The king of hybrid cars
For years now GM has been on the verge of toppling Toyota's hybrid cars according to GM's Bob Lutz. The dual mode hybrid powertrain was to be more sophisticated. The BAS mild hybrid was to be cheaper.
Neither has been competitive.
Might all that change when the Chevy Volt beats Toyota to market with a plug-in hybrid vehicle?
How is that even possible, some might ask? How could GM beat the king of hybrid cars to the plug-in hybrid market?
To answer that question, one needs to step back in time several years.
Just a decade ago, Toyota's Prius plans were an utter joke in the auto industry. Auto executives, such as Lutz, mocked Toyota's hybrids relentlessly. Yet, Toyota even upped the ante on this joke when they announced several years ago that they would be selling 1,000,000 hybrid vehicles per year worldwide in the first half of the next decade.
LOL, GM would have tweeted, if only tweeting had been around back then.
Yet, based on last month's sales numbers, Toyota is on pace to sell well over 1/2 million hybrid cars per year by 2010. And, with several new and important hybrids set to reach production in the next few years, it's beginning to seem almost a certainty that Toyota will achieve its 1,000,000 hybrids per year prediction before 2015. In fact, by 2020 Toyota expects a full 30 percent of its entire fleet to be hybrid.
So, again, how is GM beating Toyota to market on plug-in hybrid cars, even producing a plug-in with greater EV range than a Toyota Prius plug-in hybrid?
I have to admit, I'm a bit perplexed as well.
While GM was still trying to figure out the body shape of the Volt concept, Toyota was busily testing more than 100 plug-in Prius hybrids in every real world condition imaginable. They even found out that these lithium-powered plug-in hybrids were safe and reliable.
But they also found out they would be expensive, too expensive for most consumers. Plug-ins would not be the driver of the auto industry for decades, Toyota realized. Consequently, being first to market with such vehicles would be about marketing, not reality.
And, since GM has always been a better marketer than Toyota, GM seized this hype-filled opportunity.
For this Toyota has again been mocked. And, while letting GM beat Toyota to market with plug-in hybrids is probably a mistake, it is almost certain to be a short-lived moment of glory for GM.
Essentially every serious study on the subject hasn't only validated Toyota's plug-in realizations, theses studies have suggested that if plug-in hybrids are successful, they will probably be short range plug-in hybrids almost exactly like the Toyota Prius plug-in hybrid, rather than the Chevy Volt.
In essence, smaller battery packs will offer better cost-effectiveness for consumers, and cost-effectiveness is a key driver for most auto consumers.
Now, certainly, it is possible that some huge battery breakthrough could change this fundamental dynamic, but why bet the future on an assumption? Likewise, if some battery breakthrough does change this dynamic, I'm quite certain that Toyota will be able to capitalize on such technology.
In the interim, however, Toyota will be on a path towards selling millions of hybrids per year, as well as one of the most cost-effective plug-in hybrids on the market. And that's by 2020, a full decade before the mass adoption of plug-in vehicles is supposed to finally pick up pace.
And the hybrid joke is on who?
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