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Cars: Join the Revolution
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Hybrids and the Geneva Auto show
Wednesday, March 02, 2005
While hybrid
cars haven't produced quite the buzz at the Geneva Auto show
as they did at the North American International Auto show, they
are still an important part of the mix. Reuters
is reporting that while diesels have become the vehicle of choice
in Europe, hybrids aim to challenge for markeshare.
Yoshio Ishizaka, executive vice president and board member at
Japan's Toyota Motor Co., the world's second-biggest carmaker,
stated "Hybrid is really not an intermediate technology. We
think hybrid is the technology we have to see for the
future," he told Reuters in an interview, predicting it would
become the global standard and even power sports cars some day.
Toyota plans to sell about 20,000 Prius
hybrids in Europe next year and will also be releasing the Lexus
RX400h hybrid as well.
Even Ford, which currently sells the Escape
hybrid, plans on Jaguar and LandRover hybrids in the next five
years.
Still, others think that fuel cells might only be 10 years away,
and that both diesels and hybrids are but a short term
distraction. "...both the diesel car and hybrid car are a
transition as we head to fuel cell cars or pure electric
cars," states Laurent Aebi, a product specialist at Honda
Motor Co.
"Fuel cell technology is far, far away, maybe 10 or 20
years," Toyota's Ishizaka replied. "Even if it catches
on, fuel cells will still use much of the power technology
developed by hybrids," he added.
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