Tag: prius

Hybrid Suvs Roll Into Showroom

For the past few years, people who have wanted to buy a more energy-efficient car have had to think small. That’s about to change. The floor of this year’s North American International Auto Show in Detroit offered a look at several new energy-efficient models due out later this year or within the next few years. The auto industry hasn’t sold very many of the cars carrying one type of new technology so far, but officials hope more choices will boost sales. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland has more:

Transcript

For the past few years, people who have wanted to buy a more energy-efficient car have had to
think small. That’s about to change. The floor of this year’s North American International Auto
Show in Detroit offered a look at several new energy-efficient models due out later this year or
within the next few years. The auto industry hasn’t sold very many of the cars carrying one type
of new technology so far, but officials hope more choices will boost sales. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland has more:


At the Toyota display at this year’s auto show, a small crowd formed around the newest version
of the gasoline-electric Prius. Toyota’s sold the car since 1997, and has made it bigger for this
year. What makes this car different is it’s powered by a gasoline-electric hybrid engine. A few
months ago, Denny Jones of Toledo, Ohio ordered a new Prius. He’s still waiting for delivery, so
he drove to Detroit to sit in one at the auto show.


“First of all, I’ve had other Toyotas, so I like the quality. They’ve made improvements on this
one. There’s hatchback. On the first style you couldn’t have a hatchback. They get better
mileage than the first one. And, overall it is a larger car.”


Gasoline-electric hybrid engines have lower emissions and get better mileage than cars with
standard gasoline engines. Toyota says the Prius gets about 50-miles per gallon. But the only
hybrids on the market so far have been small cars like the Prius and the Honda Civic.


Later this year and next, larger hybrids will roll into showrooms. Honda will offer a hybrid
Accord. And Ford will sell a hybrid version of its Escape SUV. Jerry Bissi braved an afternoon
snowstorm to come to the auto show, and was checking one out.


“I prefer to have an SUV-type vehicle for driving back and forth, all-wheel drive, the weather
conditions we have today outside. So I prefer something like that rather than the car.”


There will be several hybrid SUV’s available by next year. Toyota will sell a hybrid Highlander,
and its luxury division Lexus will offer its own model.


“Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to introduce the world’s first luxury hybrid vehicle, the
Lexus RX-400-H.”


Denny Clements is a vice-president at Lexus. He says there seems to be a pent-up demand for
larger hybrids.


“Our dealers have taken a huge amount of orders just off word of mouth about Prius, I think. I
think what we have when you talk to our customers is there is a lot of very affluent people who
would like to make a statement about Middle East oil, would like to make a statement about who
they are, but they don’t want to make the sacrifices in terms of luxury amenities.”


Toyota says Americans bought about 21-thousand hybrid Priuses last year. But that’s a drop in
the bucket compared to the almost 16-million vehicles sold in the U.S. last year.


“If you added up all the hybrids that have ever been made since the beginning of time, they don’t
equal the production of one high-volume auto plant in one year.”


That’s David Cole. He heads the Center for Automotive Research. He says some people have
shied away from hybrids because they’ve only been available as small cars, and others have been
wary of the new technology. But mostly, Cole says a lot of people aren’t willing to pay more for
a hybrid.


“Where it is going to be in the future is dependant on one thing in my judgment and that is
economics. Can it be done at a cost that consumers will pay for?”


So far, Toyota, Lexus and Ford aren’t saying what their new hybrids will cost. Right now a new
hybrid Honda Civic costs about two-thousand dollars more than the most expensive gasoline
model. The federal government offers a tax deduction to hybrid-buyers to help close that gap, but
it is being phased out during the next few years. Some automakers and environmental groups say
it’s not enough anyway. They want Congress to pass a federal tax credit for people who buy
hybrids.


David Friedman is with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He says the automakers’ decision to
offer hybrid engines in more models is an opportunity for the country to become less dependant
on imported oil – if enough people can be persuaded to buy the vehicles.


“If automakers put some of their 10-to-15 billion dollars of advertising muscle behind this, and if
the government is willing to get these tax credits out there, I think we can see hybrids grow into a
significant portion of the market.”


Back at the auto show, Jerry Bissi says he’d consider buying a hybrid SUV. He says he thinks
others will too, if the price is right and they prove to be reliable.


“I think there are a lot of people sitting on the fence. They’re going to watch the first one, see
how it does. If it does prove to be good, they’ll jump on the bandwagon and be late joiners.”


Buyers might need some convincing, though. On this afternoon at the auto show, Ford’s hybrid
version of the Escape SUV drew only a few visitors compared to the crowds surrounding the
standard gasoline-engine Escape and the company’s larger Explorer SUV.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Michael Leland.

