2005 Year of the Hybrid Vehicle

2004 might have been the year of the Toyota Prius, but the hype around hybrid cars isn't going to end there.

If Toyota meets its goals, at least 100,000 Prius hybrids will be sold this year.

Next up for Toyota is the Lexus RX 400h hybrid SUV. Already, 10,000 orders have been placed for this vehicle, which doesn't hit the street until almost 5 months into the year. At that pace, one might imagine Toyota easily selling another 20,000 hybrid SUVs, at least.

Later in the summer, Toyota will add a third hybrid, the Highlander Hybrid. Based on Toyota's current success, similar numbers should also be expected for that vehicle.

In two years, Toyota should easily be producing a quarter million hybrid vehicles. By then, with the Camry available as a hybrid, it shouldn't be hard to visualize that Toyota could easily sell half a million or more hybrid cars in America alone, within just 5 years.

Some analysts don't even expect these numbers within 10 years, but if all goes as planned this year, the streets will be filled with hybrids within 10 years.

If Toyota can sell half a million hybrids per year by 2010, that would represent almost 25% of their current American sales. At that point that ball would be rolling, and Toyota could begin to contemplate converting to a hybrid-only powertrain platform.

A new automobile manufacturing era would emerge. On a hybrid platform, options might include gasoline, diesel, or hydrogen combinations.

These combinations would enable Toyota to always be at least 25 percent more efficient than any conventional competitor using any kind of internal combustion engine platform. Because any new engine technology in conventional cars can also be used in hybrids, hybrid technology is just more efficient.

And that's just Toyota.

Ford will be making 20,000 Escape hybrids this year, and the Honda Accord hybrid is Honda's third hybrid. With its three models, Honda is planning to sell about 50,000 hybrids this year.

Times are a changing.

Either a technology better than hybrids will be developed this year, or 2005 really will be the year of the hybrid.

More 2005 hybrid cars.