## US Hybrid Sales Hit All-Time Monthly High in August

##### 01 September 2005

US hybrid sales hit a record 23,307 units in August, boosted by a surge in sales of the Honda Civic and Accord hybrid models, as well as ongoing strong performance by Toyota and Ford.

Sales of the Civic hybrid soared to 4,146 units in August—its best month ever. That compares to sales of 1,816 in August 2004, and 2,329 units in July 2005.

Toyota’s Prius continues to lead the hybrid market, with 9,850 units sold in August. The hybrid Highlander had its best of its three months so far, with 2,925 units sold. The Lexus Rx 400h posted 2,607—its second best performance of the five months it has been on sale.

Ford’s Escape hybrid rounds out the results with 1,363 units sold in its third-best month yet. Taken as a percentage of brand sales, the Escape hybrid now accounts for 9.1% of all Escapes sold, up from 6.2% last month.

In terms of percentage of total light duty vehicle sales, Toyota leads with 7.5% of all sales being hybrids. Honda is second with 4.2% and Ford follows with 0.5%

Hybrids as Percentage of Total Sales
August 2005
AutomakerHybridsTotal LDV% Hybrids
Toyota 15,382 205,362 7.5%
Honda 6,562 156,173 4.2%
Ford 1,363 288,429 0.5%
Hybrids as Percentage of Model Sales August 2005
ModelHybridsFull model% Hybrids
Toyota Highlander 2,925 13,042 22.4%
Toyota Rx400h 2,607 9,644 27.0%
Honda Civic 4,146 34,762 11.9%
Honda Accord 2,336 46,153 5.1%
Ford Escape 1,363 15,023 9.1%

Here's something that would interest me:
* The "fleet" MPG of all hybrid cars sold in any given month.
* The "fleet" MPG of all non-hybrid cars sold in that same month, or at least for all of 2004 or somesuch. If too hard to take out the hybrid data, the overall "fleet" MPG would be interesting and still pretty close.
* The percentage of cars sold in the USA that month that are hybrids.

How about breaking it down even further and having the Fleet MPG broken down by state. then you could even have Federal incentives awarded to states who have the lowest Fleet MPG or that improve thier Fleet MPG to certain level.

Great news! Now I'm just waiting for my chinese plug in electric car.

Gasoline and diesel, soon to be $4 a gallon USA, will certainly help the sale of cleaner vehicles but$5 or $6, with the help of a progressive pollution tax, would be more persuasive and may be required to convince the Big Three (and the North American drivers) that they should produce/purchase efficient Hybrids and PHEVs. The electric companies should plan to progressively increase their production by 16% to 20% to satisfy the new demand (plug-ins). A few thousands high power wind mills + a few dozen nuclear power stations would meet the increased energy demand without increasing the air pollution. Hey! There's a lot of places for power wind mills in Canada. If you want cheap and clean electricity, you just have to create a partnership with your neighbor from the north. We already send electricity to New York but we have so much more potential. The wind energy 'potential' in the USA and specially in Canada is sufficent to supply the clean electric fuel required, at a very competitive price, for 100% PHEVs and EVs cars and light trucks in both countries many times over. A progressive USA-Canada pollution tax of$1 to $2/gallon could be applied for a 20 year period to offset the change over cost and accellerate the process. September and the next months will surely show even further increase in hybrid sales. g How much electricity is needed to propel every car in the US? Answer: The US currently uses 14 million barrels of oil a day. At$60/day, that's 840 million dollars a day or $306.6 BILLION/year (most of this money goes into countries which opposse our values). Since each barrel of oil yields about 19.5 gallons of gasoline and 9.5 gallons of diesel, we can calculate the annual consumption of gas and diesel by multiplying by 14 million barrels a day times 365 days a year. Result: about 100 billion gallons of gas and 50 billion gallons of diesel. At 22 mpg national average, that is 3.3 trillion miles travelled per year. It is estimated that the average car consumes 1 Mega Joule (MJ from now on) per mile travelled at highway speed. The total electric energy amounts to 3.3 trillion MJ every year. We would need an additional 104642 MW of continuous electric power to satisfy the new demand (actually, we can already meet a good portion of this demand if we charge at night). GE produces a 3.6 MW wind turbine for$3.6 million. However, the average power produced by these turbines is 30%. This means we need to spend $104642 million/0.3 =$348.81 billion.
How do we pay for this?
Answer: Remember the $306.6 billion our nation bleeds every year? In addition to this amount, electric companies would collect an average of 8 cents per KW*hr which translates into: 104642 MW * 1000KW/MW*$0.08/KW*hr * 365 days * 24 hrs = \$ 73 billion.
What's stopping us?
Answer: A good battery that can last at least 300000 miles.
Is there any hope?
Answer: Of course, Toshiba will launch a fast charging lithium battery in 2006 that can be fully charged and discharged 1000 times with only 1% loss of capacity.

Progressive pollution tax? What exactly would be progressive about it? Do you really think it's a good time to tax gasoline?

Anyone know where lithium comes from, and/or how abundant it is? And how much energy it takes to produce lithium-ion batteries? Oh, and how about the half-life of nuclear waste?

Energy conservation.

I made a deal with my right foot. Take it easier on hard acceleration, drop my freeway speed to around sixty, and save a little fuel and money.

My foot protested saying it was a conspiracy involving my head. The head always wants to wear this green halo of conservation, while my right foot likes to have fun.

Perhaps it was a conspiracy. Perhaps it was economics.
Perhaps we truly have environmental problems, but if this is so, why isn't our government doing something about it. For that matter, average fuel economy was actually lower in 2004 than it was in 1994...so my right foot decided to have it's own way, and floored the pedal when the light turned green. Speed is fun...

So finally I promised my right foot a hot tub every week along the cliffs of Big Sur if it would concede to my requests. Slower acceleration and keep the speed below 60.

So...accelerate and have fun or hot tubs at Esalen, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. My right foot agreed to the terms. This was three years ago...just by relaxing my foot on the accelerator pedal and relaxing it in a hot tub...I saved 20% in fuel economy.

Steve Sanders
retired geologist
author of Kar Karma

If you are going to calculate how much power would be needed to replace the current oil based transportation, remember that a very large percent of electricity used today goes to oil refineries. That power, plus the available excess capacity at night would more than cover EVs that are roughly double the efficiency of the current hybrids.

I don't think electric vehicles will be a workable solution for everyone or every purpose, but I think they should be implemented wherever they can be currently put to use. All alternative power technology (bio-fuels, etc) will have to be embraced to some degree in order keep the economy moving in the post-peak era. There should not be just one alternative, that's foolish and shortsighted for obvious reasons.

My only problem with Electic cars is that I can't use it for everything. It won't work for the longer drives that I have to make in order to pick up my son on weekends that I have him. However, I can't afford to buy another car that I just use when I need to get my son. Therefore I end up buying a car that works in my worst case situation and is worse in my most of the time best case situations. I expect it's the same with most of the people that drive around in an SUV with only the driver in it. They need it every now and then, but can't afford it for the rare occasions and a much more fuel efficient alternative for the rest of the time.

For you a plug-in HEV would be most suitable. EV most of the time and use gasoline for the longer trips. Best of both worlds in one vehicle.

hybrid car

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Hey www.teslamotors.com Ev for most of the time , or go to enterprize for the gas hog for the long trips.

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