Inderscience Publishers. "Hybrid Electric Vehicles Not As Green As They Are Painted, Analysts Contend."
ScienceDaily 8 February 2008. 8 February 2008 <
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0207094314.htm >.
Quote:
. . .
The researchers have analyzed the spread of this technology including the non-financial driving factors for its adoption. They point out that most manufacturers are rapidly integrating hybrid electric vehicles into their technology portfolio, despite the absence of significant profitability.
They add that the misinformed craze for hybrid vehicles especially in the USA, and increasingly in Japan and Europe, and potentially in China, could represent a red light for more innovative technologies, such as viable fuel-cell cars that can use sustainably sourced fuels, such as hydrogen. They concur with earlier studies that suggest that hydrogen fuel cells will not be marketable in high volumes before at least 2025. This could, however, be too late for some models of climate change and emissions reduction. They also point out that even fuel cell technology has its drawbacks and much of the marketing surrounding its potential has emerged only from the hydrogen lobby itself.
"There is a general convergence of strategies towards promoting hybrid vehicles as the mid-term solution to very low-emission and high-mileage vehicles," the researchers assert, "this is largely due to Toyota's strategy of learning the technology, while building up its own 'quasi-standard', thanks to its high-quality and reliability reputation and its high market share on the North American market." They add that, "Such a convergence is based more on customer perception triggered by very clever marketing and communication campaigns than on pure rationale scientific arguments and may result in the need for any manufacturer operating in the USA to have a hybrid electric vehicle in its model range in order to survive." . . .
|
A subscription to this "Journal" lists in Amazon for $766 per year, four issues, or $192 for one issue. So to read the original article, not this synopsis, is pretty expensive. However, this is the second time I've seen "profitability" listed as a criticism from a European source. It had also been a claim by CNW Marketing. Earlier claims of a profitability problem seem to have ignored the investment cost of mastering a technology followed by the eventual transition to profitable manufacturing as economies of scale and improved engineering show up on the assembly line.
What I find most amusing is the claim that hybrids might delay the introduction of hydrogen cars ". . . not be marketable in high volumes before at least 2025." So a hybrid car today causes hydrogen cars to be further delayed, what HUMBUG!
The referenced source is only a synopsis of an original article that is prohibitively expensive. So I can only imagine what must be going on in the minds of those who pay so much to read what sounds like, even in this synopsis, to be an advocacy piece with obvious contradictions.
Bob Wilson