. sales of its Prius and Lexus models recently passed the one million mark.
Henry Li, general manager for BYD Auto, bemoaned the situation to the Reuters news agency during a recent interview at the firm's Shenzhen headquarters: "I hope government subsidies can help boost demand, because this is good technology, though expensive compared to conventional cars."
Could Also Happen In U.S. to Compete with Lower-Priced 2010 Honda Insight
So much for Toyota's insistence that it doesn't see Honda's new 2010 Insight compact hybrid as competition for the larger and pricier mid-size Prius, which has long been the world's best-selling gas-electric car.
Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper is reporting that there's serious talk inside Toyota Motor Corp. of releasing a base model of the upcoming 2010 Prius that's 250,000 yen cheaper (about $2,575 at today's exchange rate) than the least expensive 2009 model Prius now sold in Japan.
U.S. Plans
The redesigned 2010 Prius is slated to go on sale in the U.S. in late May or early June and pricing hasn't been announced yet.
Toyota does plan, however, to hold up release of the base, or "standard" trim level of the new Prius for three to six months (marketing plans calls for the initial launch to include Level 2, 3, 4 and 5 models, but no Level 1) and a spokesman said this morning that it is likely to have less standard equipment than the other models and a price that is closer to the Insight's. Honda recently announced that 2010 Insight pricing in the U.S. would start at $20,470, including destination. The new hybrid goes on sale here March 24. The '09 Prius in the U.S. starts at $22,720 including the destination charge.
Hot Contest
The reason for the price-cut discssion in Japan is also to better compete with the Insight, which has taken Japan by storm in the month since it was released here, with Honda dealers booking a reported 18,000 orders.
While the bottom-of-the-line '09 Prius is now priced at 2.3 million yen, the base Insight went on sale Feb. 6 in Japan at 1.89 million yen, almost 18 percent less.
AT&T says it plans to spend more than half a billion dollars over the next decade purchasing hybrids and alternative fuel vehicles for its corporate fleet.
More than half the 15,000 vehicles the communications giant intends to acquire would be Ford vans - 8,000 of them - that would be converted to compressed natural gas by a so-called "upfitter" that would install the new CNG fuel systems.
The sales would not require any production increase at Ford. "We can meet this demand within our current plans," a spokeswoman for the automaker said.
In all, Reuters news service reported, AT&T is budgeting $565 million on the project, aimed at making its fleet on of the greenest in corporate America.
Ford Motor Co., which would likely be the biggest financial beneficiary of the plan, said in a statement provided to Green Car Advisor today that it "is pleased to support AT&T with their Green Fleet strategy."
A spokeswoman Ford, which has seen sales plummet as the global economy continues to weaken, confirmed that the automaker would not build the CNG vehicles itself but would merely sell AT&T the full-size Econoline vans with 5.4-liter V8 engines prepared with special valves that are compatible with natural gas.
The Prius, entering its third generation wth the new 2010 model (above), has led Toyota's hybrid march.
Toyota, which was closing in on this major hybrid milestone last time we looked, said this morning that combined U.S. sales of its Toyota and Lexus hybrids now has topped the 1-million mark.
Most of those sales can be chalked up to the segment's volume leader, the Toyota Prius, which became the world's first modern gas-electric hybrid when it was launched in Japan in 1997.
Toyota brought the Prius to the U.S. early in 2000 and has since added five other hybrids to its fleet.
"One million hybrids in less than nine years indicates how quickly American consumers have accepted this important technology," Jim Lentz, president of Toyota Motor Sales USA, said in a statement released this morning.
Combined Toyota and Lexus hybrid sales account for more than 75 percent of the market in the U.S. Honda and Ford Motor Co. hybrids account for most of the rest.
Globally, Toyota is adding 10 new hybrid models over the next three years and expects to be selling 1 million gas-electric cars and SUVs a year by early next decade.
Kyodo News International is reporting that Honda Motor Co. wrote about 18,000 orders in Japan for the 2010 Insight hybrid hatchback in the month following its February 6 debut.
The surge of Japanese Insight orders shows considerable interest in the compact hybrid in a country where, as in the U.S., the Toyota Prius has reigned supreme.
And despite the shortened February selling period, Japan's Honda dealers hit the company's monthly target of 5,000 sales, delivering 4,906 new Insights during the month to land the car at 10th overall on the Japanese Automobile Dealers Assn.'s monthly sales ranking.
The Prius fell from 5th to 12th place on February sales of 4,524 vehicles.
The auto dealers association linked the tumble to Japan's stalled economy and to consumer interest in the new hybrid on the block. Japanese consumers also are waiting for the spring launch of the new 2010 Prius.
Kyodo reports that the Insight, as expected, is clicking with young singles. But the report also notes that the compact hybrid hatchback is drawing "seniors who are seeking a family car, thanks to its high fuel economy" and relatively affordable price.
As we reported earlier today, the official U.S. starting price for the base LX model will be $19,800 when sales here begin on March 24. The real starting price, including the destination charge, is $20,470.
In Japan, the Insight went on sale last month priced at 1.89 million yen, or about $20,640 plus the Japanese version of a destination charge.
The votes are in and the finalists in the 2009 World Green Car award race are (in alphabetical order) the Honda FCX Clarity, the Mitsubishi iMiEV and the Toyota iQ . The winner is to be crowned April 9 at the 2009 New York International Auto Show.
Past winners of the three-year-old World Green Car of the Year have been the BMW 118d (2008), the Mercedes-Benz E320 Bluetec (2007) and the Honda Civic Hybrid (2006).
To be eligible, vehicles had to be available in at least one major market during 2008. The field included production models and experimental prototypes with near-future applications -- thus Honda's fuel-cell electric Clarity and Mitsubishi's battery-electric city car. Judging criteria includes fuel economy, emissions and overall environmental impact.
While diesels dominated in the past with two of three previous titles, this year's field has none, instead offering the Honda fuel-cell sedan, the Mitsubishi battery-electric car and the gasoline-fueled Toyota. Two are small city cars, and the third, the Honda, is a midsize, four-seat sedan.
A 59-member jury of green car specialists including journalists from several continents selected the three finalists.
Edmunds.com has spilled a lot of digital ink on each of the three nominated vehicles. Here are some links to the Honda FCX Clarity, the Mitsubishi iMiEV and the Toyota iQ.
Not by much, though, and the hybrid's 50-miles-a-gallon overall rating remains the same.
But instead of the originally reported 50 mpg in the city and 49 mpg on the highway for the new Prius, due to hit showrooms in late May and early June, the new and official numbers are 51 miles a gallon in the city and 48 on the highway.
Even the carmakers that live and die by the vehicles' fuel economy ratings can have trouble understanding the formulae the regulators use!
A Toyota spokeswoman said the Prius mileage rating error was caused by a "misinterpretation of the preliminary data."
Sales of hybrid cars and SUVs continued falling in February but their plunge was slowed somewhat by a strong updraft of incentives.
---------- Camry hybrid sales were down 50 percent from February '08 but with incentive spending rose 82 percent from January ----------
While new car sales overall were down 41 percent from a year earlier, hybrid sales were off just 28.5 percent with 16,020 vehicles sold, down from 22,411 in February 2008.
The gas-electric cars cost more than their conventional counterparts and haven't been doing well as the economy tanks and gas prices remain relatively low.
Sales also have been slowed as interested consumers hold off in anticipation of the new Honda insight compact 5-passenger hybrid and the redesigned 2010 Toyota Prius, both due to hit showroom floors soon.
One Gainer
February saw only one gain - the Lexus RX400 hybrid crossover SUV was up 31 percent from a year earlier - but several models posted smaller declines than the segment as a whole.
The Lexus RX400 hybrid was helped by significant incentive spending, as Toyota's luxury division poured an average of $6,338 into each vehicle, according to Edmunds.com's True Cost of Incentives data. That was up from just $503 per vehicle incentive spending on the RX400 hybrid a year earlier and was $1,300 more than Lexus was spending on RX400 incentives in January.
Both the Ford Escape hybrid and the Toyota Camry posted big gains for the month. The Escape, with 1,172 sales, climbed 55.6 percent from January and the Camry, with 2,080 sales, was up 82.3 percent.
Camry sales really show the power of incentives: the car was among the worst performers in comparing February '08 and '09 sales, down almost 50 percent.To get the big January to February improvement, Toyota pumped up incentive spending on the model to $1,495 per vehicle from "virtually nothing in January," said Edmunds.com industry analyst Jessica Caldwell.
Ford Fusion billboard makes fuel economy rating as prominent as the hybrid car it is selling.
The top reason U.S. car shoppers don't buy a Ford is fuel economy; they think Ford makes only gas-guzzlers, the automaker's research shows.
The company is looking to dispel that notion with its massive new advertising campaign for the 2010 Ford Fusion and, most notably, the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid.
Quite simply, Ford bills all versions of the Fusion -- from the four-cylinder to the V6 to the gas-electric hybrid -- as the most fuel-efficient midsize sedans in America.
The first print ads were featured in newspapers Monday; the first television commercials air tonight on American Idol.
More Interior Room, 22 Percent More Horsepower and a 50 MPG Fuel-Economy Rating
Squared corners, smaller upper and larger lower grilles, new roof line help boost 2010 Prius' fuel economy.
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
Toyota Motor Corp. has lots to say about the new 2010 Prius -- the press briefing material handed out at the media preview in California's rain-soaked Napa Valley last week lists 45 pages of styling, powertrain and technology changes and improvements for the third generation of the automaker's segment-leading hybrid.
All that extra stuff adds 110 pounds to the new Prius, but stretches the car barely at all. It is just half an inch longer and three-quarters of an inch wider than the '09 model, and despite an impressive gain of 5 cubic feet of passenger and cargo space, it is the same height as the present model.
