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Hybrids' Rising Sun
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Tom Simonds
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Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2004 2:07 am Post subject: Hybrids' Rising
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Hybrids' Rising Sun
Gas-electric cars are transforming the auto industry. Toyota's head
start has Detroit scrambling to catch up.
Green power: No longer cramped eco-cars, new hybrids at Toyota's
factory in Tsutsumi, Japan, will compete for horsepower-loving U.S.
drivers. (Photographs by Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert)
By Peter Fairley
April 2004
Banners two meters tall outside Toyota Motor's sprawling factory in
Tsutsumi, Japan, scream "Hybrid," the word emblazoned over an image
of the earth. Inside, beneath signs reading "Yoi shina, yoi kangae"
("Good thinking, good products"), assemblers in blue jackets and
white gloves turn out about 400 of Toyota's newly designed Prius
hybrid sedans every day.
Apart from the signage, it looks much like any other automotive
factory floor-and that's what's remarkable. The Prius, which uses
both a gasoline engine and an electric motor for propulsion, gets an
average of 55 miles to the gallon-about double the mileage of a
comparable gasoline car. What's more, the latest model rolling off
the factory floor at Tsutsumi doesn't sacrifice power or comfort and
sells for only about $1,000 more than a base model of Toyota's mid-
size sedan, the Camry.
And the Prius is only a preview of Toyota's ambitious plans for the
new hybrid technology. By the end of this year, the automaker plans
to sell a luxury sport utility vehicle using the technology-a hybrid
Lexus-in the United States. Within a decade, say Toyota executives,
the gas-electric combination could be offered in every category of
vehicle the automaker sells, from subcompacts to heavy-duty pickup
trucks. "When Toyota's SUVs hit the market, and people see what a
really powerful hybrid electric vehicle can do, I think it's going to
rattle a few cages," says former General Motors chairman Robert
Stempel, who chairs Rochester Hills, MI-based technology developer
Energy Conversion Devices.
In the next few years, the six top sellers of cars in the United
States plan to roll out a range of hybrid cars and light trucks. New
models include "full hybrids," which add all-electric propulsion to
the traditional engine, and so-called mild hybrids, in which a less
extensive electric system supplements the engine or does things like
stop and restart the engine at traffic lights.
You can be forgiven for thinking that fuel cells, which use hydrogen
to produce electricity, were the auto industry's next new thing. GM
and other automakers have for years shown off various versions of
fuel cell prototypes that do away entirely with the internal-
combustion engine (see "Electricity-Producing Vehicles," TR December
2002/January 2003). But it will be at least five years-and more like
a decade, according to many experts-before a fuel cell car is cheap
enough for the mass market. Then there's the challenge of storing
sufficient hydrogen, the lack of hydrogen filling stations, and the
problem of producing hydrogen in the first place. In contrast,
hybrids are available now, and they fuel up at the local pump. Toyota
alone expects to sell 130,000 Prius hybrids in 2004. Throw in the
hybrid Lexus slated for export and a handful of Japan-only hybrid
models, and the company's sales of gas-electric vehicles should
easily top 150,000-a figure that Toyota says could double by 2006.
While that is a small fraction of Toyota's total sales-which hit
nearly 6.8 million in 2003-it is still a big number for an
unconventional automotive technology.
Indeed, gas-electric hybrids are the first significant break with
carmakers' total reliance on the internal-combustion engine in nearly
a century. And the implications of a widespread switchover to gas-
electric hybrids are immense for both consumers and the auto
industry. Even bumping up the average gas mileage of U.S. vehicles to
a modest 40 miles per gallon by 2012 would mean the United States
could trim its oil consumption by three million barrels per day-more
than it imports from all the Persian Gulf countries. And though
buyers would have to pay more initially for gas-electric hybrids,
they could save, on average, $5,000 at the gas pump over the 15-year
life of a vehicle.
