Talking About Automobiles

Eco-cars… green cars… hybrid cars or electric cars… or whatever you call it… these are what hot for people these days. In fact, it is the hottest subject of conversation at this year’s Tokyo Motor Show.

In the event, several major automotive companies, including Toyota, Honda and General Motors, flaunted their latest ideas and plans for hybrid vehicles. Going hybrid (using a combination of traditional fuel and electric or battery power) has caught the public imagination.

Toyota Motor Corp., the world’s largest automaker, showed off its Prius. The company was able to have 7500 units of the vehicle sold in the UK for the first nine months of this year, showing a very big improvement from approximately 5000 units for the whole of 2006. And so, they are expecting to have about 400,000 units sold around the world this year. Aware of the heightening demands for hybrid, it has unveiled the next generation, the 1/X. It has a lightweight carbon-fiber body, making it a third of the weight and twice as efficient as the Prius.

General Motor Corp., an American multinational corporation, has been working on its hybrid, the Volt, which will be out by 2010. And, Mitsubishi, a Japanese automaker, works on its electric car, the i-Car, which will be available in the market in 2009.

Everyone seems to be focused on the fuel economy those green cars offer. We barely realize that though such vehicles have low carbon emission, they are expensive to produce and run. Some breeds, like hydrogen-powered cars, are not considerably practical, since hydrogen could not easily be distributed.

According to a recent study, there were 13,381 new alternatively fuelled vehicles in Britain for the first nine months of this year. However, “that pales in comparison with the figure for standard vehicles: 1.9m so far in the UK is 2007,” an article in thisismoney.co.uk has mentioned.

Howard Wheeldon, senior analyst at BCG Partners, said, “We’ve heard that the green motor car has come of age but we are a long way from that.” He also said, despite the slow burn, “now there is going to have to be action”.

The rise in oil price, which has quadrupled in the past five years, has triggered the demand for green cars. Considering the cost of the car, however, doesn’t make the use of green cars an actual solution for the need to save money on petrol. Hybrids are not cheap. The Prius, at £18,000, costs twice the price of an average conventional car.

Despite that snag, the government encourages the people to buy and drive those eco-friendly models for them to avoid road tax, the congestion charge in London and the parking charges in Westminster.

In addition, the EU is even planning to impose stricter CO2 reduction targets. Last week, the European Parliament called for the manufacturers to cut the allowed CO2 emissions. They will impose penalties and fines on firms who fail to meet the targets.

The Japanese automakers are in lead on hybrid technology. And, considering the EU move and pressure, European firms, like Renault and Peugeot, would most likely join the trend.

Wheeldon said, “The losers are going to be those who have not got it right by the time the European regulations come into force.”

Now, automakers will face the problem of developing new engine types for green cars. We are just then left to think of what type (petrol-electric or diesel-electric hybrids, hydrogen-powered fuel-cells or lithium batteries) they would be having.