http://www.forbesautos.com/news/feat...008-story.html

CNW Marketing claiming 338,851 hybrids were sold in 2007 looks a little on the high side. I wonder if it includes the used hybrids?

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.

According to following site, the number was almost 350,000 hybrids in 2007.
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008...ed-us-hyb.html

Ken@Japan

Thank you,

This second source has a lot of credibility but one late thought about the Forbes article was the impact of small, gas-only car sales.

In the USA, that market has been hobbled by offering the cheapest possible piece of cr*p that can pass a safety inspection. The low end, USA cars have been treated pretty much 'junk' except for many of the imports. This comes from the attitude that if you are trying to save gas, you are a tightwad who will put up with manual everything, pot-metal parts and a car that will have to be replaced in say, 109,000 miles.

This is the hubris that led the major USA manufacturers to produce so many horrible, small cars in the past. It is the reputation, deserved or not, still follows them. It took a Yugo to find something to replace the Chevette as the worst small car in the USA (only because the East German, two-cycle, Trabant couldn't pass the emissions test.) Hummm, perhaps they were imported to suggest how bad Communist products could be?

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.

Gotta look at all the angles Bob!

Care to comment on the Tata "Nano"?
World's cheapest car ( $2500 U.S. ) going on sale this year in India.
( Not legal for U.S. import... zero airbags... but it does have recycled shoe laces for seat belts.

Then there is the slightly more expensive, but not much ( $8500? ) air car.
Tata motors I think has signed to start manufacturing cars that run on compressed air. You can fill the 4000 psi air tanks in about 4 hours with a plug-in compressor at home I guess... and get 40 miles of driving. Releasing the compressed air gives you free air conditioning ( good for India ) but no ICE, so no heat for us Minnesota drivers!

I guess you can get one with, or without a small lawnmower engine to run a compressor if you are away from grid power. Sorry I lost the link.

The Indian air car uses pistons just like an ICE.
There is an Austrailian inventor who has an air car with a rotary engine... runs by something like turbine vanes. They are already in use for trucks and carts that need to run indoors, like shipping warehouses.