We're talking green stuff here, but you can catch the rest of the ABCs of the 2010 Prius, and a lot more photos, on Edmunds Inside Line news blog, while Edmunds AutoObserver explores Toyota's Prius marketing plans and the 2010 model's safety and convenience technologies.
More HP for More MPG
Not the least among the changes Toyota will start bragging about today are new EPA mileage figures that boost fuel economy for the 2010 Prius to 51 miles a gallon in city driving, 48 mpg on the highway and 50 miles a gallon for the combined driving cycle.
(Note: EPA ratings changed 3/10/09 to reflect final numbers. Original numbers released by Toyota were 50 mpg city, 49 mph highway and 50 mpg overall.)
The extra mileage comes despite Toyota's decision to load a bigger, more powerful gas engine in the new Prius, which will go on sale in early June.
Actually, the mileage boost comes largely because of that decision. Prius chief engineer Akihiko Otsuka said the 98-horsepower, 1.8-liter four-banger lets the car run at lower engine RPM at highway speeds and delivers more torque than the present 76-hp, 1.5-liter engine.
The power and torque boost enables the car to use less fuel while accelerating, climbing hills and cruising.
Not a Drag
Otsuka's team of more than 2,000 engineers also included aerodynamics specialists who managed to cut the 2010 Prius' coefficient of drag -- to just 0.25 from 0.26 for the '09 model, which already had one of the lowest CDs ever for a mass-produced car (a bullet by comparison, has a drag coefficient of 0.29).
Among the tricks employed are full underbody covers, a reduced upper grille opening to help smooth airflow over the upper body and an enlarged lower grille opening to reduce air flow resistance.
It also helps that 2010 Prius avoids parasitic losses in engine output by eliminating accessory drive belts" power steering, the water pump and the air conditioner compressor all are electric.
Beyond the engine improvements, Toyota achieved the fuel-economy increase -- from an overall 46 mpg for the 2009 Prius -- with a hybrid drive system that's 90 percent new and with a few improvements to the nickel-metal hydride battery pack.
Weight, Price Penalty for 40 Miles of All-Electric Range Is Prohibitive, Researchers Say
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
In a report sure to be a blow to GM's hopes for its upcoming plug-in hybrid, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have found that the extra cost and weight of the
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Researchers say vehicles like the the Chevy Volt may be too much of a good thing.
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batteries a vehicle such as the Chevrolet Volt must carry to achieve its targeted 40 miles of all-electric range make it too expensive to be cost-effective transportation for most people.
The report, to be published in a future issue of the journal "Energy Policy," doesn't identify the Volt by name but compares a plug-in hybrid with its basic characteristics to conventional hybrids, other plug-ins with less electric range, and even conventional vehicles.
"Large-capacity PHEVs sized for 40 or more miles of electric-only travel are not cost-effective in any scenario," the report's authors insist.
Bloomberg News issued the first report on the study today.
Fuel Savings Not There
General Motors Corp. has designed the Volt to travel up to 40 miles on a fully charged battery pack before its auxiliary gasoline engine-generator kicks in.
The automaker says that because the average American drives less the 40 miles a day when commuting or using the vehicle for normal household errands, the Volt will be highly fuel-efficient and will run as a zero-emissions vehicle for much of its time on the road.
That may be true, the Carnegie Mellon researchers say in their study of plug-in hybrid cost-effectiveness, but if an owner hopes to recoup ownership costs from fuel savings, a rechargeable hybrid vehicle capable of that much all-electric range isn't the answer.
"Forty miles might be a sweet spot for making sure a lot of people get to work without using gasoline, but you're doing it at a cost that will never be repaid in fuel savings," Jeremy Michalek, an engineering professor who led the study, told Bloomberg News in an interview.
They're not too worried over at Toyota Motor Corp., the world's leader in sales of gas-electric cars and trucks, but Honda Motor Co. says that global sales of its hybrids have now topped the 300,000 mark.
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Civic hybrid is Honda's top-selling gas-electric model now...
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Honda began marketing hybrids in 1999 in Japan and the U.S. with the now discontinued two-seat Insight, beefed up its offerings in 2001 with a hybrid Civic and briefly added an Accord sedan to the lineup from 2004 through mid-2007.
The company said in a brief announcement today that it had sold 300,740 hybrid models around the world through Jan. 31.
Of the total, 234,252, or almost 78 percent, were sold in North America, with the U.S. market accounting for most of those sales.
In contrast, Toyota sold 3.7 million hybrids globally from the introduction of the first Prius in Japan in 1997 through the end of 2008. U.S. sales account for about a third of the total.
Honda hopes to see a dramatic rise in its hybrid sales this year with the introduction of the sub-$20,000 Insight, a five-seat compact that resurrects the name of the company's first gas-electric car.
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...but expects the 2010 Insight to quickly overtake Civic as its leading hybrid model.
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Global sales of the new Insight are expected to top 200,000 a year, with half the total gobbled up by North American buyers.
The 2010 Insight already has gone on sale in Japan, where 5,000 orders in the first week outstripped Honda's expectations for the entire month.
The new hybrid goes on sale in the U.S. in April.
Worldwide, Honda's hybrid sales include 255,246 Civics, 28,471 Accords and 17,020 original Insights.
It's seemed for the longest time that if a clean, economical form of ethanol was ever going to be developed, the cost and effort would be left largely up to researchers in the U.S. and Europe.
The companies want to develop a low-cost method of producing cellulosic ethanol - the kind that comes from the cellulose in wood chips, prairie grasses and waste biomass instead of that in food crops such as corn and sugar cane.
The Japanese cellulosic ethanol research isn't aimed at a particularly quick fix, though.
Reuters says the group's goal is to be producing about 1.6 million barrels a year by early 2014 and to get the cost down to the equivalent of $70 a barrel by 2015.
Among the companies joining Nippon Oil and Toyota in the consortium are Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Sapporo engineering - a subsidiary of Sapporo Breweries, which churns out a lot of biomass waste from beer-making.
John O'Dell, Senior Editor
---------- Graphic courtesy U.S. Department of Energy
China has taken steps in recent years to change its reputation as a mass polluter to an environmentally sensitive country.
Its efforts started with a massive Beijing clean-up operation for the Olympics, followed by a $175 billion countrywide clean-up and the closure of some particularly dirty coal power plants.
Soon the country will offer subsidies to the residents and businesses of 13 large cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, who purchase hybrid cars, trucks and buses, or vehicles that run on electricity, liquefied petroleum gas or compressed natural gas.
If the subsidy program succeeds, it might be extended to the rest of China.
Although the Toyota Prius, Honda Civic Hybrid and the domestically produced and recently released BYD F3DM are available in China, fewer than a 1,000 hybrids cars were sold in 2008.
That number will likely change as China produces more hybrids, which are much less expensive than the Japanese hybrids. The size of the subsidies have yet to be announced.
So far, only two Chinese carmakers - Dongfeng Motor and Great Wall Motor (its Kunna EV is pictured) - have announced plans to make electric or plug-in hybrid vehicles.
Nissan Motor Co. announced today that it is seeking a federal loan under a U.S. program for fuel-efficient autos.
The decision means that it is competing for U.S. funds with numerous American companies, including General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and electric-car start-up Tesla Motors Inc.
The announcement came the same day as Nissan, Japan's third-largest automaker, said it intended to cut more than 20,000 jobs worldwide and shift production out of Japan as part of a broad new effort to weather the economic downturn.
Nissan, which suffered a net loss of $908 million for the quarter that ended in December, today projected a $1.92 billion operating loss for its year ending in March.
As for the federal loan, the U.S. Department of Energy may disburse some of the $25 billion in low-cost loans to successful applicants in coming weeks, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Friday.
Rules for the program were set in November and the agency received 75 applications for projects totaling $38 billion, Energy Department spokesman Phil West said. Of those, only 26 were "substantially complete," he said.
U.S. officials notified Nissan that its application met initial requirements, and the request entered the second of four approval stages, according to Alan Buddendeck, Nissan's U.S. vice president of communications.
Unlike the $17.4 billion in emergency federal loans GM and Chrysler LLC won to avoid bankruptcy, the $25 billion are part of 2007 legislation creating tougher fuel-efficiency rules. Any manufacturer can apply as long as the money is used to make autos at U.S. factories that produce cars with at least 25 percent better fuel economy.
No surprise, hybrid sales in January went down the drain along with the rest of the industry.
The gas-electric cars, pricier than their conventional counterparts, typically don't do well when gas prices are cheapish, as they are these days.
---------- Lexus RX 400h was one of only two hybrids to post a gain over January '08 sales. ----------
Add in a recession teetering on the edge of depression and the picture is grimmer.
Piling on, Toyota and Honda -- the industry's hybrid sales leaders -- have new models coming out in a few months, a situation that doesn't do much to promote sales of models that are soon to be outdated.
The only good news is that, as a percentage of an overall abysmal market, hybrids gained in January, rising to a 2.33 percent market share from 1.97 percent in December and 2.14 percent a year earlier.
In terms of market share, January was the seventh-best month for hybrids since the first model went on sale in the U.S. in 1999.
Good market share in a bad market isn't much to cheer about, though. In terms of sales volume, January was the worst month for hybrids in almost three years.
Total sales of 15,393 hybrid cars and SUVs were down 12.8 percent from December and plunged 31.2 percent from a year earlier.
The last time sales were lower was February 2006, when only 14,957 hybrids were sold.
Gains
As usual, Toyota's Prius was the month's volume leader with 8,121 sales -- almost 53 percent of the total.
The Prius also was one of only five hybrid models of the 16 tracked by Edmunds.com to post a gain from December, up 3.3 percent. Prius sales were down 28.6 percent from a year earlier, though.
