Uchiyamada: Hybrids Soon Reaching 20 Percent Of Global Sales

It is Toyota and they still use non-lithium batteries so you can drop the fairly big if. Also any improvement in batteries for the next 5 years is already discovered but not yet engineered

He's not the only one to discount diesel hybrids. I wonder why that is.

Weight savings will play a role, but you are definitely right that start/stop and micro hybrids will define the market. Full-on hybrids like the Prius don't make economic sense to most drivers. But very few drivers would NOT benefit economically from start/stop or micro hybrid applications, even today. The payback of the smaller systems is pretty low. The market for the full-on hybrid should continue to grow - it's not even close to saturating the market for drivers that would benefit from them.

"micro-hybrid systems"? That just gave me the possibly erroneous idea that there's no universal definition of "hybrid", is there? Could regenerative braking returning electrical energy to a backup or beefed up battery to drive accessories qualify? How about to run a supercharger? Unless there's a hard definition, this prediction can easily be met.

It is a bit meaningless if Hybrids are expensive without knowing the price of other cars, the way the tax system works and it is only the UK and not Europe as specific models and prices differ in different countries. ps. The price difference between a Yaris, 5 doors automatic and a hybrid 5 doors Yaris is 355Euro in the Netherlands. I do think you will get that back in gas consumption even if you drive only a little. If you get a company car in Holland i doubt you want a non hybrid one.

@RogerB34 Europe does not subsidise diesel. It's more expensive than US or Australian diesel and these are taxed higher than gasoline. European diesel is taxed, not subsidised.

@Big Al from Oz Taxing something less than something near equivalent is subsidizing in my eyes. But to compromise and not go into a discussion about definitions i would suggest a change in the offending sentence. Most EU countries financially favor diesel fuel so its price is below that of gasoline making the more expensive to buy diesel a strong seller.

@charly The USA had long taxed diesel motor fuel more than mogas because it is mostly used in long haul trucks. In that application diesel engines are so superior to gasoline engines that diesel users practically have to pay the extra tax. It is more of a tax revenue maximization issue. Diesel engines in light vehicles are discouraged, mostly because they are so dirty. In Europe and some other places, highly-engineered turbocharged diesel engined small cars and light trucks make sense because if lightly driven, they can get amazing fuel economy and are fairly cheap to build. This addresses the major system externality in these regions which is the lack of security of their fuel supply. Libya, Russia and the Middle East go down for a year or two? Nie problema. Just slow down and muddle through.

The assumption of a $6000 initial gap is too much. It's more like $2000~3000 as compared to a Matrix of similar trim level. Gas price does go up too.

Perhaps there are more drivers like myself out there who would 1), rather send their money to the Japanese for sophisticated machinery rather than to the international oil mafias be they corporations or nations, 2), do care about reducing their carbon foot print, and don't really care about "payback". Doubltess I am in a small subset of drivers.

@Conslaw If government incentives are taken out of the EV/Hybrid market, what would the cost of these vehicles be? So, even with the subsidisation of these vehicles the payback is a lot longer than what you are saying. How many years will it take the US to pay down it's debt? This money is also used to subsidise EVs/Hybrids. When and a big if these types of vehicles become mainstream what will their true cost be? Even with a large market they will always be much more expensive than a comparable ICE vehicel. As this article points out diesels are very competitive with hybrids for energy use and are a damn sight cheaper. So are we wasting money trying to create an artificial market. If they are viable then let market forces dictate sales numbers. We are wasting money, this EV/Hybrid subsidy money could be better spent on road infrastructure, gas or nuclear power generation to make a country more competitive.

@Big Al from Oz A deficit is a problem (Not true, a debt that is a growing share of GDP is a problem but everybody knows and acts that way anyway) A current account deficit is a BIG problem. One has a simple solution (print money or slightly more difficult tax) but current account deficits have only hard solutions. So increasing the deficit by a measure that lowers the current account deficit is good governance. Importing oil is a big cost for countries and a big very part of their current account problems (oil is a major part of Americans current account deficit). Lowering it by financial favoring hybrids (See Mongolia with their 0% import tax on second hand hybrids) or small cars (done by just taxing the hell out of all cars) is smart. People don't buy the car they need (an Aygo is what 99% of the people need) but what they can afford (see monthly payment and the much bigger cars people own) so shifting demand by favoring financially one type of car over another type wont change car use that much (the US government needs to use subsidies because state government tax cars, not Washington. Normal countries just use different tax rates which is much cheaper and effective) A hybrid $40k car is just as expensive as a comparable $40k ICE car so no, hybrids are not more expensive than ICE cars except for the bottom of the new car market as $10k ICE cars exist but $10k hybrids don't. Luckily that market is not large in the West European car makers are good at making diesels. That is one of the reasons why diesel is supported in Europe. They are not good at making hybrids so it is not surprising that the countries that support hybrids (Netherlands & Norway) don't have a car industry ps. I would assume that you won't call Mongolia not taxing importation of second hand hybrids subsidization.

