Hybrid Car Sales In US More Than Double In 2005 - AFP

Helped by sky-high fuel prices and celebrity endorsement, US sales of hybrid cars more than doubled in 2005, but Japanese rather than home-grown auto makers are cashing in on the boom.
Hybrid engines powered by electricity and petrol have been around for years. But it took a kick from rocketing gasoline prices to encourage large numbers of Americans to see their fuel-efficient appeal.

Toyota began selling the Prius in North America in 2000. It is now the best-selling hybrid in the United States, helped in no small part by the sight of Hollywood stars such as Brad Pitt and Cameron Diaz behind the wheel of one. Up to the end of November, Toyota said it had sold 99,000 Prius cars this year compared to 47,700 over the same period of 2004.

According to research firm Global Insight, total US sales of hybrids are set to more than double to 200,000 this year and mushroom to 500,000 a year by (Missing In Original Article). Toyota has led the way with the Prius and the four-by-four Highlander, designed to appeal to Americans' taste for sport utility vehicles (SUVs). Its Japanese rival Honda has three hybrid models and lies second in sales.

US giants General Motors and Ford are now ramping up their own hybrid production but came late to the game. The Ford Escape Hybrid made its debut in mid-2004 as the first US-made example of the genre. GM and Ford remained wedded for too long to petrol SUVs and pick-up trucks, whose sales have slumped this year as Americans shun gas-guzzlers.

EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/2005/051220112205.r2s3dj2b.html

reference: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-autos18dec18,1,7672239.story?coll=la-headlines-business

2005 annual purchases of cars is aobut 17million. Purchases of cars in the US may reach 20 million in a few years. Even if these Hybrids double in sales that is still only 2% of annual sales.

Americans have just not been sold on the utility of a hybrid, especially in cold climates where battery life is shortened as a result of below zero temperatures and the poor handling characteristics now being talked about of these cars on icy or snow covered roads.

Low center of gravity definitely helps. :hi:

Although relatively few Americans have bought hybrids, it is also worth remembering that:

a) Americans have bought every hybrid available, as fast as Toyota and Honda can make them.
b) everyone who has bought one is happy with the product (to my knowledge, I'd be interested to see any negative reviews)
c) the waiting lists to buy one are still weeks or months long
d) Toyota and Honda are retooling factories to make more hybrids, as fast as possible.

Can GM or Ford say the same about any of their product?

It has to do with limited availability because the factories can't make batteries fast enough to meet demand. I live in Minnesota, and have spoken to several Prius owners that live here. They haven't had any issues with their Prius's not handling on icy roads any worse than a normal car of equivalent size. I would have purchased one this summer if it weren't for the 4-month waiting period on them.

As to battery life being diminished, the Toyota warranty guarantees their batteries for 100,000 miles or they replace them. I doubt they could make this claim without doing some research into battery longevity in various US climates.

Then you have to replace them. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

and they do handle like crap on ice.

Nobody that paid a $$$$$ premium for one is going to complain and look naive, now are they?

Just like they will say they expected to have to fork over $$$$$$ for batteries in a few years when performance goes down. Oh, they could always sell it but who wants a Hybrid whose batteries have only 1 year of (warranty) life left?

:rofl:

It's fun watching these threads and being a Prius owner. It's so much more of a laugh when you know firsthand just how ridiculous the FUD spread by folks like this guy is.

You'll excuse me, I have to go drive my Prius through... gasp... an icey driveway to buy a pack of cigs and stuff... oh my... I just WONDER is I'll make it. :rofl:

BTW, as far as replacing the batteries, personally I hope Toyota will be on board with these guys here by the time (years and years and years from now, on my 2002) I have to do that. I'd love to get some of these babies in the trunk...

http://www.a123systems.com/html/home.html

When I think of four years of driving through AAAAAAIIIIIIIIEEEEEEE!!!!!! ICE AND SNOW in my horrible, dangerous, Katerina Witt Model Prius, I marvel that I'm even here at all!!