The other January gainers were:
The Lexus 400h crossover hybrid, up 6.3 percent with 1,556 sales;
Toyota's Highlander hybrid SUV, up 10.6 percent with 984 sales;
Honda's Civic Hybrid, up 3.8 percent with 1,076 sales; and
The Mercury Mariner Hybrid SUV from Ford Motor Co., up 19.8 percent with 127 sales.
Despite the one-month gains, the Civic Hybrid was down 38.3 percent from January '07, the Mariner was off 28.7 percent from a year earlier, and the Highlander was down 54.1 percent.
Potential buyers holding back in anticipation of the improved 2010 Prius and Honda's new 2010 Insight Hybrid, both due later this year, didn't help any of the January-over-January sales comparisons, said Jessica Caldwell, Edmunds.com's manager of industry analysis.
"Hefty price tags combined with the promise of newer, more-efficient models to come within the next few months have really hindered hybrid sales in January," she said.
Two hybrid models did post gains from their year-ago, marks, though.
---------- Nissan Altima Hybrid joined Lexus in winner's circle with an increase from January '08 sales. ----------
The Lexus 400h was up 28.3 percent from 1,211 sales a year earlier -- the only model to gain for the month and the year -- while Nissan's Altima Hybrid, with 644 sales last month, was up 36.1 percent from 473 sales in January '07.
Big Losses
The rest of the pack lost ground, although most are such low-volume sellers that the losses didn't make much impression on January's total sales picture.
General Motors Corp.'s hybrid cars and crossovers were the biggest losers, percentagewise, all but one falling more than 50 percent from December (none were in the market a year ago, so there are no January '07 numbers to compare to).
The Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid SUV was hit hardest, down 69.5 percent with 299 sold versus 981 in December.
The Chevy Malibu Hybrid sedan was a close second in the loser column, its 145 sales a 68.1 percent decline from 454 sales a month earlier.
The GMC Yukon Hybrid SUV (a twin to the Tahoe) was down 62 percent to 168 sales from 442 in December; Cadillac Escalade Hybrid SUV sales fell 56.8 percent to 132 from 306; the Saturn Vue Greenline Hybrid crossover was off 54.7 percent with 153 sales, down from 338; and the Saturn Aura Hybrid sedan was down 44.1 percent to 19 sales from 34 in December.
Sales of Ford's Escape Hybrid SUV fell 27.9 percent from December, to 753, and were off 41.9 percent from January '07, and Toyota's Camry Hybrid sedan dropped 39.6 percent from December, to 1,141 sales, and was down 49.7 percent from a year earlier.
In Toyota's luxury stable, the Lexus LS 600h L hybrid sedan posted 33 sales, down 34 percent from December and 68.6 percent below January '07 sales, and the Lexus GS 450h crossover hybrid dropped 19.6 percent from December, to 41 sales, and was off 35.9 percent from a year earlier.
Although the new models from Toyota and Honda could pump a little excitement into the hybrid market later this year, Caldwell and other analysts don't expect much improvement before the latter part of the year.
U.S. On-Sale Date Is Late April, but First Cars Could Be Here by End of March
By John O'Dell, Senior Edito
r
Honda Motor Co. hasn't set U.S. pricing yet for its new 2010 Honda Insight Hybrid (right), but by launching the car first in Japan -- it goes on sale there Friday -- the automaker provides a pretty good clue.
Japanese pricing for the five-seat, gas-electric compact starts at 1.89 million yen, the U.S. equivalent of $20,640 at today's exchange rate.
Honda has said that the Insight will be the least-expensive hybrid in the U.S., and most in the automotive media have taken that to mean that the price tag here will be under $20,000.
The Insight officially is scheduled to go on sale in the U.S. on April 22, but Honda insiders say the company will start shipping them to dealers as soon as the first boatload makes landfall and that some could be in showrooms as early as the end of March.
Honda and most other Japanese carmakers often price vehicles higher in the home market than the same models sell for in the U.S., so it would seem that guesstimates of a base Insight price here in the range of $18,995 to $19,995 would be on the money.
Toyota's Prius starts at $22,000 and the Honda Civic Hybrid at $23,550.
The 2010 Insight, introduced at the Detroit auto show last month, uses the name of Honda's first hybrid, but shares little else with the original two-seat Insight.
GM Gets Three Models on 'Greenest' List and Tops 'Meanest' Ranking With Hummer H2
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
In an anticlimactic repeat, Honda's natural-gas burning Civic GX topped the annual "greenest vehicles" of the year listing being published this morning by the non-profit American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy.
It is the 12th year the Washington-based environmental and economic lobbying group has published its Green Book Online, which ranks passenger cars and light trucks for overall environmental impact.
Although the list for the 2009 model year contained no big surprises, it was marked by the reappearance of General Motors Corp., with trio of small cars among the dozen "greenest" vehicles in the market - the Chevrolet Cobalt compact and its Pontiac G5 twin placed eighth overall and the Chevrolet Aveo subcompact finished10th.
The GM cars, which were rated highly for their fuel economy, knocked Ford's Focus off the "greenest" list after its appearance there last year as the only domestic car in the top twelve.
The Ford didn't get a lower score - but the average scores in the top 12 were higher this year than last.
Evolution, Not Revolution
Generally, the 2009 list was marked by continued improvements in the fuel economy and reduced greenhouse gas emissions of scores of vehicles rather than by stellar performances from just one or two models.
Manufacturers are fine-tuning their engines and transmissions, improving materials, and adding emission control technologies, said ACEEE transportation program director Therese Langer.
While they've been publicly sniping at one another over California's controversial greenhouse gas reduction rules for automobiles, a group of automakers, environmentalists and regulators have been privately meeting to see if there's any common grounds for agreement.
We're not getting our hopes up.
The series of meetings, conducted at the invitation of the private, nonprofit Aspen Institute, took place over the past few months but have ended with no agreement and no plans for further meetings, according to a source with insider knowledge of the sessions.
The meetings were attended by representatives of Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp., Honda Motor Co., the California Air Resources Board, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists.
All of the participants signed an agreement to keep the content of the greenhouse gas meetings confidential.
Green Car Advisor is told that while the sessions did promote "greater understanding of the issues" by all parties, there were no changes of mind and no agreements to compromise.
Opel will unveil a vehicle at the Geneva Auto Show in March that uses the same powertrain as the upcoming Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid, parent company General Motors announced this week, and that the car will be named Ampera.
The Ampera (pictured) will enter production in 2011, one year after the Volt is scheduled to do so, GM said. Vauxhall, Opel's sister brand in the U.K., will get its own version in 2012 or sometime thereafter.
All three cars will share the Voltec powertrain, which will use an electric motor for propulsion. A battery pack will supply electricity to the motor for the initial 40 or so miles of driving. After that, an onboard gasoline generator will come on to juice the battery pack for roughly 200 more miles of travel.
Once out of gasoline, the Ampera's lithium-ion battery can be recharged via a standard 230-volt outlet. GM will release more data on the European-specification Ampera at the Geneva show.
"With the Ampera, Opel will be the first European automobile manufacturer to provide customers several hundred kilometers of non-stop electric driving," said Alain Visser, a spokesman for GM Europe's chief marketing office.
The European variant of the Volt is a key model for GM Europe's future model plans and the reinvention of Opel as an upper mid-market brand.
The Ampera is not expected to have any major styling changes in comparison to the Volt and is set to rival the new generation Toyota Prius and Honda Insight that will go on sale in Europe this year.
GM will be hoping that the Ampera's groundbreaking plug-in hybrid powertrain technology will give the model an edge over the Prius and Insight - conventional hybrids that rely on less-desirable nickel-metal hydride battery technology.
The Detroit auto show is over and the Chicago show doesn't start until the end of next week, so we thought we'd bring you a treat for the slow time in between.
The crack Edmunds video team usually does its work at auto shows for Inside Line, but there were a couple of new and noteworthy green cars being unveiled in Motown earlier this month, so we asked for a few minutes of their time to be devoted to pieces expressly for the Green Car Advisor audience.
Senior Automotive Editor Brian Moody first maneuvered Honda spokesman Sage Marie in front of the 2010 Honda Insight for this 3.5-minute look at what's going to make the upcoming 2010 Honda Insight hybrid tick and why it will come to market costing a lot less than Toyota's Prius.
Then Moody stuck his microphone and inquisitive self in front of Toyota's Bill Reinert, national manager of advanced technology vehicles, for this 6-minute, 47-second discussion of the FT-EV concept car, which foreshadows the battery-electric city car Toyota says it will launch for retail sales in the U.S. in 2012.
Among the things Moody teases out of Reinert is a nice explanation of Toyota's marketing strategy for its first EV, as well as the disclosure that the company is "way beyond" overnight battery charging and is confident it can bring to market a car that can be charged up and ready to go in two hours or so.
So do yourselves a favor, take a 10-minute break and take a look.
Then do us a favor and let us know what you think.
Now we know why GM has been so enthusiastic about ethanol. The often-corrosive alternative fuel has proven to be the undoing of nearly a quarter million of rival Toyota Motor corp.'s high-end Lexus luxury models.
---------- Lexus LS 460 models from 2006 through 2008 are among the cars being recalled. ----------
Toyota and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are launching a safety recall affecting about 214,500 Lexus GS 300, GS 350, IS 250 and IS 350 and LS 460 and LS 460L vehicles from the 2006 through 2008 model years because of a potential fuel line problem.
Seems that low-moisture ethanol blends can corrode the cars' fuel delivery pipes, causing a warning light to come on and possibly eating a pinhole through the pipe wall, causing a fuel leak.
The automaker said no other Lexus models are affected.