@charly Do you or are capable of managing a balanced household budget? Judging by your comments above you can't. The only way for a $40k hybrid to be as good as a $40k ICE car is it requires subsidisation. So, how much is that so called $40k hybrid? $60k? So your $40k hybrid is actually a $60k vehicle. This leads me to believe a $40k hybrid is only as good as a $25k-$30k ICE car. You can try and bull$hit your views which are heavily based on left wing politics and economics. But the reality is if a country has to borrow money to create an artificial market to sell a product, then the product is not viable. The product is of no benefit to a nation. It's only benefit is a warm and fuzzy feeling some middle class person gets driving it to work. Because no American who earns $10 and hour can afford one. Why should people of a country pay taxes and have a country borrow to support an unprofitable industry. I suppose you greenies and socialist can't see the forest through the trees. What is needed is the left to gain some common sense.

@Big Al from Oz I can manage a budget but people are different from entities that can be immortal like companies or governments. But even then i have more debt than MONEY like most people (Houses, cars, stocks etc are not MONEY) Companies are often run to keep debt to capital or gross or profit stable so debt grows when companies grow and with inflation the almost always grow at least nominal. Government debt is a form of money and has features that make zero government debt something unwanted. I don't have a clue what would be optimal but for an economy the size of Australia is will be at least 20%. Have 2% inflation and 2% growth and you need a deficit of .8%. You could also look at taxes and the fact that they are mostly postpaid while spending allocation isn't (government 40% of GDP, 1 year, 2% inflation, also .8% deficit) $40k hybrid Seats 5, 4 doors, 4 wheels, brakes, engine, steering wheel $40k ICE Seats 5, 4 doors, 4 wheels, brakes, engine, steering wheel I don't see much difference. Both says $40k car (sadly the most important for humans) and can do about the same. Seen from the viewpoint of the state a 40k hybrid is just as good a car as a 40k ICE. In fact it is a better car as it uses less imported/exportable oil. The state had to borrow money to build the interstate and all the other roads cars need so you want to say that cars aren't viable? People who earn $10 an hour can't afford new cars from their wages. But guess what, they don't buy new cars. Most, if not all industry would be unprofitable at their current level and prices without tax brakes and subsidies. Hybrids have one gigantic advantages. They use less oil. Oil is the real current account currency and it is the deficit that MATTERS. So if you want less deficit you need to use less oil. There are three ways to do that. Less miles, smaller cars, more efficient cars. Less miles is bad because people use those miles to do things and most of those miles are good for the economy. Smaller cars is easy (just tax cars more and people will buy smaller) but if you have a car industry it means less money for the car industry and that is bad for the economy. So if you have a car industry than the solution is the hybrid (steered by taxes/regulation, see japan) People spend just as much on the car industry but the import bill for oil is less.

@Big Al from Oz Big Al, I know you are an expert on America, but you occasionally get your ideas mixed up. Regular hybrids haven't had federal government incentives for quite some time. It expired on 12/31/2010. Plug-in EVs do have tax credits and it is scaled on battery size, but they simply don't account for much market share. If you pulled trucks and SUVs/CUVs out of the mix, plug-ins are ~1% of the passenger car market. That puts them around 0.5% when you bring trucks and SUVs back into the mix. By comparison, hybrids, again, unsubsidized by the feds, sold approximately 5x the number of plug-ins in 2013.

@Al We have had this conversation before Al. In some markets there are sizable externalities, so for a market system to work with maximum efficiency, these have to be dealt with. Usually, this is not too hard to handle. For example, a mandated 'best practice' or 'emission control standards' work well for chemical and central electric power stations or waste water disposal or even cars, for that matter. Occasionally, though, in some markets it seems best to use taxation as the tool. This is what the heavily subsidized hybrids are all about. I don't like the pissant little b*sterds any more than you do. I particularly don't like their subsidy programs which depend on being able to correctly predict the future price of oil. The principle may be OK, but the execution maybe not so much. It is, relatively speaking, a dead cinch to predict the outcome of a mandated emission standard as compared to that of a tax subsidy for EV's and hybrids.

@Big Al from Oz I'm not seeing that a Diesel car is less expensive than is a hybrid, at least not here in the USA. Compare the Chevrolet Cruze, which comes in both a gasoline and a diesel, with a Ford Fusion, which comes in both a gasoline and a hybrid version. The price difference between a Cruze Diesel and a similarly equipped 2LT is $3655, while the difference between a Fusion SE and a Fusion SE Hybrid is $3380. Despite being a larger, more comfortable car, the Fusion hybrid will return very similar highway MPG to the Cruze Diesel, and will use much, much less fuel in town. On top of that, since Diesel contains on the average of 15% more energy per gallon than does gasoline, the Fusion's total energy usage is going to be 30%-40% less than the Cruze's for most drivers.