thanks, great article
That says it all.
While some changes are necessary (safety) many others are a luxury. Power steering and breaks are just not that important.

I am convinced that hybrid will meet and exceed 50+ mpg efficiency. However, the current models still have to improve a lot.

g-
Sure, the Civic hybrid is a bit overkill for a commuter car, but wait another year for the new small Honda hybrid. It will be smaller and cheaper than the Civic hybrid, and I'm sure it will get above 50 MPG combined.

Lary:
The only caveat with that is that expensive oil also means the exploitation of even more CO2 intensive fuels with a lower EROI. That's why you see the extraction of Canadian oil sands and heavy oil in a lot of places. Coal liqufication is a very real possibility.

The whole term "commuter car' should give us a clue. If people live closer to where they work and telecommute as much as possible, we would not need as much fuel to get to and from work. It is no ones fault, it is everyones fault that things have turned out the way that they have in the U.S. People liked suburbs in the 50s when gas was 20 cents per gallon. We still have suburbs and huge SUVs when gasoline is approaching $4 per gallon. This sort of insanity inertia has got to stop.

Karkus,

Indeed, I would expect Honda to refocus back to smaller efficient cars. As the Civic family has grown they lost this leadrship, which is a pity. Unfortunatelly, past 10 years both Honda and Toyota put more focus into SUV and trucks and neglected smaller efficient cars. Prius is the only notable exception.

The trouble is that even Toyota is too conservative and stuck in the past. They ridicule GM Volt and insist that cars don't need larger batteries. Honda is so secretive that I have no clue what they are up to.

Yet larger batteries are key to using less gasoline and more electricity (from grid or regen).

Anyway I hope that both Honda and Toyota reconsider their car lineup in terms of fuel consumption. Otherwise my next car could very well be from GM.

Santos,
That's a scary number considering that GM sold 280,713 vehicles in March. In other words, the hybrids would make up all of 0.2% of sales. And that's between four (more?) hybrid models. Not good. Nissan sold more hybrids for just one model!

Anybody (except me) remember the Honda CRX HF? 50MPG in 1991.

There are people that are fixing up old high mileage Honda cars and other makes and models here for commuter cars. It makes sense. You can buy a used one cheap and a few thousand dollars gets you a car that can go a lot more miles on a lot less gasoline. I would prefer people also telecommuting at least one day a week if they can, but that is another topic.

GM not breaking out the hybrid contribution pretty much admitting their lack of success at selling their hybrids. Despite of what they say, they are really not betting the house on hybrids. Although they have a program on the Volt, they don't have a program for parallel hybrids. Nor do they have a dedicated program for developing weight reduction ideas.

Even if the Volt program goes to production, there is a risk that the vehicle will turns out to be a high priced offering, and would have relative little impact to their sales.

I am also hearing nothing from GM about what their concepts are for small cars. They are likely lagging in that area as well. GM needs to start cooking or they will be left terribly behind by the competitions.

Just a preview for April figures -- Toyota sold 32,800 hybrids in the month according to reports from CNN. That's up about 2,500 from the month prior. Looks like April Hybrid sales might push 40K.

i can see it's very difficult for people to understand the issues related to hybrid vehicles, petroleum prices, energy, etc. when they're not engineers.. so you should try to study more about scientific subjects before expressing an opinion