Owners with cars covered by the Lexus recall will be notified by mail starting later this month and will be asked to contact local Lexus dealers to schedule inspections and possible repairs of any ethanol damage.
Toyota Motors Sales USA, which is managing the recall for the automaker, said repairs will involve replacing the fuel pipes with new ones that won't be affected by ethanol. The repairs will be done at no charge, the automaker said.
In a bid to lure more used car shoppers seeking fuel efficient transportation into its dealerships - and to help dealers unload hybrids coming in as their leases expire -Toyota Motor Co. has extended its 12-year-old certified used vehicle program to its lineup of gas-electric vehicles.
The program, announced Tuesday, covers the Toyota-brand Prius, Camry and Highlander SUV hybrids.
The Toyota Certified Used Hybrid plan extends to the hybrids the same three-month, 3,000-mile comprehensive warranty, roadside assistance plan and seven-year, 100,000-mile limited powertrain warranty that cover non-hybrid used cars offered in the company's certified used vehicle program.
It doesn't, however, extend the existing battery warranty of 10 years or 150,000 miles in states that have adopted California's emissions regulations, or eight years and 100,000 miles in states following federal EPA emissions rules.
Cars to be sold under the plan do, however, get a looking-over that goes beyond the standard certified program's 174-point inspection to include key hybrid system components including the battery, electronics control modules and hybrid transaxle.
Vehicles in factory-sponsored certified used programs typically cost a bit more than those that aren't covered by the programs' extended warranties, and in these ough financial times, that could be a stumbling block.
But we're betting that Toyota, which doesn't often guess wrong when it comes to making money, is feeling pretty confident that shoppers will believe that a pre-inspected, certified and thus more worry-free used hybrid is worth the extra bucks.
Volkswagen, which has been selling its Polo subcompact in Europe since 1975, has decided to bring the supermini fuel-sipping car in the United States.
---------- A 2009 VW Polo gets the star treatment. ----------
VW development chief Ulrich Hackenberg says the automaker wants to take advantage of American buyers' increasing enthusiasm for smaller fuel-efficient cars.
"Oil prices will rise again and that will drive small-car sales up further," he said in an interview at the Detroit auto show last week.
Hackenberg said the U.S.-bound Polos may be produced in VW's assembly plant in Puebla, Mexico, where the original Beetle was made until a few years ago, to avoid an unfavorable Euro-dollar exchange rate. He did not say when U.S. sales of the Polo might start.
The Wolfsburg, Germany, company will debut its fifth-generation Polo -- the 2010 model -- at the Geneva auto show in March. Pricing and fuel economy have not been divulged.
The most fuel-efficient of the current, fourth-generation Polo variants sold in Europe get about 60 miles per gallon. The low-emissions version or versions sold in America would likely get between 40 and 60 mpg.
The decision to sell the Polo in the U.S. will give VW an entrant in the increasingly competitive subcompact market that exists there.
Currently, VW's smallest car in the U.S. is the Rabbit (or Golf, as the model is known elsewhere), which starts at $15,900. Its 2.5-liter five-cylinder engine puts out 170 horsepower, which is wonderful, but achieves only 24 miles per gallon in combined city-highway driving.
VW also sells a Jetta compact, which starts at $17,300. It and the Rabbit thus far have not competed favorably in the high-volume, affordable-car segment dominated by the 2009 Honda Civic, which starts at $15,200, and the 2009 Toyota Corolla, which starts at $16,700.
Stepping down a notch in size and price are the 2009 Toyota Yaris, starting at $12,200, and the Honda Fit, starting at $14,700. These -- or rather their 2010 successors, assuming the U.S.-bound Polo is a 2010 model -- would likely be the Polo's direct competition, as would Ford's new Fiesta global car.
Hot on the heels of its recent announcement that it is pushing hard to bring plug-in hybrids
and more conventional hybrids to market as quickly as possible, Toyota Motor Co. now has put a date on the launch of hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles.
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Toyota Highlander fuel-cell vehicle completed a 350- mile trip from Osaka to Tokyo last year without refueling.
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The company's top product planner, Masatami Takimoto, a corporate executive vice president, said in interviews during the Detroit show's media days earlier this week that "limited commercialization" of a Toyota fuel-cell vehicle will begin "in 2015, and maybe sooner."
The program is seen by Toyota as "the beginning of true commercialization" of the fuel-cell vehicles, Takimoto said.
Although it is best for its gas-electric hybrids, especially the Prius, and its (mostly) reliable and fuel-efficient conventional cars, Toyota Motor Corp. has never abandoned the hydrogen fuel cell.
Indeed, the company continues testing models in Japan and in California as a charter member of the California Fuel Cell Partnership and last year announced several improvements that greatly improved reliability and range.
"We think the technology has been achieved," said John Hanson, Toyota's top environmental spokesman in the U.S.
Gas prices are starting to climb again after falling from $4 a gallon to below $2 a gallon in recent months, so its probably not buyer complacency about fuel costs that's got the once mighty Prius staggering a bit.
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Some dealerships now have Prius lineups instead of lineups for Priuses.
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But sales of Toyota's segment-leading hybrid hatchback are down and the waiting lines that once defined the marque have disappeared faster than you can say "I'll take one at any price."
We're pretty sure it's a combination of fewer buyers for general economic reasons and reluctance among many of those that remain in the market to buy now when Toyota is launching the redone 2010 Prius in a few months.
Whatever the case, there's no more messing around with low interest rates,"dealer cash" and other hidden incentives. Toyota has come right out and - in the West at least - admittted it now needs to pay people to buy Priuses now.
To that end, according to Edmunds.com's incentive trackers, the company's dealers are offering $1,000 Prius rebates in the San Francisco region. The cash replaces a cut-rate lease incentive. Cash discounts also are being offered in the Denver - $750 - and Los Angeles - $500 - regions.
This follows word that average Prius sales transactions in December were off almost 50 percent from summer highs and were running $2,000 below MSRP. That's about $ 7,000 less than the midsummer peak when many dealers were charging - and getting - $5,000 premiums for the gas sippers.
It's always fun to be able to kick sand in the face of the muscle-bound guy who pushed everyone else around, but we're kind of sad, first that the economy is emulating a Dyson Cyclone vacuum cleaner and secondly that so many people were so quick to jump off fuel efficiency bandwagon as gas prices fell
We're afraid that all to soon we'll be able to say "told you so!"
Toyota made good on its promise to place the third-generation Prius on the world stage today, rolling out at the Detroit Auto Show a model that is more fuel efficient and more powerful, roomier and cleaner aerodynamically, than its predecessors.
Plus, the No. 1 Japanese automaker by sales divulged a lot of facts about Prius Gen 3. The only large piece that's missing from the 2010 Prius puzzle is pricing, which won't be announced until shortly before the new Prius goes on sale late spring.
Toyota claims the 2010 Prius achieves 50 miles per gallon in combined city and highway driving. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has not yet rated it. The first-generation Prius is EPA rated at 41 mpg combined and the second generation Prius is EPA rated at 46 mpg combined.
A larger and more powerful 1.8-liter Atkinson-cycle, four-cylinder engine powers the new Prius. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the larger engine actually helps improve highway mileage. By making more torque, the new engine can run at lower average revolutions per minute on the highway. When operating at lower RPM, the new engine uses less fuel.
Toyota says the use of an electric water pump and a new exhaust gas recirculation system also contribute to the engine's efficiency. And the 1.8-liter engine is the first Toyota power plant that requires no belts under the hood for better fuel economy and less potential maintenance.
Also new is a multi-information display panel that monitors fuel and energy consumption. It provides feedback on the Prius's efficiency using three different displays to help the driver acquire economical driving habits.
It's been nearly three months since Toyota released a very grainy photo of the 2010 Pruis
, the third generation of the illustrious low-emissions hybrid, and the car isn't scheduled to make its world debut until late Monday morning.
That's when Toyota has scheduled a press conference to strut its new stuff at the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.
However, a Toyota-owned Japanese Website today posted the first high-resolution photo we've seen of the 2010 model, and we've posted that photo it here.
We will, of course, post photos of the newest Prius as soon as it takes the stage in Detroit. Toyota is expected to announce the vehicle's fuel economy and North American pricing and availability at the unveiling.
Lexus just unwrapped its newest hybrid, the 2010 HS 250h. No pricing of fuel efficiency numbers yet, although the company is claiming that it will be "more than 30 percent better than the most fuel-efficient model currently in the Lexus lineup."
That would would put the HS 250h somewhere in the territory of 33 mpg, as the most-efficient Lexus today is the 2008 RX 400hhybrid crossover, rated at 27 mpg in the city and 24 on the highway for a combined average of 25 miles per gallon.
The HS 250h, a five-seat sedan that uses the same platform as the 2010 Prius from stablemate Toyota, is Lexus' first stand-alone hybrid model.
It uses a 2.4-liter, Atkinson-cycle, four-cylinder gas engine and Lexus' version of the Toyota hybrid electric motor and battery pack, for combined output of 187 horsepower. It's basically the same powerplant used in the Toyota Camry Hybrid, which, not coincidentally, is EPA-rated at 33 mph in the city and 34 mpg on the highway..
Among its claims to uniqueness, the 2010 HS 250h is the first Lexus to use bio-plastic in its interior.
Lexus' parent, Toyota Motor Corp., has been developing plastics based on renewable plant material rather than petroleum for years now and intends to become on of the world's leading suppliers.
Lexus says that about 30 percent of the HS 250h interior and luggage area is covered with the material, which it calls Ecological Plastic.
That's enough, the company said, to reduce lifetime carbon dioxide emissions from the vehicle by 20 percent.
