Well... Toyota and Honda might have initally lost money on hybrids, but now that their respective systems have proven to work *very well* over a long period of time, I imagine that they can quickly turn big profits by licensing out the technology to companies that either waited too long, were too lazy to develop, too incompetent to develop, or just plain too cheap to develop their own fully-functional hybrid systems. Let's face it: Honda's IMA drive is a completely awesome mild hybrid system. When GM's crap, psudo-"mild" hybrid (BAS) falls flat, who do you think they'll turn to? Likewise, Toyota's Synergy drive is like something out of Star Trek, when compared to BAS. I really think that when the GM/DC/Wannabes' half-baked systems crack up, there will be two licensed products: IMA for mild hybrid applications and Synergy for full hybrid applications.

I sort of look at it like developing software. Sure, you have to pay a lot of people a lot of money to make the product, but the licensing quickly puts the project into the black.