:toast:

You and skids are transparent to me now. You're both embarrassed to admit you made a lousy purchase. Come, throw the weight of lies off your shoulders! The truth will set you free!

:toast:

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

Even though the poster in question has a very low post count, and very well might live in a cave, DU protocol is not to "call out" anyone. If you've seen activity that steps over the line on the part of a poster -- use the alert button instead.

Say you do drive 25,000 miles per year, for 4 years with a conventional car. Let's be optimistic and say you get 30 mpg the entire time, ie all highway miles.

100,000 miles/30 mpg = 3333 gallons of gas. At $3/gallon, that is $10,000 worth of fuel.

Now let's estimate you only get 50 mpg driving a Prius, which is actually rated at 60 mpg city/51 mpg highway. 100,000 miles/50 mpg = 2000 gallons of gas. At $3/gallon, that is $6000 worth of fuel. You save $4000 in fuel costs.

How much does it cost to replace the batteries on a Prius?

http://hybridcars.about.com/od/hybridcarfaq/f/batterycost.htm

"In November of 2005, when asked about the price of a new Prius battery, Toyota spokeswoman Mona Richard said, "The service parts price for a new battery is $3000, but we have not had to sell a battery yet."

Even if you assume $1000 for installation, you still break even on the gas you save. As hybrids become more common, the replacement price should come down as factories recoup start-up costs on battery production. And, I seriously doubt that gas prices in the future will be less than what they are today.

BTW, what premium are you referring to when buying a Prius? The MSRP for a Prius is $21,725: http://www.toyota.com/prius/.
The MSRP for a Camry is $18,445-$22,795: http://www.toyota.com/camry/index.html?s_van=GM_TN_CAMRY_INDEX.
The MSRP for a Ford Fusion is $17,145-$21,710: http://www.automotive.com/2006/12/ford/fusion/pricing/.
The Prius comes standard with many features you have to pay extra for on most vehicles, like automatic transmission, cruise control, and ABS.

From a purely economic point of view, the Prius matches or exceeds conventional cars of the same size even with a battery replacement factored into the costs. This doesn't take into consideration the environmental good you do by emitting less CO2 and pollution and using less fossil fuel.

As for spinning on ice, all cars do this if you don't ease down on the gas when accelerating from a stop. Don't want to spin on ice? Don't stomp on the gas when the light turns green. In the Prius this problem is amplified because the electric motor provides a lot of torque when initially accelerating from a stop, so you do have to be more cautious in that regard and more gentle with the gas pedal. Otherwise, they handle just like any other car while driving.

It is good as far as it goes but you forgot to factor in a few things. The purchase price of of hybrid cost a bit more then a regular car. Take Honda's Civic which is offer as both a hybrid and a traditional powered model. The average price of a hybrid Civic is around $22k while a similiarly equiped traditional Civic would go for 18k-19k. There is a 15%-20% price difference right up front.

http://www.edmunds.com/new/2006/honda/civic/sedan/compact/index.html

Also recall that there are opportunity costs associated with that extra $4k-$5k as well as extra interest that must be paid to borrow that extra money. Hybrids are nice but most people aren't going to make back their original investment much less save money with them. Instead they're sold as a fashion item to prove you car about the enviroment and are cutting edge, which is nice, but it isn't for financial reasons. Instead your average hybrid buyer makes more and can afford to spend the extra money to get a hybrid so they're not concerned with spending an extra 20% up front nor are they worried about making up the money in gas (which is good since it is unlikely to happen).

A lot of those hybrids come with only a few available option bundles. Toyota's estimate on their current cost of the hybrid portion of a vehicle is between $2k and $3k. They are looking to halve that within the next few years.

That flaw being that they don't offer it with a PHEV and a flex fuel (E85) option.

With these options, it would truly be the car of the future.