Smog-causing emissions from the fuel system and engine are low enough to give the new hybrid a SULEV (super ultra-low emissions vehicle) rating.
Lexus expects the HS 250h to hit showrooms in the late summer, slotted between the IS sport sedan and ES sedan models (which ought to put the starting price somewhere around $32,500).
Toyota's concept electric vehicle is a light-duty runabout based on Japanese-market iQ commuter car.
By John O'Dell, Senior Editor
The battery-electric city car concept Toyota Motor Corp. will unveil Sunday afternoon in Detroit at the North American International Auto Show is confirmation, the automaker said today, of Toyota's intent to begin selling an urban EV by 2010.
In a pre-show statement, Toyota's chief US spokesman also said the automaker, undaunted by the present collapse of auto sales around the globe, intends in the next few years to :
intensify the launch of conventional hybrid models;
push development of plug-in hybrids that can run solely on electric power for extended periods, and ;
use concepts like the city EV to expand its alternative vehicles efforts beyond the hybrid technology it has helped perfect.
Toyota's hybrid push begins Sunday with the 2010 Prius and 2010 Lexus HS250h hybrids being unveiled during the auto show's opening media day.
iQ With Batteries
The EV concept, which hasn't been seen until now, is expected to generate as much buzz as the new hybrids, however.
Photos released today (top, right and below)
show the Toyota electric car, the FT-EV Concept, as a tiny two-seater based on the popular Toyota iQ urban commuter car launched last year in Japan.
Toyota says the FT-EV concept is an attempt to examine a car that would fit the needs and lifestyle of an urban dweller who drives no more than 50 miles a day and uses public transit for longer trips.
"Last summer's $4-a-gallon gasoline was no anomaly, it was a brief glimpse of our future" Toyota spokesman Irv Miller said in a statement released with the photos.
"We must address the inevitability of peak oil [the point at which global production begins to decline] by developing vehicles powered by alternatives to liquid-oil fuel, as well as new concepts, like the iQ, that are lighter in weight and smaller in size," said Miller, group vice president for environmental and public affairs at Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A.
It may be a case of piling on, but Ford Motor Co. gleefully issued a press release today touting yet another fuel economy win over Japanese rivals - this time it's the conventionally powered Ford Fusion S beating the 4-cylinder Toyota Camry and Honda accord models.
The base model in the 2010 Fusion lineup has been rated by the federal Environmental Protection Agency at 23 miles per gallon in city driving and 34 mpg on the highway, Ford said.
The company has proudly been touting the EPA fuel efficiency rating for the 2010 Fusion hybrid - 41 mpg in the city and 36 on the highway - as best-in-class in the mid-size car segment, easily overshadowing Toyota's Camry hybrid and Nissan's Altima hybrid.
Toyota took umbrage at that claim, however, maintaining, as we reported earlier today, that despite being much smaller that the Fusion and the Camry, the Prius qualifies as a mid-size under federal rules and thus beats the Fusion hybrid with its 48 mpg city-45 mpg highway rating.
In today's announcement, Ford tried to fix that by proclaiming the Fusion, which goes on sale in the spring, as "American's most fuel-efficient mid-size sedan for both hybrid and conventional gasoline models."
The key word there is "sedan." Toyota's Prius is a hatchback and thus no longer part of the comparison set.
The Fusion S uses Ford's new 2.5-liter, 4-cylinder engine linked to the front wheels through a six-speed automatic transmission.
Its 23/34 mpg rating tops the 2.4-liter, 4-cylinder Camry's by 2 miles a gallon in the city cycle and 3 mpg on the highway. It bests the 2.4-liter, 4-cylinder Accord by just 1 mile per gallon in the city, but by 3 mpg in highway driving, according to the EPA.
We don't really care who is mileage champ, it's just good to see the automakers battling it out over fuel economy claims as well as doing the standard horsepower and 0-60 acceleration match-ups.
We hate to help them play the publicity game, but some things are too good to pass up.
Toyota apparently is miffed at Ford for claiming that it's new Fusion hybrid (left) will be the most fuel-efficient midsized car on the road when it goes on sale this spring.
Ford has gotten a lot of ink with the fuel economy claim, which it has aimed at the car it sees as the Fusion hybrid's major competitor -Toyota's mid-size Camry hybrid.
But Toyota, according to a piece in USA Today, says that Ford's claim is not correct because the more-efficient Prius (below, right), although 16-inches shorter, 4 inches narrower and 800 pounds lighter than the Fusion and quite a bit smaller than the Camry as well, turns out to be a midsized car as well!
Midsized, at least, per federal government measuring rules, which take into account passenger and cargo space, but not little things like the vehicle's overall size.
Under the government's rules, a midsized car has between 110 and 120 cubic feet of combined space.
The Fusion comes in at 111.6 cubic feet, easily meeting the mark, although at the small end of the mid-size range.
And the Prius (thanks to its tall ceiling) squeaks over the line at 110.6 cubic feet.
The fusion is EPA-rated at 41 miles per gallon in city driving, 36 mpg on the highway. The Camry is rated at 33 in the city, 34 on the highway.
The Prius, of course, beats everything else in the hybrid segment with an EPA rating of 48 mpg around town and 45 mpg on the highway.
And stories like this one, with the publicity they'll help generate for all three vehicles at a time when new-car sales are in the dumps, are just what Toyota was after, no doubt, when it decided to squawk about Ford's claim.
Ford, according to the USA Today article, says it thinks Toyota's complaint is groundless and that it has been clear all along that its mileage superiority claim for the Fusion is aimed directly at the Camry hybrid (right)
.
If Toyota presses its case and wins, Ford would be compelled under truth-in-advertising rules not to refer to the Fusion hybrid in its advertising as the most fuel-efficient midsized car in the market.
It could say, though, that the Fusion hybrid is the most-efficient mid-size sedan, because the Prius is a hatchback.
And, of course, it could say that mileage-wise, its midsized hybrid beats the snot out of the Camry.
(Note: Article updated after initial posting to include Lexus hybrid)
The upcoming North American International Auto Show in snowy Detroit - media preview days begin Sunday and the show opens to the public on Jan. 17 - is likely to be a pretty glum affair, what with the auto industry imploding and the prospect of many people really being interested in buying a new car right now ranking right up there with being interested in having wisdom teeth pulled sans anesthesia.
But carmakers are trying, and what most are trying hardest with is fuel efficiency and alternatives to the thirsty, greenhouse-gas spewing cars and trucks of the past.
Oh, there will be speedsters and factory-built hot rods on display at the show - Ford Motor Co., for example, will unveil the 540-horsepower 2010 Shelby GT500 Mustang and Audi will be showing a 525-horsepower, V10-version of its exotic R8 sports car.
But most attention will be focused on advanced technology cars such as the 2010 Prius hybrid (right)
and the battery-electric city car concept that Toyota will show, Honda's Prius-fighting 2009 Insight hybrid and concepts such as the all-electric, plug-in hybrid and fuel -cell electric trio, collectively called Concept Zero, that Mercedes-Benz will unveil.
Beyond the cars, the show's media preview will spotlight industry executives who will be delivering news about their companies' green futures.
Most notably, Toyota is expected to outline its hybrid and electric-vehicle strategies for the next few years and Ford is expected to discuss its plans for a stable of future EVs, starting with a commercial truck it plans to launch in 2010.
Green Car Advsior, along with Edmunds Auto Observer, Edmunds Inside Line and Edmunds.com, will be covering the show 's media days and bringing you timely reports, but we thought we'd also offer a preview today of the major green vehicles that will be displayed and discussed.
Green Preview
So, by manufacturer, here they are:
Audi
Volkswagen's upscale stablemate is expected to announce plans for its upcoming U.S. diesel lineup. So far, the company has said it will launch a 3-liter diesel version of its Q7 SUV (right)
later this year and has broached the possibility of a diesel A4. We'll know more after Audi's Sunday afternoon press conference.
BMW The pride of Bavaria will discuss the X5 and 3-Series diesels it plans to bring to the U.S., perhaps supplying us with some performance and fuel economy numbers as well as a marketing time-line.
Chevrolet
Nothing big here, unless the General decides to announce the upcoming Volt plug-in hybrid's pricing and/or the battery suppliers.
The Chevy vehicle that gets officially introduced at the show is the redesigned 2010 Equinox crossover (right), which will come with a new six-speed automatic and a fuel-efficient, direct-injection four-banger expected to deliver 182 horsepower (almost as much as the '08 model's base V6) and highway fuel economy of 30 miles per gallon.
Chrysler The company has three brands that it has tied together for car show purposes with a trio of concept electric vehicles.
Those to be displayed in Detroit are further refined versions of the Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep EVs originally unveiled last September and first shown publicly at the Los Angeles International Auto Show in November.
By brand, they are the Chrysler EV, an extended-range electric version of the town and Country minivan; the Jeep EV, a gas-electric Wrangler; and the Dodge EV, a Lotus-based, bumblebee-striped battery-electric sports car that would look great in the garage next to an electric Tesla Roadster.
Chrysler has said that it will bring one of the cars to market in 2010, but hasn't said which or in what kind of numbers. Maybe that's what we'll hear at the show.
Fisker
The nascent plug-in-hybrid company headed by, and named for, noted auto designer Henrik Fisker (BMW, Aston Martin, Fisker Coachbuild), will show the production version of it first proposed vehicle, the Fisker Karma sports sedan (right)
that it unveiled to great interest at last year's Detroit show. Fisker also will unveil a new version - a convertible, we suspect - caled the Karma S.
Like the Chevy Volt, the Karma uses an on-board internal combustion engine to generate power to keep its electric motors turning the wheels.
Ford We expect a discussion of the company's electric vehicle strategy, perhaps with a teaser glimpse or two of potential future offerings and a look at the commercial truck the company has said it will launch in 2010.
