JD Power: US hybrid, plug-in and diesel sales to remain sluggish

US industry analyst JD Power predicts that demand for hybrids and EVs will remain low for at least the next five years. Bloomberg reports that even with fuel prices on the rise, Power says consumer interest in alternative powertrains remains under a shadow of doubt, based on cost, practicality and range. The report also says diesel passenger cars remain slow sellers in the States because of residual perceptions of diesel as dirtier than petrol -- even though the more advanced oilers emerging from Europe, Japan and Korea are cleaner.

Californian-based JD Power's US Green Automotive Study of 4000 US consumers concluded that the majority are interested in alternative power-trains and on the whole take a positive view of them. Fifty-one per cent would consider buying a hybrid model such as Toyota's Prius or Honda's Insight; 37 per cent would consider a PHEV such as GM's upcoming Volt (pictured); 31 per cent expressed interest in diesel models. As the newest and therefore least developed of these technologies, EVs had the least appeal, with 26 per cent of respondents saying they would consider one.

But cost and uncertainty about range still takes precedence, so "converting this interest into actual sales will require concerted efforts to improve the technology and infrastructure and reduce the cost to consumers," JD Power said. And while auto makers and marketers consider ways of doing that, demand for hybrids and EVs will likely account for less than 10 per cent of US sales until at least 2016.

Despite the rising profile of vehicles like the Tesla Roadster, Nissan's Leaf and the Volt, government incentives and the media space given to alternative powertrain models, Bloomberg's own data shows that hybrids accounted for just 2.5 per cent of auto sales in 2010.

For hybrids -- of which there is a considerably greater choice in the US than in Australia -- JD Power puts this down to reservations over cost premiums next to conventional petrol vehicles; for EVs and PHEVs there's the added issue of range limitations.

"It is the financial issues that most often resonate with consumers, whether it is the higher price of the vehicle itself, the cost to fuel or charge the vehicle, or the fear of higher maintenance costs," Mike VanNieuwkuyk, JD Power's executive director of global vehicle research said in a statement. "Most consumers want to be green, but not if there is a significant personal cost to them."

For EVs, consumer concern comes down to high relative cost and range anxiety issues. New generation 'clean' diesels, however, did not fare much better, even though they use an established IC technology refined over decades to become typically cleaner and more fuel efficient than their petrol counterparts.

Power puts this down to lingering consumer concerns about price per gallon, the availability of fuel -- despite its ubiquity in trucks -- and what VanNieuwkuyk describes as "a lingering perception that diesel is 'dirty,'."

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