The building a car with two engines. That just adds a lot of extra cost and weight. If we were serious about improving fuel economy we'd be making smaller & lighter cars with forced induction systems (super chargers or turbochargers) like several Japanese manufacturers offer in their home market. Suzuki makes some fine super minis.

hybrids are interesting but needlessly complex and overly heavy. They are burdened with the weight and cost of two engines and a battery pack when one small fuel efficent engine would weight less and likely use less gas to boot due to the over all weight savings.

The main one is acceleration. You can get equivalent mileage from a small diesel, but not as much accleration. The obvious question is, "what's the big deal with acceleration?" But we Americans do love our cars to have pickup!

Another is the efficiency of regenerative breaking, and halting the engine during idle. On the other hand, if the overall mileage is the same, you could question the value-added over a straight diesel.

Oh, another avenue that hybrids open up is the pluggable-hybrid, where additional battery capacity allows the thing to run without fuel for a useful distance. For neighborhood driving, it's effectively pure-electric or close to it.

A super mini will be both faster and more fuel efficent plus it will cost less to boot.

We on the left act very silly sometimes. We get wrapped up in pointless details instead of looking at the big picture. Instead of advocating hybrids we should be advocating drastically higher milage and letting people & companies figure out how to deliver it however they want. If a small turbo charged gasoline powered car gets use the fuel milage we want then great. If a hybrid suddenly massively improves effiency and decreases costs then great again. But we should stop trying to legislate who the winners should be and instead simply concentrate on setting high standards and letting people decide what package of trade offs they want to pay for in order to reach those standards.

An excellent example of the wrong way to do things was how Washington made laws about car head lights in the 1970's. In the 1970's some scientists did a study showing that using conventional light bulbs square lights created more usable light then round lights so ignorant but well meaning Congressmen ran out and passed legislation mandating every car sold in America have square lights. The problem is this mandadated a single solution instead of just saying "all head lights must be X amount of candle power bright". Using nontraditional lighting materials (like xeon, different filliments, or other gases to fill the bulb) would have delivered the same performance without mandating that everyone kowtow to Washington's oricles.

Good legislation simply says "everyone must reach the goal of X" instead of "everyone must adopt this one technology". Let the market figure out how to reach the goal but hold their feet to the fire and make sure the goal is met. That's good legislation.

Legislation should be goal/result oriented. Methods and technology should be business decisions. On the other hand, there is no pro-hybrid legislation that I'm aware of. Our current CAFE standards are so anemic that it doesn't take any particular innovation to comply with them.

Here in California the California Air Resorces Board (CARB) passed a law in the 1990's saying X percentage of cars had to be electric by 2005 and X percentage had to be hybrid or some such. It was eventually dropped because it was so poorly written and out of touch with reality that no company could comply. Now they've gone back to the drawing board and they've come up with Green House Gas targets per mile driven. That is goal orientated instead of process orientated so it is much better legislation.

Instead of saying 10% of all cars sold must be electric like they previously did they're now saying if a car puts out X amount of GHGs per mile driven then you have to pay additional taxes and fines. That will help produce fewer green house gases though the politicians need to double check that the goals they set are realitic and reachable. The previous mandate that 10% of the cars sold in California must be electric cars was a total crackpot idea without any basis in reality. Two companies did release electric cars (GM and Honda) but they were total dogs, cost way to much, and the batteries had to be replaced after just a few short years (at a cost above the average cost of a new car). That was an unrealistic mandate. One good thing did come from that misadventure tough; Toyota was able to talk CARB into letting them count the release of the world's first mass produced hybrid as half an electric car. Even after the electric car goals were tossed out Toyota decided to still release their hybrid car (the first generation Prius).