Honda
The news here will be the unveiling of the production version 2009 Insight hybrid (right)
, a sub $20,000, five-seater Honda hopes will finally, finally, pump its hybrid sales up into Prius territory.
We're expected to hear a lot of technical detail and, perhaps, even a firmer price for the car, which looks in pictures a bit like the Prius it's designed to battle.
Lexus Toyota's luxury unit will reveal its first stand-alone hybrid model, a small car that is based off the upcoming 2010 Prius.
Although it is not unusual - its pretty common, even - for photos of new models to leak out before their official unveiling, the best we've been able to come up with for the new Lexus hybrid is this rendering (left) published in a Japanese auto magazine a few months ago.
Mercedes-Benz The covers will come off a trio of EV concepts from Daimler's luxe brand. All use the same swoopy, sport wagon-ish body (below right) - a design that also shows where Mercedes is heading with the compact B-Class replacement due in 2010 and, perhaps, headed for the U.S.
The so-called Concept Zero family consists of the E-Cell, a battery-electric with a range of about 60 miles; the E-Cell Plus, a plug-in hybrid that uses a 3-cylinder gas engine-generator to extend the range of its batteries when the initial charge is depleted (think Chevy Volt), and the F-Cell, which uses a hydrogen fuel-cell to produce electricity on-board by combining hydrogen and oxygen in the fuel-cell stack. Range is about 125 miles. Mercedes says the E-Cell Plus can go almost 400 miles on an overnight battery charge and a tank of gas.
Toyota The company whose name has become synonymous with 'hybrid" is introducing the redesigned 2010 Prius at the show, but photos of the car leaked out weeks ago and you've got to believe that anyone who's interested has already seen it. What will be news, of course, are the specifications and performance numbers.
The other biggie on the product front from Toyota will be the unveiling of a concept electric vehicle, probably called the FT-EV if the company's previous auto show naming practices prevail (that would stand for "future technology-electric vehicle").
The car, believed to be built on a current Toyota subcompact chassis, is the company's effort to give us a look at what a Toyota-built battery-electric EV for short-range urban driving might look like if the company does, as it has said it would, put an EV into its retail fleet in 2012.
Not The End
And, of course - Detroit being Detroit - there likely will be a surprise or two. So consider this list a starter, not a definitive catalog.
China's BYD, for instance, will be there with the plug-in-hybrid (left)
it launched in its home market a few weeks ago, beating the big boys like GM and Toyota to the punch by a matter of, oh, a year or two. Who knows what the company - whose name is an acronym for Build Your Dreams and whose future is being backed by investment whiz Warren Buffett - will do next? We might find out as the Detroit show rolls along.
We'll be back when media days begin on Sunday to keep you up-to-date.
Real-world testing by Consumer Reportsshowed the best-selling plug-in conversion kit for the Toyota Prius did not come close to meeting its manufacturer's fuel-economy claim of a possible 100+ miles per gallon, the magazine says in its February issue.
Moreover, "our Prius conversion to plug-in power cost more than you could ever expect to recoup in gas savings," the magazine said of A123 Systems' Hymotion L5 conversion kit, which retails for $10,000 to $11,000, including installation.
As we reported two months ago, it didn't matter that Wall Street was spiking like an EKG and the global economy teeters on the brink of a magnitude-9 collapse, Prius owners couldn't hardly wait to plunk down the big bucks for the mileage-extending product.
And according to the half-dozen companies nationwide that sell and install the conversion kits for A123 Systems, sales remain brisk. Indeed, demand for the product -- a lithium-ion battery pack that collaborates with the Prius's factory-installed nickel-metal hydride battery pack -- continues to exceed supply.
But the Consumer Reports article, available only to subscribers and published online this week in advance of it February print edition, will likely give pause to many Prius owners who've placed hefty deposits on the kits but have yet to receive them.
The idea of plugging a hybrid car into the power grid so the juice in its batteries can provide electricity for home appliances or other non-automotive uses has been discussed for years.
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Utility company brochure from 2007 vehicle-to-grid test shows how hybrid car battery could be used for residential power (click to enlarge).
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There have even been a few tests of what is called the smart grid or vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology that lets hybrid and battery-electric cars provide power instead of consuming it -- one in San Francisco a few years ago comes to mind, as does the SmartGrid City project in Boulder, Co.
And now comes word from Harvard, Massachusetts, via the Harvard Press and Toyota's own Open Road blog, of several instances of Prius-to-grid emergency hookups in which Priuses were used to keep home appliances running when electricity in parts of the university city was knocked out by a snow storm last month.
The newspaper reported that one resident, John Sweeney, linked his Prius' battery pack to an inverter -- which converts the batteries' direct current to the 120-volt alternating current that most appliances need.
Sweeney told the paper that he then plugged his refrigerator, freezer, television, the blower fan for his wood furnace, and a few household lights into the inverter and got enough juice to keep them running until the electric company restored regular power.
That took three days, during which the Prius-turned-emergency-generator kept everything working just fine on five gallons of gas, Sweeney told the paper.
To keep the car's batteries charged and providing electricity for the appliances, he said, the inverter started the car and ran its gas engine for a few minutes every half hour.
The newspaper report quotes another Toyota Prius owner who says he did pretty much the same thing during the blackout.
Toyota's take on the situation is typical for a big corporation that has to worry about warranties and such: "We're not sure whether we should be bemused or horrified. This isn't, after all, what the Prius was designed to do. And it certainly isn't something we ever would recommend," wrote Open Road editor Jon F. Thompson.
Still, he added, people at Toyota are "more than a little amused, and more than a little impressed, at the creativity and inventiveness people display when confronted with emergency situations."
We hope Mr. Sweeney doesn't end up with a voided warranty if he has to have any work done on his Prius' electrical system in coming months.
And we salute the ingenuity of everyone who have figured out how to make a hybrid car serve them even when parked.
Maybe someday we can all have access to options like this.
Toyota plans to halt production at all of its plants in Japan for a total of 11 days in February and March in response to flagging auto sales, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported today
.
Production of the company's once-scalding Prius hybrid is included in the slowdown. A plan to produce Priuses outside Japan starting next year -- specifically, at a new plant in Mississippi -- was put on indefinite hold three weeks ago.
The automaker in November cut its production plan by 950,000 vehicles for the business year ending in March, but the company now eyes a deeper reduction given a further deterioration in car sales, NHK said.
Toyota, which had already announced a three-day suspension at all of its factories in Japan this month, plans the additional production halt for the next two months to reduce inventories, the broadcaster said.
Calls to Toyota to confirm or correct this report were not immediately returned.
As we reported earlier today, many U.S. Toyota dealers were demanding -- and getting -- as much as $5,000 over sticker for the low-emissions, fuel-efficient Priuses during a peak in their popularity this past summer.
But in December, average transaction prices were close to dealer invoice, or as much as $2,000 below sticker and a $7,000 price decline from the market peak.
Even with that kind of price cut, December's Prius sales were down almost 50 percent from July, when both gas prices and demand for hybrids in the U.S. were soaring.
According to Toyota sales reports, the automaker sold about 20,000 fewer Priuses in 2008 than in 2007.
December's gas-electric car and SUV sales plunged almost 43 percent from the final month of 2007 as the year wound up on a discouraging note for the only alternative technology vehicles to so far make a dent in the auto market.
It was a near repeat of a stupendously disastrous November, when sales of fuel-efficient hybrid vehicles fell 50 percent from a year earlier.
For all of 2008, hybrid sales tumbled 10.3 percent with 310,724 models sold. While nothing to boast about, the hybrid segment bested the overall market's performance of an 18.2 percent drop for the year, according to Edmunds.com statistics.
The only bright spots were that hybrid sales in December actually rose a bit from November, and that 2008 hybrid sales were the second-best on record in the decade since 1999, when Honda introduced the first model, the now-discontinued two-seat Insight. The year's sales trailed only 2007, when 346,431 hybrids were sold.
Incentives Made the Difference
The 6.8 percent rise in sales volume from November to December was due to hefty incentives and discounting by most automakers and to an especially effective financing program that General Motors' financing arm provided for almost all of the company's lineup.
Industrywide, the same pricing and financing incentives led to a one-month sales gain of 20 percent.
In the hybrid segment, December's total of 17,652 sales was the second lowest of the year, trailing only November's dismal 16,536.
After that, you'd have to go back to January 2007, when only 17,591 gas-electric cars and sport-utes were sold, to find a worse month for hybrids.
It would appear that Daimler not only views electrification of the automobile as the key to sustainable mobility, but it also views the shift from gasoline- and diesel-powered cars and trucks to electric vehicles as an opportunity for the Stuttgart automaker to compete head on with major automotive parts suppliers.
In an interview today with the German newspaper Handelsblatt, Chief Executive Thomas Weber (pictured) said Daimler -- parent company of Mercedes-Benz and Smart -- intends to compete directly with German automotive parts supplier Robert Bosch and other companies in selling high-performance lithium-ion batteries to third parties.
Weber's comments follow the joint announcement last month by Daimler and German chemical, energy and real estate company Evonik Industries that the two companies had partnered to develop lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and hybrids, with the first publicized target for the new batteries being the Mercedes-Benz S400 BlueHybrid due out this year.
Daimler and Evonik made that announcement less than a week after Mercedes-Benz disclosed plans to unveil a trio of BlueZero electric-drive concept vehicles at the 2009 Detroit Auto Show, which starts next Monday, and Daimler's announcement to expand its test program of electric-drive Smart Fortwos from London and Berlin to the Italian cities of Rome, Milan and Pisa.
