Automakers are finally getting serious about hybrids, expanding their gas-electric car offerings, and retooling gas-guzzling pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles for the hybrid marketplace.
With prices at the pump rising and environmental concerns mounting,
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Carmakers have also been experimenting with new alternative fueled vehicles, propulsion designs, and technologies, ranging from dieselpowered and electric plug-in cars to new engine management systems and other devices that boost fuel efficiency.
US hybrid sales climbed 32.5 percent to 340,000 last year from 256,000 in 2006, according to estimates by Global Insight Inc., a Waltham-based market intelligence firm. That's a small fraction of the more than 200 million cars on US roads, but the growth rate - fewer than 10,000 hybrids were sold in 2000 - has grabbed automakers' attention.
"We'll be launching a new hybrid on average every three months for the next four years," said Micky Bly, GM's director of global hybrid vehicle integration. By 2011, GM will offer 16 hybrids, nearly a quarter of its product line, but they are expected to account for less than 10 percent of sales. "Our strategy is to go after the higher-consuming vehicles and the higher-volume vehicles," Bly said.
That means heavy-duty SUVs and trucks. GM is marketing a "two-mode" hybrid system for city and highway driving. That system, already in use on SUVs such as the Chevrolet Tahoe and GMC Yukon, will power Saturn Vue Green Line utility vehicles and Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra trucks being introduced this year. All will offer greater fuel economy than comparable all-gas models, but at a higher cost.
"There are a lot of choices out there now," said Paul Lacy, manager for technical research at Global Insight's automotive office in Troy, Mich. "We're going to see quite a bit of further growth, but a lot of it will be existing hybrid systems migrating to more vehicle lines. And we're going to start seeing a proliferation of technologies that will improve fuel economy without sacrificing performance."
That's not to say automakers will be scrap ping their conventional models soon.
"Green vehicles" have become popular among well-heeled luminaries seeking to reduce their carbon footprints - Senator John Kerry, quarterback Eli Manning, and celebrity Paris Hilton are among GM's high-profile customers - but for average consumers it still takes too long for their hybrids' fuel economy gains to offset their higher sticker prices. Depending on the model, the annual mileage, the speed, and the load factor, auto analysts have estimated it takes hybrid owners three to 15 years to recoup the premium they paid for their environmentally friendly ride.
While hybrid compacts can get close to 50 miles per gallon, some hybrid pickups still get less than 20 miles per gallon, and hybrid SUVs get only around 30 miles per gallon, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
But as the hybrid fleet reaches critical mass, and automakers introduce second-generation technology, fuel economy is expected to improve and the economics to turn in favor of hybrids.
"The more people that come into the market, the more it validates what we've been doing all along," said Bill Reinert, national alternative fuel manager for Toyota Motor Sales in Torrance, Calif. "Some of the companies that were dismissing the Prius as a public relations stunt are now bringing out hybrids themselves."
Though there are variations, the typical hybrid system is a conventional gas engine combined with one or more battery-powered electric motors. When drivers sit in traffic or wait at a light, the car can stop and restart or the motor can do the work, reducing idle emissions; when they accelerate, the gas engine kicks in. Full hybrids can run on just the engine, just the motor, or a combination of both.
New hybrids also work in tandem with other technologies, such as systems that shut down half the engine cylinders when the car is running at constant speed, variable valve-timing devices that regulate the opening and closing of valves depending on engine use, and direct injection devices that eliminate fuel rails and send fuel right into cylinders. As second-generation hybrids enter the marketplace, such technologies will help them boost their fuel efficiency.
And automakers are already working on next-generation technologies that would remove fossil fuel from the equation altogether. GM, for example, has developed a concept electric vehicle, the Chevrolet Volt, that can be fully charged by plugging it into a 110-volt outlet overnight. Such a car, which could enter production as early as 2010, wouldn't require gas for daily commutes up to 20 miles.
Beyond the electric car, the Holy Grail of automotive research and development is the hydrogen fuel-cell car, which GM, Toyota, and other automakers hope to roll out in the next decade.
"The real question is oil independence," said GM's Bly. "We're trying to take our vehicles out of the environmental debate. The ultimate goal is a fuel-cell vehicle, which has zero usage of crude oil and zero emissions. But that's years in the future. Right now the hybrids are an interim step where we can make significant improvements."
Robert Weisman can be reached at weisman@globe.com.