I'd love to see CAFE standards increased by 25%-40% in the next 5 years but it isn't going to happen since only Congress can set fuel milage standards (California gets special treatment on pollution laws since it was regulating them before Congress ever did but Congress specifically outlawed California setting CAFE standards of its own) and the Republicans control Congress. Hell, we'd need a 20% hike in CAFe standards just to get back to the levels we were at in 1987.

my take on that, is different
..........
my best guess is,
.
for whatever reason, California wanted a hammer, to use on
car companies, so C. passes some ridiculous laws.
surprise, instead of negotiating, GM and Honda said,
you really want cars that pay zero gas tax?, have some...

laws got changed, cars were crushed, story over, fow now.
the cars were doggy, but useable

don't believe everything you read about pricing
of electric cars and batteries,because the THEN market
was too small for an aftermarket supplier to get in.
replacement batt prices wre high, because GM said,
Hey, that's the price, which had nothing to do with GM's cost to buy.

edit, for spelling

If you look at the Synergy drive version I/II, it actually removes several components that are normally found in a car (alternator, gearbox, reverse gear, and most everything related to the transmission.) It's really only more expensive due to the lack of mass production of key components (large PM motors, primarily.) If part count and complexity were really a such a primary concern, then the Synergy III wouldn't have added parts for the meager advantage of a horsepower boost and cheaper PM motor.

(And weight really doesn't matter as much once you have regen breaking and a little extra HP, FWIW.)

why does the US have to be lead customer for everything?

is there some reason why these things are not
first sold in countries with high gasoline prices?

on the other hand, I would not want the amusement park economies
of Germany and the UK to collapse because of a
reduction in gas tax revenue.

hey, Honda, sell your effin EV electric car in Germany

oops, I forgot they all got squished

They sold hybrids in Japan before they sold them here. And regardless, I don't see the problem. People here are buying them. Nobody is putting a gun to their head :-)

compared to their landfill {California}?

It will be awhile before any are sold.

They each offer two models of trucks (GM sells a Chevy/GMC while Ford sells a Ford/Mercury branded model) with hybrid power.

http://www.edmunds.com/new/2006/honda/civic/sedan/compact/index.html

Both are currently fiddling around with hybrid sedans. Honda's Accord is also offered as a hybrid though demand is high so they're really only making fully loaded examples. A hybrid accord will set you back $32k plus tax while a regular V-6 Accord with cost you around $26k plus tax. You pay an extra $6k upfront.

Prius owners know about the rechargeable battery that powers the electric motor but may not know it also has a regular lead acid battery.My friend learned they needed one of these common batteries but with the Prius there was a difference.

On the first generation car they use a Japanese battery with smaller posts which is not available at the corner auto parts store.So the car was towed to the dealership which charged $194.18 for the battery.There are people who have worked around this problem by modifying a battery to fit the Prius http://home.comcast.net/~DLDORRANCE/battery.html

After other related charges and towing the bill was $359.13 which is added to the hybrid premium.Do not wait until you are stranded to replace the battery,after three years it would be time to replace any battery.I would not recommend a hybrid to people who do not live near a dealership since undisclosed problems like this pop up.

I wonder why car makers do not embrace hybrids since customers use the dealership more for services like this which a shade tree mechanic could do previously.I would recommend an extended warranty for hybrids but not on a regular car since the repair costs are inflated at dealerships which hybrids depend upon.

P.S. After some searching I found bulletin about 01-03 Prius battery terminals http://home.comcast.net/~DLDORRANCE/EL014-03.pdf They do not say if this allows one to use American batteries this repair is to upgrade performance.This explains extra charges since Prius was out of warranty for this bulletin.Besides the dealership having knowledge of the internet is required to operate a hybrid.

...just replace with a bigger battery. All you have to do is ensure it can take the same current,
has the same voltage (which is a no-brainer) and then adapt the terminals and mounting bracket. It isn't rocket science. The tenperature overheat monitor probably wouldn't be entirely accurate if you changed basic battery type, but if you're putting a battery in that is way above spec anyway it won't get damaged.

You can also keep them topped up with a small 0.5-2W back-window solar cell; that extends their life.
Mine's nearing four years old in harsh NE weather and I've let it go dead from extended non-use a couple of times. It's still working peachily, minus the fact that it's undersized WRT the key-off load.