Hybrids set to bloom

Honda and Toyota's principal hybrid-drive products in this country are frugal little fuel-sippers that are far too vegan to pull a skin off anything BUT a rice pudding. The Civic Hybrid and the Prius leave consumers to question: "Is that all there is to hybrids?"

The local launch of the new Honda Accord and the presentation of the Toyota FT-HS hybrid sports car concept provided the Carsales Network with a timely opportunity to check out the lie of the land in respect of hybrid-drive vehicles and how they're travelling in our land, girt by sea.

Sales of hybrids look just about ready to accelerate away from the pack. Using the Prius as an example, Toyota advises that 8000 units have been sold in Australia, but over 3000 of those were last year alone. The more the hybrid message spreads, the faster sales will grow.

Both companies are committed to an interim period of hybrid ownership expanding rapidly. In Honda's case -- and in the here and now -- that is hampered by supply constraint.

Honda Australia's Senior Director, Lindsay Smalley explained that the Civic Hybrid sells 85 units a month, on average. That's a relatively small proportion of total Civic sales in Australia, averaging over 1200 units a month. But, to be clear about this, Honda cannot obtain any more Civic hybrid production than that. Even the conventional Civic is "supply-constrained".

"We can sell every [Civic Hybrid] we get", Smalley says. "If we promoted them, advertised them, really pushed them, we could probably move about 400 a month."

Toyota sold approximately 250 units of the Prius, per calendar month last year. Smalley believes that most of those went to government bodies, but the Civic Hybrid, with its current pricing -- over $4000 less than the Toyota -- could appeal to many more private buyers than the Prius does currently.

Some of the pressure will lift from the Civic Hybrid's shoulders if Honda can bring other hybrid models to market. The original Insight was far from commercially successful, but a spiritual successor of sorts, the CR-Z (more here), may open up the hybrid market to consumers interested in the technology beyond the purely utilitarian aspects.

Honda's MD and CEO, Yasuhide Mizuno, estimates that the CR-Z will be "two to three years" away from market here in Australia, but when it does arrive, it will possibly be priced under $40,000.

"Do you remember the CR-X? That is our [CR-Z] customer: young, however, likely concerned about the environment", says Mizuno-san.

Across town from Honda's head office in the Melbourne suburb of Tullamarine, Toyota proudly rolled out the FT-HS sports car concept to the media at the company's Port Melbourne facility.

The FT-HS (more here) is a good looking jigger, arguably better looking than Toyota's conventional sports cars over the past fifteen years, but it's a hybrid. It's no ordinary hybrid in the same mould as the Prius or the Civic, however. This is a car with a petrol V6 and traditional rear-wheel drive, up to date looks and high-tech, ergonomic design.

Doug Soden, Manager, Product Development and Engineering at Toyota, anticipates that the uptake in hybrid sales in Australia may just take off like a rocket at some time in the indeterminate future when the whole concept finally clicks in the minds of the broader car-buying public.

His analogy for this is the shift in buying habits towards turbodiesel variants of the Prado.

"You look at turbodiesel over the last few years; I've watched it on Prado for example, going from 20 per cent of the market share to 75 per cent of the market share. That's a huge step over five years. For something to change that much is very big", he said.

"I think you'll see hybrid, maybe not moving that quickly, but you'll see hybrid technology moving into vehicles at a point where you're going to see it go up like that [with the accompanying 'rocket launch' hand gesture] and then straight petrol engines will decrease to a very small amount -- or go away totally."

But that's going to be a much slower process in Australia, being a small market and specifically a right-hand drive market works against us.

"Basically, what you need to do in the end is move towards a range of vehicles and that's what Toyota has done globally -- not necessarily in Australia; our volumes are comparatively low for all vehicles -- but globally, there's a hybrid Tarago, a hybrid RAV4, a hybrid Kluger, a hybrid Camry and there's Prius.

"So moving along, you see the volumes of those things increase -- and Toyota's targets are quite strong; a million vehicles a year that are hybrid...", says Soden.

"The volume isn't large enough in Australia. For example, with Tarago -- 350, 400 units a month -- for us to bring out a hybrid, the cost is appreciably higher in a hybrid vehicle -- the cost to build -- so then you're adding more cost to it. The volume would be so low, that it would force us to set the [price] of the vehicle so high."

As economies of scale improve then, the relative cost of introducing a wider range of hybrid-drive models will reduce. Soden sees a real future for the technology, pointing out its adoption in Hino trucks and suggesting that hybrids could be fuelled by hydrogen or diesel as well as petrol.

He actually rates hybrids as being a better option for Australia (being a highly urban-dwelling country) than turbodiesel vehicles.

"Turbodiesels are excellent for distant driving, consistent speed [and] consistent throttle modulation. So they're good for rural areas and the long distance driving that Australians tend to do, but for Australians that are in the city, turbodiesels tend to be worse than a petrol engine, from an emissions perspective", he explained.

Both the CR-Z and FT-HS represent the leading edge of a clever tactic to entice consumers into more environmentally friendly cars -- not through a call for global altruism or reducing running costs, but by appealing to the heart, just like any other car-buying decision.

So, the future for hybrid-drive car manufacturers is so bright, they have to wear shades. Of course, that might be due to a side effect of global warming and the breakdown of the ozone layer.

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