Gals and Guys who know hybrids and know how important they are;

There is a man and a company who is making news with a serious "anti-hybrid" agenda. The man's name is Art Spinella, and he is the president of CNW Research, the company which recently put out the "dust to dust energy usage" analysis which delcared that a Hummer uses less energy dust to dust than a Prius.

One problem with his data: He assumed a 300,000 mile life for the Hummer and only a 100,000 mile life for the Prius. This means Priuses are getting built and destroyed at a 3 to 1 ratio of the Hummer - so of course it will use more energy in that false scenario !!!

He is now continuing his anti-hybrid propaganda. Here is the latest from Forbes website:

http://www.forbesautos.com/news/feat...n-hybrids.html
I know lots of hybrid owners, and none of them are getting any "out the door incentives" like Mr. Spinella describes. I'd like him to do some REAL RESEARCH and FIND some of those hybrid buyers who are getting these incentives. They DO NOT EXIST !!!! What about the sales number for Hybrids? Still UP UP UP, Mr. Spinella !!! This man has an anti-hybrid agenda, and he has a way to get publicity, and he will be hurting the hybrid car movement.

This is bad for EVERYONE.

I encourage each of you to Google his data reports, and look for websites and forums where people are BELIEVING his crap data, and refute it.

He is being paid by someone to give hybrids an ongoing black eye. He talks up GM a lot, so it may be them. They may be tired of Toyota getting all the hybrid kudos and have hired him as a "hybrid assassin."

Let's not let him get away with this crap !! Let's refute him left and right, because he is flat wrong, and this is hurting the hybrid movement.

Thanks !!!

I think the duped consumers will be the victim.

The truth about hybrids will come out - he might just slow it.

61.5mpg lifetime - 82mpg in recent months

Best Run >
www.cleanmpg.com

"fanatic" is what the lazy call the dedicated

I agree he is just slowing it - but any slowing at all is bad news. Each hybrid unsold because a consumer believes his crap is more dirty air for all of us !!!

It just irritates me to no end that he has a national forum and we, the hybrid believers, have way less of a forum for our views (facts) and cannot get them on Forbes like he did..... GGGGRRRRRR !!!!

Hi,
I've already subscribed to a Google news alert for articles that cite "CNW Marketing" and depending upon the content, send a 'letter to the editor' correcting the article citing independently verifiable facts and data. I often share my finding with folks in the Journalism section. But I don't mind a helping hand.

In the case of the Forbes article, I probably won't send a note because "CNW Marketing" plays a minor part in the article about Plug-in hybrids. There was a leading paragraph that showed 190,000+ hybrid registrations, which pretty much blew "CNW Marketing's' claims out of the water. BUT don't let my reluctance hold anyone back.

You might do a search in the Journalism group for "CNW Marketing" and see some of our past efforts. I'm never one to turn down help or another good idea.

Bob Wilson

Operation Iraqi Oil Freedom:

Automatic, stock, project car.

My other 1500 cc car:

Automatic, stock, backup car.
Free speech, dialog and knowledge thrives without the poison of SPAM.

Funny how he claims a reduced interest in hybrid cars. Toyota just released it's July sales info. Total of 105,808 hybrids already sold this year!

Prius sales up to 11,114 from July of 2005 (9,619), an increase of 19.3%

Camry Hybrid sales increased to 5,023 from 4,268 in June 2006.
Highlander Hybrid sales increased to 2962 from 2705 in June 2006.

Doesn't look like interest is fading to me

Let me talk to my cousins No-Neck Vito and Vinny the Chin. I'm sure they could persuade Mr. Spinella to see things more clearly.

That's a nice company ya got there. Would be a shame if something happened to it.

Let's see, if I adjust my household budget to accomodate higher gas prices, I have less money to spend on other stuff. Simply adjusting it does not ease the pain. (Not to mention that many other costs rise in reaction to higher gas prices). The money has to come from somewhere or else I have less "discrentionary income" available.

However, if I can cut my fuel consumption because of improved fuel usage efficiencies then my budget adjustment is less severe. It is still there because of the rising costs of other goods, though.

It seems that dear Mr. Spinella is immune to this because he has an infinite supply of fuel. He simply generates more everytime he writes a report.

Fortunately he has no "hidden" agenda, or else I would be really concerned.

