Is Toyota the Microsoft of the future automobile

Today, in the Yahoo: Business: Automotive News section, an article was posted by Rich Smith entitled, "Toyota: Resistance is futile".

With Toyota announcing yesterday that it was going to offer 100,000 new Prius hybrid cars into the American market, Smith concludes his article - warning American automakers - "Given the disarray and limited offerings of the competition, Toyota's flooding of the U.S. market next year may well satisfy the lion's share of the demand for hybrid vehicles - leaving no buyers left for the also-rans, and little hope of gaining economies of scale on their hybrid product lines. If they don't act soon to reverse this trend, within a year or two at most, resisting Toyota may become futile."

Smith points out in his article that only Honda is a significant rival in hybrid car technology. The only other psuedo-players are Ford and Nissan, and both of those companies are leasing Toyota's Prius hybrid car technology.

While I, as an American, feel compelled to first shop American, I will not buy anything other than a hybrid car. The technology just makes sense. It immediately helps clean the environment, while reducing the need for foreign oil. That alone is enough justification.

Furthermore, there is not one single fully American-made car - hybrid or otherwise. For even cars made entirely in America, many of their parts are manufactured in other countries and imported into America - that isn't American made.

More important, however, is the fact that hybrid cars are an innovation which helps transition towards the 'hydrogen economy' and a world run by fuel cells - aside from pollution and oil war concerns. It is technology that moves toward the future of energy. Is America going to lead the future, or follow others into the future?

Furthermore, hybrid car technology can not only be profitable, but beneficial to people. It is a technology that isn't focused on just - bling, bling - looking cooler.

American auto-makers have proven time-and-time-again that they can lead automotive innovation. Never has there been a more important time to show this leadership. Oil wars and gross pollution are concerns of too many people for this issue to go away, and if the American Auto Establishment doesn't want to lead the way in safe-guarding these concerns, then they are un-American and deserve to be boycotted.