Sure, diesels are fine for now. But, except maybe as a range extender, they're an evolutionary dead end for LDVs. They will always pollute, they'll never get the efficiencies of an electric engine and they can't regenerate energy when braking.

Toyota wants to make a profit! How dare them. Oops, silly me. I guess that's why they're in business.

The GM minivans end at the end of MY 2008. It's already scheduled. I live near the plant and they've been talking for more than two years about what to do with the site once the plant closes. I don't think the minivan is dead, either; Toyota and Honda are selling plenty of them at decent prices. But Ford and GM have struggled to sell inferior minivans for so long that they've decided that now is not the time to spend a huge amount of R&D money on trying to take that market back, especially when it has admittedly shrunk a bit. The Toyota and Honda products have a huge lead and it would take a spectacular effort for others to catch up.

As for Toyota increasing the engine size in the next-gen Prius and/or this new hybrid model, I think it's too soon for outsiders to say what that will mean. Using Atkinson cycle means that displacement isn't directly tied to performance or fuel consumption anymore. It could be that the cylinder displacements get larger but they use the extra space to have a longer expansion stroke and extract more energy from the same amount of fuel being combusted. The size of the cylinder is always the same but they can vary how much fuel and air they put in for the combustion cycle.

I don't have any inside information to tell you if the displacement gains will be for power/performance, efficiency gains, or some of both. I just want to point out that you can't judge various Atkinson cycle engines so easily just by comparing their displacement alone.

It only makes sense for them to be intentionally vague at this point about the exact plan- they don't want to tell their competitors too much- but in practice this sounds to me like a potential replacement for the Camry Hybrid that was designed from the ground up to be a hybrid, no? It's got a 2.4, is a little bigger than Prius (not as much as people think), rides better, and nobody accuses it of being wasteful. If you don't see the difference between designed-as-hybrid and putting hybrid stuff on a standard car, note that the Prius has a bigger trunk than the Camry. Batteries are still bulky and if you don't plan a space for them in the design from the get-go they will get in the way.

Posted by: Cervus | Jun 23, 2007 6:59:22 PM

DH:

The answer is: Minivans are a shrinking market segment, so they don't get a lot of R&D funding. GM no longer makes them, nor does Ford or Mazda. Toyota and Honda are really the last major players in that market. Why? Partly because people don't want to buy the same kind of vehicle their parents drove. Witness the progression from big station wagons to minivans to SUVs to CUVs.

Don't forget who is the leader in the Minivan buisness: Chrysler, they are still churning them out.