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U.S. CAR BUYERS DON’T THINK GREEN

The auto industry seems to be growing a bit green. Car makers across the world are exploring new, more environmentally-friendly power systems for cars and trucks. But despite these new developments, it doesn’t appear that American car buyers think green when they go shopping for a new vehicle. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Poorman reports:

Transcript

The auto industry seems to be growing a bit green. Car makers across
the world are exploring new, more environmentally friendly power systems
for cars and trucks. But despite these new developments, it doesn’t
appear that American car buyers think green when they go shopping for a
new vehicle. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Poorman reports:


Sales of environmentally-friendly vehicles are increasing in the U-S. Toyota is leading the pack,
with the debut in October of the second generation of its mid-size hybrid car, the Prius. The
small gas engine gets help from an electric motor, making for a much different kind of
start-up.


(sound of Prius starting)


However, those sales are dwarfed by the sales of gas guzzling SUVs.


(sound of H2 starting)


That’s the H2 – the latest in General Motor’s popular line of Hummers.
These vehicles are so big that they’re considered a heavy truck, making
them exempt from the federal government’s fuel economy ratings, so you
won’t see the gas mileage on the window sticker.


But salesman Ed Arthur of Capitol Hummer in Lansing, Michigan, says
that’s not a big deal. Arthur says H2 customers are looking for
something else than fuel economy.


“They’re looking for something that’s unique. It’s different.
They want something to be where they can go off-road if they want to.
If they don’t want to, that’s fine. But they want the capabilities, but
they don’t want to sacrifice the comforts and the rides that they’ve
been getting in other cars and other types of vehicles in the past.”


These kinds of preferences aren’t just limited to the select customers
who can afford a 50-thousand-dollar Hummer. John Denove studies
customers’ car-buying priorities for JD Power and Associates, an
automotive consulting firm.


“Probably your top five include the quality/reliability issues, styling, safety, gas mileage, and
incentives.”
And Denove says, gas mileage only recently crept into the top five, as
gas prices have risen. As for pure environmental motives, he says he
recently developed a survey and, during a series of interviews, found
fifty different factors people consider when they’re choosing what car
or truck to buy.


“The funny thing is, nobody during those interviews ever mentioned green issues other than gas
mileage, so they never made it into the survey.”


But environmentalists think those findings might not capture what’s
really happening when people go into dealerships. Jon Coifman is with
the Natural Resources Defense Council. He says that people just assume
cars and trucks won’t harm the environment now. Regulations have
prompted automakers to develop and sell cleaner technologies.


“What we’ve learned over the years is that when you’ve got
good standards in place, the automakers have done a pretty good job of
delivering good solutions at a pretty good price.”


Detroit’s car companies argue that price and performance are both major
reasons for their delay in getting out newer and more expensive
environmental technologies, like hybrids and electric cars. Consumer
surveys show most car-buyers won’t pay more just to be green. And
electrics never caught on because they had a limited range and had to be
plugged in each night.


But Toyota now says that it’s making money on every Prius. And next
year, the Japanese automaker plans to put a new twist on hybrid sales.
It will overcome the lack of demand for green vehicles by marketing a
new hybrid SUV as a performance vehicle, with a four-cylinder engine
producing six-cylinder power, and by the way, it gets good mileage.


The NRDC’s Coifman says this makes him worry that GM, Ford, and Chrysler
are already losing this latest car sales skirmish.


“Our fear is that, as this revolution unfolds, that the
American manufacturers may have been dragging their feet too long and
are going to miss the boat.”


In the meantime, GM’s investment in the Hummer is paying off for the
company and its dealers. The vehicles bring in huge profits. GM is
even considering adding another, but smaller, Hummer to its line-up,
filling what seems to be an ever expanding taste for gargantuan, rather
than green, vehicles in the U.S.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bill Poorman.

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Automakers Accelerate Toward Greener Cars

In the next few months, Honda and Toyota each will launch a
new type of super clean car, called a hybrid. The fact that the
Japanese
are
first to market hybrid vehicles concerns some environmentalists.
They’re
worried that domestic auto makers aren’t moving fast enough on this
promising technology. But in an unusual move, environmentalists are not
chastising the big three. Instead, they’re lending a helping hand. The
Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Edelson Halpert files this report:

Bringing Clean Cars to the U-S Market

Two Japanese auto manufacturers soon will unveil a new,
cleaner type of car for the U-S market. It’s called a hybrid. Hybrids
rely
on gasoline, but use an electric engine to double the fuel efficiency
and
emit fewer pollutants. So far, no domestic automaker has come forward
with a hybrid car. And that’s troubling environmentalists. They’re
worried
that the U-S could fall behind its foreign competitors. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Julie Edelson Halpert has the story: