commentary by Michael L. Bromley
copyright 2005

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... of Automobiles

Jun 8/2007: Toyota's global hybrid sales top million

Clarification: that's a million units over ten years.

A decade after the first Prius went on sale, Toyota's global sales of hybrid vehicles have hit a landmark 1 million, underlining the Japanese automaker's lead in "green" technology that has changed the face of the auto industry.

Toyota Motor Corp.'s cumulative sales of gas-and-electric-powered vehicles totaled 1.047 million as of the end of May. Of those, nearly 345,000 hybrids were sold in Japan, while 702,000 were sold abroad, the company said in a statement Thursday.

Not bad: over ten years, averaging 70,000 cars sold a year in the U.S., with most of that coming in the last few years, of course. But is it really that impressive? I mean, 700,000 cars is a lot of cars, even 70,000 cars is a lot. But is it really that big a deal?

Let's see: to what can we make a legitimate comparison?

- Ethanol cars? Brazilian cars? GM's E-85 machines? Na.
- Economy cars, generally?
But that defeats the purpose of the hybrid,
which is to bring economy to all size cars. Big nope there.
- SUVs, another government-created auto anomaly?
Nah, we've covered that story enough here.

Heh, how bout this: ugly ass cars? Let see what happens!

Chevrolet HHR: the factory claims that they'll hit 80-100,000 units next year; so we can guess half as many will result.
Chrysler PT Cruiser: 119,000 units / year over last five years
VW Beetle: 42,000 (peak sales: 83,000 in 1999)
Honda Element: 53,000
Scion xB: 55,000

(I'm getting these stats from here)

Is 100,000 hybrids a year really that much? I mean, look at those cars in the list above: they're freak cars. And cumulatively they add up to a far freaking more vehicle sales than all the hybrids combined. Hell, in one year they together sell half as many of them beasts as were hybrids sold in ten years!

Even discounting the VW retro-Bug and the PT Cruiser (whose sole salvation lies in its cool name), quick math tells us that funky-ass ugly cars still sell better than hybrids:

      
Honda Element                                Chevy HHR                

  
Scion xB                                    Ice Cream Truck              

Even without Ice Cream Trucks, the Element, the HHR, and the Scion add up to 150,000+ units a year. You were asking about hybrids, so you did want pathetic, no?

Looks like ugly sells, be it standard internal combustion or batteries included.

Btw, the Toyota Prius sold about 110,000 units in 2006. The rest of hybrid sales are variants of existing model lines. Hybrids are becoming interesting and significant alternatives, but they remain just that: alternatives.

So, what flavor Ice Cream will you?

Hopefully not one of these::

Yahoo News search results for "Ice Cream Trucks
(click for pop-up of search results: warning! scary!)

Who knew?

(Actually, when I was a kid, one ice cream truck driver sold nickel bags of dope in front of my Junior High school... the principal got to wondering why the kids were so enthusiastic about Good Humor bars.... Truly, there's nothing new under the sun.)
 

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