Posted on 01/31/2005 8:17:49 PM PST by newgeezer
NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - The head of Nissan Motor Co., breaking ranks with some of his leading rivals, said on Saturday that building fuel-sipping hybrid vehicles makes little sense in today's world because of their high costs.
"They make a nice story, but they're not a good business story yet because the value is lower than their costs," said Nissan Chief Executive Carlos Ghosn.
Nissan will, in fact, start manufacturing a gas-electric hybrid version of its Altima sedan for the U.S. market in 2006.
But Ghosn said the model was only intended to help Japan's second-largest automaker comply with strict fuel economy and emissions standards in states like California, not because he expects it to be a money-maker.
Nissan will license some technology for the hybrid Altima from Toyota Motor Corp., which is the world leader in hybrid production along with Honda Motor Co. Ltd.
The hybrids made by Toyota and Honda are in high demand, but production levels are still relatively small.
Toyota plans to nearly double production of its hybrid Prius car for the U.S. market this year, with production totaling some 100,000 vehicles.
Ford Motor Co. is alone among U.S. automakers in producing mass-market hybrid models; Ford recently announced plans to introduce four new models between this year and 2008.
Ghosn's comments, which are likely to draw criticism from environmental groups, came in an address to the National Automobile Dealers Association, which opened its annual convention in New Orleans on Saturday.
In his speech, he noted that only about 88,000 of the 16.9 million light vehicles sold in the United States last year were hybrids, adding that they are still considered "niche" products and something way outside the automotive mainstream.
He also poured cold water on hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, which many automakers see as the industry's next big technological breakthrough.
"The cost to build one fuel cell car is about $800,000. Do the math and you figure out that we will have to reduce the cost of that car by more than 95 percent in order to gain widespread marketplace acceptance," Ghosn said.
Ghosn, who is credited with a dramatic turnaround at Nissan, is poised to take over as chief executive at France's Renault SA in May.
His future role, simultaneously running operations at two major automakers, is thought to be an industry first.
Nissan -- owned 44 percent by Renault -- scored the biggest sales jump of any major car maker in the United States last year, with a 24 percent surge to 986,000 vehicles.
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That hits the nail on the head!
The last thing that we need is another underpowerd japanese tin can on our highways. Those cars should be limited to surface road use. Any car that takes more than 10 seconds to reach 65 MPH should be classified as urban transit and prohibited from inter-city routes.
BTT!!!!!!
It's amazing how many Greens (almost all) and policy makers (same) don't understand the first thing about Thermodynamics 101.
Excellent article.
Or more accurately, government purchases." They are using tax dollars to subsidize the sale and manufacture of useless junk cars that clog the highways.
So biblewonk, your slightest wish is my command! Good luck with your fruitless fantasies and have a nice niave and delusional life!!!
Tell 'em again, Ben!!! You da man!!!
If we followed liberal flights of fancy driven by ludite/pesimistic/selfloathing ideology, we'd be back to riding horses.
Hybrid's are simply a thermodynamic ponzy scheme.
Lol! The old muscle cars are making a comeback. Check out the rust buckets on eBay motors. You'll freak when you see what they're going for, and prices for the prime ones are unbelievable.
Hear, hear!
How are you FRiend?
BTW, the buying habits that I described above don't apply to me.
I'm the auto buyer that wants to know about the rear end/ differential.
Not too bad for an old fart.
The state of Oregon has purchased the Toyota hybrid for state vehicles. We passed one on I-5 with a bumper sticker which read, "Oregon State Vehicle."
I'll see you on the highway when you're driving you electric car at 35 mph top speed. I'll be smoking my tires at 70 in my Cobra... The one with the aluminum block. Buh, bye.
I guess the diesel engine was expensive when it first came out as an alternative to the gas engine. Hybrid engines are the wave of the future - 10 years on maybe? Hybrid engines make even more sense for gas guzzling SUVs.Which will come first, the higher demand necessary to lower cost, or a lower cost to create necessary demand? Nissan ain't waiting around for it, it would appear. Subsidizing hybrids will only last so long.
Diesel came along slowly -- Rudolf Diesel patented it in 1893. It was put to use on ships and large machines by the 1910s, but it wasn't commercialized in the US until 1920 or so, when C.L. Cummins licensed the patent for stationary engines. Cummins ran a race car on the engine in approx. 1930, and then put it to a truck. In automobiles, it never caught on until the fuel crisis, gasoline taxes, and government subsidies spurred its development in Europe.
Here for a little history on Justus B. Entz and his electromagnetic transmission, something of a sort of the hybrid concept, and related to diesel-electric locomotives.
Hybrids were built to the EPA test. One of the conditions of the EPA test is that the car starts with a fully charged battery. In a normal car, that means little, because the battery does not provide any of the motive power. However, with a Hybrid, it means the motor only has to run under hard acceleration for the duration of the city driving test, but the test is over before the engine needs to be run to recharge the battery.
Think of it this way, if you took a souped up golf cart to be tested by the EPA, you could plug it into the wall overnight to charge fully. Then you could run the whole city driving test without having to rely on anything other than stored battery power. The result of the test would be that the car gets an infinite number of miles per gallon in the city! Well, I'd buy that for a dollar!
In normal day-to-day operation, the engine has to be run to recharge the battery every time energy is taken out. And, of course, to overcome internal resistance, twice as much energy be put in as is taken out. This is an inherent inefficiency of hybrids that is overcome by the application of state of the art technology and the fact that competing vehicles are nowhere near as efficient as they could be. But nobody gets even close to the advertised milage in the city.
Ah HAH!!! Yer the automotive proctologist!!! LOL!!! (rim-shot, off in the distance)(mile wide grin!)
Thanks for clarifying that. I had heard something was up. Sort of how Nvidia and ATI were designing their new graphics cards and drivers to specifically score well on certain well known benchmarks.
I get 48mpg on my commute (75mph on the GSP).
I think that's pretty good. It's rated at 51, so yeah, getting 48 may make it overrated. But not by much. What do you get?
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