According to industry forecasts, the market size for high-performance lithium-ion batteries will exceed $13 billion within the next decade. Clearly, Daimler and Evonik Industries want a chunk of that market, as do Toyota, Volkswagen and Renault-Nissan, all of which have recently partnered with battery-makers.
Although it applied early for the honor, Plug In America, the support group for plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles, didn't make the cut when organizers of the Presidential Inaugural Parade were picking participants.
So the organization, whose motto ought to be "never say die" (a good one for backers of battery-electric cars, dontcha think?) , is staging its own, pre-inaugural parade to pull in some publicity for EVs and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs).
The event, dubbed "Inaugural Parade West: Plug In America," will be staged on Jan. 17 - three days before the real parade honoring the swearing-in of the 44th president - in Santa Monica, reports Zan Dubin Scott, who helped start the advocacy group.
Scott said that the parade so far has booked 32 40 electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids for the event, which is scheduled to begin about 9:30 a.m. (at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, in case you are interested in attending, and no, it won't be televised although a clip or two may well show up here and there and the evening news).
Parade "participants" will include Tesla Roadsters, Toyota RAV4 EVs, Vectrix electric motorbikes, Chevy S10 EVs and a variety of Prius plug-in conversions.
A New Year's Day report from the Associated Press that Toyota is secretly developing a solar-powered electric car has Toyota spokesman John Hanson, head of the company's U.S. environmental and safety communications team, scratching his head in wonder.
"My intelligence on this
 is about as deep
 as it gets" at Toyota's U.S. sales, marketing and development headquarters, "and I've heard nothing remotely close to a 
solar-powered" battery-electric vehicle, Hanson told Green Car Advisor in an e-mail this morning.
The AP report cites a Nikkei business daily story (which we can't locate) as reporting, without identifying any Toyota sources, that the carmaker is working on a car that would get part of its power from on-board solar panels and the rest by recharging its batteries from solar panels mounted on residential rooftops.
Beyond that, the report said, the work is aime at developing a Toyota solar car that would get all of its power from on-board solar panels.
It is possible that Hanson is in the dark if this is some ultra top-secret project being developed in a dark lab somewhere deep in the bowels of a Toyota R&D facility in Japan, but we're still in the doubter column.
We can believe that Toyota would like to use residential solar power to help charge plug-in hybrids. After all, the company has said as much, and out loud, not in secret.
But a completely self-contaned solar car would require an awful lot of surface area covered with solar panels, and despit its efforts with full-sized SUVs, we don't see Toyota scrambling to come out with a new model the size of a freight car.
Businesses in Japan have an even greater habit than businesses in the U.S. of using the media to float trial balloons, and this looks to be the first big one out of Tokyo for 2009.
The Associated Press says that the Nikkei business newspaper is reporting that Toyota - looking for some environmental bling to help bolster its suddenly money-losing business - is secretly developing a solar-powered electric car.
The AP report, published New Year's Day in the Detroit Free Press and a few hundred other news outlets, says it will be years before the vehicle would be available on the market.
No surprise there. Our understanding of solar energy conversion isn't great, but we suspect that it will require major improvements in solar cell technology to make them so powerful that a conventionally-sized car could carry enough of them to generate the juice that would be needed to make it go.
Fact or Fiction?
While the AP story got lots of traction, a blogger for The Truth About Cars has posted a piece debunking the whole thing, saying that a search of recent Nikkei articles didn't turn up anything that had Toyota and solar powering the same story.
The closest, according to the posting, was an article about solar-powered homes that could use electric cars as storage batteries (the cars would be able to pump juice back into the household system when the sun was down). The article, however, doesn't mention Toyota.
Our own search of the Nikkei index had the same result: we could find nothing about a Toyota solar car (and Toyota was closed for the holiday, so we couldn't get a comment there).
If, however, we're all missing something and the wire service writer got it right, we suggest that perhaps floating the idea of a solar Toyota now was seen as something that would brighten spirits among the automaker's investors in Japan - and elsewhere - who are looking at the company's first operational loss in 71 years with a pretty dismal 2009 expected to follow.
Solar Housing First
According to the Associated Press's report, Toyota supposedly is initially looking at a car that would get some of its electrical power from on-board solar cells but still would rely on rechargeable batteries for most of its juice. The wrinkle is that the power to recharge the batteries also would come from solar cells mounted on residential rooftops.
That plays into something we already know about Toyota: it is considering solar panels in the roof of the upcoming 2010 Prius to provide power for the air conditioner and perhaps a few other accessories, and it has a home-building business in Japan and is toying with the idea of solar power that would tie together a Toyota house and a Toyota electric car.
Toyota has boasted, justifiably, that very few of its Prius hybrid batteries have needed replacement since the car was introduced at the end of 2000.
But as the number of older Priuses (right) with steadily mounting odometer tallies grows, the automaker apparently is getting ready for the numbers to start changing.
After mentioning that a number of Prius taxis have racked up more than 300,000 miles on their original battery packs, Thompson notes that the batteries are warranted for 150,000 miles or 10 years in states using California emissions standards and for 100,000miles or eight years in the rest of the U.S.
"Fears of premature battery failure probably are unwarranted," he wrote. And if/when yours does go belly up, Toyota has cut the price on replacement packs to $2,299 for Generation 1 models (model years 2001 through 2003) and $2,588 for model years 2004 through 2008.
Of course, labor to replace the batteries can boost that, as can the cost of related parts your dealer might try to sell you.
We're talking about EV battery manufacturing
and development
in the U.S., but they're doing it in Japan.
Nissan Motor and NEC Corp. reportedly have agreed to pump almost $1.1 billion, into Automotive Energy Supply Corp., their previously announced joint venture for manufacturing lithium-ion battery packs (right) for electric and hybrid cars.
If the Nikkei business daily report is accurate, this will be the fourth major battery venture in Japan: Toyota has teamed with Matsushita Electric, Honda with Sanyo and Mitsubishi with GS Yuasa.
Nissan has an agreement with its French partner, Renault, to begin producing electric vehicles by 2010, and needs an assured battery supplier. The Japanese model calls for important components for a Japanese-built vehicle to be developed and produced at home when possible.
The deal, according to the Nikkei report as reviewed by analysts at Global Insight, calls for the Nissan-NEC partnership to ultimately produce sufficient batteries to supply 200,000 hybrids and EVs a year, with initial production of 13,000 battery packs a year to begin in 2009.
The all-new 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid will carry an EPA fuel economy label of 41 miles per gallon in the city and 36 mpg on the highway when it goes on sale this spring.
With those numbers, the Fusion Hybrid will be America's most fuel efficient mid-size car, topping its chief competitor -- the Toyota Camry Hybrid -- by 8 mpg in the city and 2 mpg on the highway.
But the Fusion Hybrid might be even more fuel efficient than the Environmental Protection Agency numbers indicate. In an article in last Friday's Los Angeles Times, Pulitzer Prize-winning auto writer Dan Neil wrote that on a test drive of a Fusion Hybrid in West L.A. traffic, he managed, "without much trouble, to get 52 mpg in mixed city-highway driving."
The Fusion Hybrid's final fuel-economy certification was completed this week at Ford's testing laboratories in Allen Park, Michigan. The low-emissions car, which beats even the much smaller Honda Civic hybrid by 1 MPG in city driving, can travel more than 700 miles on a single tank of gas, Ford says.
To deliver the class-leading fuel economy, Ford's engineers spent the past three years developing the vehicle's next-generation hybrid propulsion system. It allows the Fusion and Mercury Milan Hybrid to travel up to 47 miles per hour in pure electric mode -- faster than the Toyota Camry and all other hybrids currently on the road.
We've watched hybrid sales, especially the league-leading Toyota Prius, plummet in recent months along with gasoline prices and consumers' overall purchasing power.
Now the hybrid car that people stood in line for and willingly paid premiums to snag at the height of the gas price run-up this summer is being discounted in a growing number of markets as Toyota dealers seek to get rid of their growing stock of '09 Priuses as the automaker gets ready to launch to redesigned and slightly larger 2010 model.
Latest to join the discounting crowd are the Los Angeles area Toyota dealers. They may not be advertising the discounts, but Toyota is giving them an extra $750 "marketing support" allowance for each 2009 Prius (right)
they move off the lot.
Go Shopping Fully Armed
Obviously, most sales people would like to keep as much of that as possible for themselves and many may not be all that willing to volunteer the info.
But the Edmunds.com incentives and rebates center provides the info - at no charge - with the click of a mouse.
Just follow this link, which is pre-populated with a West Los Angeles zip code that you can change to see what, if anything, Toyota dealers in your region have available to bargain with - and how much more you can ask for.
Unlike direct consumer rebates, marketing money is provided by the carmaker to the dealer to encourage sales of a particular model or models, and the dealer can use to lower the price to the customer, to reward successful sales people or for anything else that helps move the targeted vehicles.
It's Not Just Toyota
The marketing money often is used when a carmaker doesn't want to have to admit out loud that it needs to incentivize a particular model.
Honda has long used such funds to let it continue to boast that it almost never offers incentives.
And, BTW, if you are looking for a hybrid and the Prius doesn't move you, even at a possible $750 off MSRP, check out your area Honda dealer on our incentives finder.
With Honda about to unleash the sub-$20,000 Insight hybrid next year, they're offering steeply discounted interest rates on the '08 Civic hybrid (right).
Toyota's president may not make it to Detroit next month for the North American International Auto Show (and who could blame him for passing on downtown Detroit during an icy cold January??) but his company will be there, and with an unexpected surprise.
In a terse teaser today, Toyota Motor Sales said it will display a concept battery-electric car at the show: A Toyota EV!
The company's statement, accompanied by the small detail photo you see here, was all of two sentences long: Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. will display a battery electric vehicle concept at the 2009 North American International Auto Show. This display marks the world debut of this concept vehicle.
