Re: THE GAS MISER

From: Steve Spence (sspence_at_beavercreekconsulting.com)
Date: 09/25/04 

Date: Sat, 25 Sep 2004 15:37:29 -0400

Big deal. A gas engine and an electric motor. Still can't beat a vw jetta on
biodiesel.

"Dr. Jai Maharaj" <usenet@mantra.com> wrote in message
news:sdS5g56slky0@rW489K4jvaIVNf...
> THE GAS MISER
>
> Forwarded message from fidyl@yahoo.com
>
> [ Subject: The Gas Miser
> [ From: fidyl@yahoo.com
> [ Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004
>
> The Gas Miser
>
> Toyota's new hybrid may just be the biggest thing in cars
> since the combustion engine
>
> The new Prius looks normal, not experimental
>
> By Michael Hastings
> Newsweek
> September 20, 2004 issue
>
> http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5963500/site/newsweek/
>
> Richard Pearce has turned out his old love, a 1989 Dodge
> pickup truck. In 2002 the 50-year-old retired soldier and
> his wife decided to bring a Toyota Prius hybrid back to
> their Virginia home. They "fell in love with the
> technology," which uses an electric motor at low speeds
> and a small engine at high speeds to power the car with a
> lot less gas. Now a new, 2004 Prius sits in the garage
> alongside the older model, and the pickup languishes in
> the driveway, used sparingly to haul garbage to the
> landfill. Pearce says he'd never think of taking the
> truck on his 26-mile commute. It gets less than 20 miles
> a gallon, while the Prius gets 60, so he wouldn't be able
> to use the special lane Virginia has set up for fuel-
> efficient cars. "We'll never have anything but a hybrid
> again," he says.
>
> Pearce's extreme embrace of the Prius was once the stuff
> of wild dreams for the Toyota engineers who developed the
> brand. They had hoped the gas-electric hybrid, introduced
> in Japan in 1997, would become nothing less than a new
> Corolla or Camry-sedans that made the company's
> reputation in America. Last year sales of those two
> models helped push Toyota past Ford to become the world's
> second largest carmaker, laying huge tire tracks for the
> unproven Prius to fill. The first hybrids sold at such a
> high premium over regular sedans that buyers couldn't
> save enough on fuel to come out ahead-yet were so
> expensive to make, Toyota took a big loss on each one.
> While Toyota's engineers made grand statements about the
> car of the future, its bean counters wondered whether
> there would ever be a mainstream market for these things.
>
> LIVE TALK TRANSCRIPT - Hybrid Power
>
> -From hybrid mass transit to the hottest in green gizmos,
> Christopher Dickey discussed the latest in the hybrid
> thought revolution in a Live Talk on Friday, Sept. 17 at
> 5 p.m. ET.
>
> Click here to read the transcript
> http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5972618/site/newsweek/
>
> The answer has caught Toyota off guard. Since October,
> Toyota has had to increase production of the Prius three
> times, most dramatically in August when it announced a 50
> percent boost for next year to 15,000 vehicles a month
> worldwide. That's a fraction of its Corolla output, but
> enough to raise serious questions about whether Toyota
> innovations are once again leading a major revolution in
> the American market. While the automaker plans to send
> most of the new production run to the United States,
> there are still 22,000 customers on waiting lists for the
> car. "We didn't know how the consumers would react to
> this technology," says Don Esmond, a senior vice
> president and general manager at Toyota. "They've voted
> for it, they've voted with their dollars."
>
> To be sure, the hybrid phenomenon is still only a ripple
> in the pool of American gas guzzlers. The highest
> estimates for the United States predict annual sales of
> 500,000 hybrid cars by 2009-about 3 percent of the 16.7
> million car market. Analysts think that the price of fuel
> would have to hit $3 a gallon to see bigger sales sooner.
> Yet already the Prius is the first significant departure
> from the combustion engine to make any major inroads in
> the auto industry since Henry Ford invented the Model T
> in 1908. And major carmakers have learned never to ignore
> the ambitions of Toyota, arguably the best-run big
> automobile company in the world, with a reported stock-
> market value of $107 billion, almost four times more than
> GM or Ford. "For Toyota," says prominent Japanese car
> critic and environmental-technology specialist Tadashi
> Tateuchi, the hybrid car "may well be the key to world
> domination."
>
> The key to the Prius story is rapidly advancing
> technology. The original project was launched in 1993
> under the code name G21, for 21st Century Generation,
> with strong backing from Toyota chairman Shoichirou
> Toyoda, an heir of the founder. When the first Prius was
> unveiled seven years ago, it was an undersized,
> underpowered and overpriced experimental box of a car,
> which competitors felt free to ignore. Most rivals said
> they would concentrate on fuel cells and other fuel-
> efficient technology that wouldn't be widely available
> until 2010. When Toyota introduced the Prius to North
> America in 2000, it sold only 15,000 cars its first
> year-a minor hit, but mainly with environmentalists and
> Hollywood liberals like Leonardo DiCaprio and Cameron
> Diaz.
>
> Toyota's napping rivals had given it a five- to 10-year
> technological lead by the time the new Prius came out
> last October, says Tateuchi. The new model's electric
> motor was 50 percent more powerful, its interior was
> almost twice as roomy and its body was designed to look
> like a futuristic sedan rather than an ecological-science