Mike

I know I'm preaching to the choir here but...

The comparisons are far from apples to apples and the conclusions are extremely short sighted. For example, there is an implied assumption that the Hummer will always use it's simple engine and emissions controls. However, that is obviously wrong. As inevitable as taxes, vehicles currently exempt from stringent emission requirements will eventually need to be reengineered to comply with tighter requirements (probably as soon as next year). I predict the dust to dust energy cost of the Hummer is only destined to go up, while the cost for hybrids will decline. And if the requirement for introducing any new technology is that it has to be cheaper from the git go as the established technology it is replacing, we'd still be paddling wooden canoes. AFTER hybrids have had 100 years of equivalent development that a conventional automobile has been through, IF the costs remain higher THEN you can conclude it's not worth doing. That would be an apples to apples comparison.

In addition, some statements in the Reason article are simply wrong. The statement that most sticks out to me is: "But the biggest reason why a Hummer's energy use is so low is that it shares many components with other vehicles and therefore its design and development energy costs are spread across many cars. It is not possible to do this with a specialty product like hybrid." In fact, hybrid manufacturers are doing just that. In Toyota's case, for example, they are using the same technology across multiple vehicle models already, and learning more as they do it. The 2008 Prius is suppose to get better than 90 mpg in part because of what Toyota has learned from the first two Prius versions. That's absolutely incredible.

The “Dust to dust” paper seems to concentrate on manufacturing costs, sales costs and disposal costs. I don't know if their numbers are correct or not, but the report says nothing about costs related to empowering the operation of the vehicle. The costs I’m talking about is the cost of protecting the mid east oil fields and the ocean trade lanes with the US military, as well as the cost to the environment and the health of the population. Security expenses related to protecting oil wells costs somewhere between $2 to possibly as much as $12 per gallon. Right now, the Iraq war is directly costing us in excess of $1 for every gallon of gas you buy (last year we burned 200 billion gallons of gas and the war cost over $300 billion so far). The expense of cleaning up the environment or negating the effects of global warming are becoming unmanageable (and may in fact threaten the survivability of the human race if things get too far out of hand). I’m not going to argue that mankind is, or is not, contributing to global warming. We are, however, deciding to spend money, resources, and energy combating global warming. The cost of that battle can be, and should be, in part associated with the levels of CO2 emissions from our vehicles. How much does polution affecting our health cost us? No one knows. But I think it's safe to say that less polution costs us less in health care terms.

One graph in the report made me laugh. The graph shows the premium people are willing to pay for a hybrid is declining. The funny part was the same graph showed the premium being charged also declining at the same time. Hmmm, people are less willing to pay a premium if they don't have to? ****, someone alert the marketing department!

So, simply stated, these guys seem to have a view horizon equal to just over a few months. Personally, I think we had better start looking out a few decades.

In closing, I'd like to say "be cool and keep the faith" (). If the average consumer really felt the way the Reason article says (losing interest in hybrids), Toyota wouldn't be reporting record full-year profits. I have a couple of predictions myself: The cost of gasoline/diesel isn't going down and consumers' desire for improving fuel efficiency isn't going away.

Thank you.

Dave May

LOL

Yep, that would do it !!!


But seriously, I agree with Bob - more specifically the approach he's been recommending.

We should not engage Mr. Spinella or his so called "Research " company directly. Doing so elevates him to more relevancy than he deserves and lowers us to his level.

Instead, we can do far more by disseminating the true facts about Hybrid ownership from our own collective experiences and the pure empirical data we possess.

I also believe that because Mr. Spinella no longer represents ignorance (in the innocent sense), he should not be our target primary strategic target. As Bob suggests, our strategic target should be those who are still ignorant, do not perform proper journalistic research and end up using CNW's "research results" without further scrutiny.

I just break up laughing when I mention "CNW's Research".


Cheers;


MSantos

Hey, you guys are doing a great job on putting this in perspective. I agree with virtually everything posted so far. Letters to the Editor is a good idea. Promoting hybrids on their obvious values is a good idea. Attacking the ignorance which is STILL around, after so many hundreds of thousands of hybrids have been sold - good idea again.

We should just make sure we counter this guy when we can with FACTS of our own in place of his assumptions, guesstimates, and flat out false data.