We don't know any more about the concept, but we do know that despite sinking global sales, a looming operating loss and its seemingly single-minded devotion to gas-electric hybrid technology, Toyota continues pursuing a number of "green" avenues as it ponders the best ways to remain atop the heap as the auto industry moves into a challenging 21st Century.
In addition to the new EV concept, Toyota also will unveil at the Detroit Auto Show (press preview days are Jan. 11-14) the 2010 Prius and a new Lexus hybrid.
We also know that the company plans to use the show to lay out its vision for a future that deemphasizes use of petroleum-based fuels.
The transaction, announced today, positions the latter to sell its plug-in Toyota Prius conversion kits worldwide and produce kits for hybrids made by other manufacturers.
Under the new strategic partnership, PICC will first expand its U.S. network of certified installers -- the auto dealerships or mechanics using PICC's nickel metal hydride battery kits to convert Toyota Priuses into plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.
San Diego-based PICC will then begin to sell the kits wherever GP Batteries sells its products.
"In collaboration with the battery conglomerate's engineers, PICC also plans to make conversion kits for other hybrids made by Toyota and those sold by Ford and GM," Gold Peak and PICC said in a joint statement. "These will also supply an international market."
It will be interesting to see if the partnership is able to carry out this ambitious plan or whether it proves to be so much pie in the sky.
Toyota Motor Corp. has unveiled plans to use plant-derived, carbon-neutral plastics in many of its vehicle models, including the redesigned 2010 Prius hybrid that will make its world debut at the Detroit auto show next month.
---------- The 2010 Prius will contain bioplastics. ----------
The so-called "ecological plastics" are polymer materials derived from biomass oils rather than petroleum. They emit less global-warming carbon dioxide during a product's lifecycle (from manufacture to disposal) than petroleum-based plastic.
Toyota, which first used bioplastics in Japanese-market Raum mini MPV in 2003, says its ecological plastic used in the all-new Prius and future vehicles meets the heat-resistance and shock-resistance demands of vehicle interiors and is every bit the equal of conventional plastics quality-wise.
Japan's largest automaker hopes to use plant-based plastic for up to 60 percent of the plastic components within vehicles (such sun visors, pillar covers and scuff plates) by the end of next year.
Fourteen U.S. technology companies are joining forces and seeking $1 billion in federal aid to build a plant to make advanced batteries for electric cars, in a bid to catch up to Asian rivals that are far ahead of the U.S., The Wall Street Journal reported today
(subscription required).
---------- GM engineers work on the lithium-ion battery pack for the Chevrolet Volt. ----------
The effort, the latest pitch from corporate America to inject federal dollars into a project, is similar to an alliance that two decades ago helped the U.S. computer-chip industry restore its competitiveness. Participants include 3M Corp. and Johnson Controls Inc.
Many experts believe battery technology and manufacturing capacity could become as strategically important as oil is today. Automakers, including General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., say they plan to roll out plug-in electric cars by 2010.
But the United States has limited capacity to make the lithium-ion batteries those cars will need. Asian producers such as Panasonic Corp. dominate the car-battery field.
Small cars fare better in crashes than they used to, but they still lag behind larger vehicles in protecting passengers. Their disadvantages are especially clear in side-impact crashes.
---------- Chrysler's PT Cruiser did poorly in the side-impact test. ----------
Of the nine small cars recently tested by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, all received the group's top rating of "good" in frontal crashes, but only two got good ratings when broadsided.
The Insurance Institute tested nine small cars for the 2009 model year in front, side and rear collisions. The group included the BMW Mini Cooper, Chevrolet HHR, Chrysler PT Cruiser, Ford Focus, Hyundai Elantra, Saturn Astra, Suzuki SX4, as well as the Toyota Matrix and Pontiac Vibe, which are essentially the same vehicle sold under two brand names.
Only the SX4 and Matrix, and its twin the Vibe, received good ratings for protection in side crashes. The Ford and Chevrolet were judged acceptable in side-impact protection, while the Hyundai and Saturn were marginal and the Chrysler was poor.
Only the Ford Focus was top-rated in rear-impact crashes that test how well the vehicles' seats and head restraints protect passengers. The Chrysler PT Cruiser was the worst performer, with poor ratings for side and rear protection.
If you've been thinking of circumnavigating the globe in a donated diesel Toyota Land Cruiser, fueling it with biodiesel you make from waste vegetable oil you collect from bewildered but friendly people along the way, just so you can tell your friends you were the first person to do it -- and to make a green statement -- forget about it. It's been done.
Shusei Yamada (pictured), a Japanese photojournalist and rally driver, ended his round-the-world romp the first of this month in Vancouver, 360 days after setting out from Tokyo. He appeared no worse for wear.
The same could not be said for the Land Cruiser, which racked up 29,734 miles from start to finish. Yamada, who gave interviews along the way, often described the sport ute as the only biodiesel vehicle that can refine its own fuel from waste oil. Judging by the photo, the biodiesel fuel processing plant that filled the cargo bay was no Mickey Mouse production.
For further information -- like, how many people donated waste vegetable oil to Yamada (779) and how much waste vegetable oil did they donate (6,504 liters) -- check out the Biodiesel Adventure Website.
German automotive giant Daimler of Stuttgart and chemical, energy and real estate company Evonik Industries of Essen have partnered to develop advanced lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles and hybrids, with the first publicized target for the new batteries being the Mercedes-Benz S400 BlueHybrid due out next year.
The German companies made the announcement Monday -- less than a week after Mercedes-Benz, a division of Daimler, disclosed plans to unveil a trio of BlueZero electric-drive concept vehicles at next month's 2009 Detroit Auto Show. Presumably the new batteries will make their way into whatever production models arise from the concepts.
Daimler officials have often stated that electrification of the automobile is the key to sustainable mobility. To that end, Daimler engineers have registered more than 600 patents associated with battery-powered vehicles over the past three decades, of which 230 were in the field of lithium-ion technology.
For its part, Evonik Industries has invested $110 million in battery technology in recent years. The outcome, according to Evonik Industries and Daimler: "Production-ready high-technology battery cells that are superior to competitor products in several key areas."
The Toyota-Isuzu diesel project, announced in June, 2007, was a direct response to Honda Motor Co.'s earlier announcement that it was developing a diesel for its passenger cars and would introduce it in the U.S. and Japan in 2009.
Honda earlier this year put its U.S. diesel plans on hold because the price gap here between diesel fuel and gasoline has erased the more expensive diesel engine's fuel efficiency cost advantage.
Toyota and Isuzu had said they would start introducing diesel engines in Toyota cars in Europe in 2012.
Toyota, which has focused on gas-electric hybrid technology in the U.S. and Japan, has said it could bring a diesel passenger car to the U.S. if demand were there, but has never announced a project.
Now, with sales of all types of cars and trucks plummeting, Toyota is reviewing every project as it seeks ways to cut costs. It also is suspending work on a Mississippi plant that was to be the home for U.S. produced Prius hybrids.
Toyota Motor Corp., reacting to a deep decline in U.S. sales, announced today that it will complete construction of its Blue Springs, Mississippi, factory but it has scuttled plans to produce Prius hybrids there in 2010.
Mike Goss, a spokesman for Toyota's U.S. arm, said that the plant's construction is about 90 percent complete and that Toyota will finish the building. However, installation of the factory's equipment and machinery -- "the most time-consuming" element of construction, he said -- is delayed indefinitely.
The roughly 100 people who were hired to oversee construction at the plant will not lose their jobs and will be assigned other duties, Goss said.
Although Toyota's U.S. sales have held up better than those of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, the entire industry has seen a steep plunge, which Goss said forced Toyota to delay the plant's opening.
Carmakers industrywide have been having trouble making sales because consumers are skittish about making big purchases during the recession, and it has been more difficult and more expensive for some buyers to obtain financing in the tightened credit markets.
Toyota reported its auto sales in the U.S. fell 34 percent in November, while sales across the industry sank 37 percent. The company's sales are down 13 percent for the first 11 months of the year compared with the same period in 2007.
Chinese automaker BYD Co. today unveiled the world's first mass-produced plug-in gas-electric hybrid, with domestic sales to begin this month -- at least a full year before rivals such as Toyota and General Motors bring electric-powered vehicles to market.
The F3DM, which was unveiled to reporters at BYD's headquarters in Shenzhen, can travel 62 miles using only batteries, BYD said in a statement. Though essentially an electric car, the F3DM also has a small gasoline engine that is used to generate electricity if the battery runs dry.
The company, which is China's largest battery maker, said the car will be priced at less than 150,000 yuan, or about $22,000. That's toward the low end of the price range for a typical midsize sedan in China.
The F3DM's batteries can be fully recharged from a regular household outlet in as little as seven hours and 50 percent powered via a quick charge at a specialist station in 10 minutes, BYD said. The car also has a gasoline engine as a backup power source.
BYD began marketing the F3DM to cab operators and other potential fleet customers earlier this month and plans to have the car in showrooms by the end of the year. The company, which expects to sell as many as 10,000 F3DMs in China next year, plans to bring the F3DM to the U.S. market as early as the second half of 2010.
In yet another example of how hard it is to come from behind, beleaguered General Motors lost a chance to sell a bunch of its Malibu Hybrids to the Indianapolis police department when the department instead opted to buy 85 Toyota Camry Hybrids because they get better gas mileage.
The cars are to be used by the city's police detectives and administrators but not as patrol and pursuit cars (imagine being chased down a long stretch of Indiana highway by a "speeding" Camry Hybrid!).
The city paid a local Toyota dealer $25,770 each for the cars, which were built at Toyota's Kentucky plant.