> project. The redesign cost Toyota untold millions, and
> putting that much into a product that "consumers didn't
> even know they wanted yet," says Esmond, was "a bit of a
> crapshoot."
>
> The new Prius appears to be moving rapidly out of its
> green niche. Sales in the United States shot up by 153
> percent in the first half of this year, by a whopping 874
> percent in Europe; in Japan they increased tenfold.
> According to Esmond, once skeptical rivals are now
> jumping on the bandwagon. "I don't want to say they're
> scrambling, but they are trying to quickly put together
> their own hybrids," he says.
>
> So far Honda has given Toyota the only competition for
> the hybrid market with the Civic and the Insight. But the
> first hybrid SUV, Ford's Escape, hits the streets in
> September. Nissan recently announced that its hybrid
> Altima sedan will arrive next year. Later this year Dodge
> plans to roll out a diesel-electric pickup. GM plans
> hybrid -models of the GMC Sierra and the Chevy Silverado.
> Honda plans to unveil a hybridized Accord in the fall.
> Hyundai says its hybrid will be ready in "the near
> future." According to CSM Worldwide, a Detroit-based
> research firm, by 2007 there will be some 22 hybrid
> options for popular models, including even Hummer's H2.
>
> In America the lust for the largest gas guzzlers seems to
> be slowly waning. Though SUVs are still the top-selling
> vehicles, the mix of SUVs is tilting toward smaller
> models. And because big SUVs have driven the average gas
> mileage of the American fleet down to 20.4 miles per
> gallon, its lowest level in two decades, the Big Four
> automakers risk falling afoul of fuel-efficiency
> regulations. That's one reason many of the new American
> hybrid designs are for SUV models. But the bigger reason
> is Toyota. "We can't just sit here as a major corporation
> and say, 'Trust us, you'll get a fuel cell from us and in
> the meantime, we're not doing anything'," says GM vice
> chair-?man Bob Lutz. "With more and more of our
> competitors playing the hybrid card, there was just no
> way we could ignore that."
>
> Europe has been slower to respond. It has already chosen
> diesel as its cleaner, more efficient fuel, and the
> diesel market is dominated by German carmakers. Indeed,
> one reason Toyota pursued hybrids was that it was so far
> behind in the diesel market. But growing sales of the new
> Prius could change all that. Lindsay Brooke, an analyst
> at CSM, says every big car company has to be thinking
> that "if the Japanese kick-start this thing, you've got
> to have this technology on the shelf, especially if the
> fuel price really rises."
>
> The Prius faces two critical turning points before it can
> be called a true mass-market car. It needs to be
> profitable, and practical. When Toyota first introduced
> the Prius, it was reportedly losing $3,000 on each car.
> The company now says the line is profitable, but analysts
> aren't convinced. "I know engineers at rival carmakers
> who've done total teardowns of the Prius-comprehensive,
> bolt-by-bolt cost analysis," says Brooke. "Toyota is
> getting close to breaking even," probably within the next
> five years.
>
> Reaching that point takes longer for the consumer. Most
> hybrids sell for $2, 000 to $3,000 more than comparable
> sedans, and drivers would need at least 10 years and
> 100,000 miles to recoup that much in gas savings,
> analysts say. But those who say hybrids must narrow that
> gap to boost sales ignore the power of instant
> gratification: Richard Pearce says he pays $10 a week in
> gas, compared with his neighbor's $60.
>
> Last year Toyota launched a U.S. ad campaign pitching the
> Prius as a big, sexy "real car," not a green techno
> curiosity. One spot called Prius "the world's biggest
> hybrid," and showed the universe being sucked into the
> car's yawning rear hatch. The ad also noted that "you
> never plug it in"-an attempt to distance the Prius from
> old electric cars. A Toyota ad this summer billed "mpg"
> as more peaceful getaways, over a picture of a scantily
> clad couple on the beach.
>
> It's also worth noting how much attention Toyota is
> focusing on hybrid technology. Toyota is posting record
> sales and building a cash reserve of more than $40
> billion while other carmakers are struggling. "They could
> eat a number of other car manufacturers for lunch without
> even noticing it on their balance ***," says auto
> analyst Ryan Tutak at Ducker Worldwide. Yet Toyota has
> avoided the recent frenzy of industry mergers and instead
> focused on key models, including hybrids. A hybrid luxury
> SUV will appear next year and a hybrid Camry in 2006.
> "Ford and GM have more brands than anyone, but Toyota is
> piling up the money," says Tutak. "Which horse are you
> going to bet on?" For Toyota at least, hybrids look like
> a winner.
>
> End of forwarded message from fidyl@yahoo.com
>
> Jai Maharaj
> http://www.mantra.com/jai
> Om Shanti
>
> Hindu Holocaust Museum
> http://www.mantra.com/holocaust
>
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> http://www.hindu.org
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>
> The truth about Islam and Muslims
> http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate
>
> The terrorist mission of Jesus stated in the Christian bible:
>
> "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not so send
> peace, but a sword.
> "For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
> daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in
> law.
> "And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
> - Matthew 10:34-36.
>
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