Green Options

According to CEO Carlos Ghosn, unlike its other Japanese rivals, Nissan has made a strategic decision to cede the standalone hybrid wars to them and will not make hybrid-only models such as Toyota’s Prius or Honda’s Insight.

The American hybrid landscape is shifting under our feet.

With the perceptible movement of a slow landslide, Ford hybrid sales have been dramatically increasing over the last year—sales in September were up 73% from last September. According to Automotive News (subs. req’d), this brings Ford within a few thousand units of overtaking Honda to become the second largest seller of hybrids in America.

These numbers are significant because, according to Ford hybrid marketing manager David Finnegan, “More than 60 percent of Fusion Hybrid sales have been from non-Ford owners, and more than half of those are customers coming from import brands, mostly from Toyota and Honda.”

Confirming Finnegan’s assessment, the established hybrid juggernaut, Toyota, has seen sales of its hybrids plummet 28% in the same time period. Toyota still blows all the hybrid competition out of the water—capturing nearly 66% of all US hybrid sales—but the speed with which the changes are taking place certainly bodes well for a healthy and competitive hybrid marketplace in the future.

“Premium … (adjective): finest, exceptional; premium quality.” So says Chambers Dictionary anyway. For me it usually translates to “bloody expensive”.

Come to think of it, that’s also a good description of the Lexus range: priced between $32,000 and $106,000, “cheap” is not the first word which springs to mind.

To many Americans, India is just another one of those countries with LOTS of people in the general vicinity of China where they sometimes get routed when they call customer support with questions about why the new HP they just bought won’t turn on.

And that’s a shame, really, because India has so much to offer. From excellent food to the funky movie scene, India has some pretty great stuff. And now we can add another bean to India’s basket — the country has been stealthily gaining a reputation with auto manufacturers as the place to build fuel-efficient, small cars for export to the rest of the world.

Where is the mainstream media when you need them? Probably off chasing another Micheal Jackson’s baby’s daddy. But they could do a lot more use into investigating the court case of Paice LLC vs. Toyota. In the lawsuit filed by Paice against Toyota, Paice claims that several of Toyota’s popular hybrid models infringe on patents held by Paice. Having won a similar case back in 2005, Paice is now seeking an exclusion that would keep Toyota hybrid imports from entering the U.S.

Total US hybrid sales jumped 48.6% in August from last August, buoyed up by Cash for Clunkers.

We Americans did the right patriotic thing with our clunker money last month, it turns out. We bought more American. And we bought more hybrid cars.  Ford was the big winner, making a big dent in Toyota’s hybrid sales.

Consumer reports tells us that 80% would rather buy US cars and 46% of us now prefer fuel efficient cars.

In an effort to drum up attention and support for their algae-based biofuel, Sapphire Energy has announced they will conduct a coast-to-coast journey in their “Algaeus” plug-in hybrid. Part electric hybrid, part biofuel vehicle, Sapphire claimes the Algaeus will get 150 miles per gallon from its hybrid/biofuel drivetrain.

The Algaeus will visit 10 cities, starting in San Francisco on September 8th and ending in New York City on the 18th.

The economy is down, but here is another sign that green technology may be the way out of our economic dilemma. US clean energy patents hit a record high last quarter.

Scanning the week’s news of the leading fleet magazine, more than half the headlines are focused on automotive manufacturers including Toyota, Ford, Nissan and their commitment to greening of their fleets by moving to electric vehicle technologies.

For example, Nissan plans to use a $1.6 billion U.S. loan to rework a Tennessee factory so that battery-powered cars can be manufactured there. Ford Motor Company said it has developed an intelligent vehicle-to-grid communications and control system for its plug-in hybrid electric vehicles that “talks” with the nation’s electric grid.

Indeed it is exciting to read on a daily basis how much closer we are to the reality of EV’s for consumers and fleets.  Fleets will be the first mass adopters of EVs and PHEVs. We are already seeing businesses, government agencies, cities and countries across the world that are making significant and meaningful steps to reducing their fuel costs, our nation’s dependence on imported fuel, and our carbon footprint by converting their gas guzzling and polluting fleets to eco friendly EV’s…but what about the infrastructure needed to support such vehicles?  Is there different technology needed to support EV fleets vs. consumer EVs?  Just what are the needs of fleet managers when it comes to EV fleets?

No doubt many of you have read or heard about David Nichol’s woodgas F-150. I came across it during a media hailstorm a few months ago (which has since petered out). But while I was doing research on the One-Gallon Challenge, I saw that David’s truck was going to be participating. I gathered up my camera and notepad and my best friend (who I sort of tricked into coming) and took the drive to Greenfield Mass. last Wednesday night to get a look at this truck, and other fuel-sippers in person.

I learned a whole lot more than I bargained for.

The Toyota Prius is among the most popular cars under the Cash For Clunkers program right now. But many people who want one will have to wait, as production of the popular hybrid has slowed because of a battery shortage. The supplier of Prius batteries, Panasonic EV Energy, can not keep up with Toyota’s 500,000  annual Prius capacity. While Panasonic EV says it should have its production capacity ramped up to a million units annually by mid-2010, this begs the bigger question;

Will battery packs hold back hybrid production and development?