According to Dailytech, GM sold only 1100 hybrid SUVs the first five months of 2008. Their effort to green wash SUVs is not working.

According to these graphs, the non-hybrid Civic outsold the non-hybrid Camry. The Accord was also very close. I thought the Camry consistently outsold all of them significantly.

craziest part about that graph is the number of idiots still buying new non-hybrid tahoes.
who are these people? and i don't buy that whole "i need it to drive my two children around". having children is not something that started in the mid-90's. neither are after school sports. people got by for so long without 8000lbs of monster truck..
i know it's not scientific but i like to observe vehicle occupancy. i've found that regardless of the car size and more or less regardless of the time of day, average occupancy is close to one. why do you need a tahoe to drive yourself around?

steve,

The problem with the Altima Hybrid is the same as for the Civic Hybrid. They're both "place holders." Nissan and Honda want to show that they're in the hybrid game. But Toyota took a strong early lead, so the followers lose money for every car they sell. With high gas prices they could be selling three or more cars for every one they can make.

If, as everybody expects, gas prices stay high, that situation will rectify itself. By 2010 we'll have more hybrid choices. Most GCC posters could see this coming way before the general public. Thus the frustration with the slowness of auto OEMs to commit to hybrids. Finally, I think they got it. But it still takes years to bring out new models. Patience is hard.

@marc:

Yeah, people used to drive their kids around in station wagons. Minivans are a better alternative than an SUV today if you want to drive kids around. Most SUV drivers prefer them because they are insecure, and sitting up high makes them feel powerful and invulnerable. Take the Hummer as an extreme example; how insecure would a guy have to be to drive a fake military vehicle?

I really hate the "SUV = Bad" Stereotype. There are a lot of folks driving around in Pickup Trucks that never haul anything - ever. But no one "picks" on Pickup Trucks. Why? I thinnk in many cases the Picup truck make less sense than an SUV. At least an SUV can haul people and then be reconfigured to haul stuff.

Go to Europe - How do they manage to get along without pickup trucks? Really - no BS - they have almost no full size Pickup trucks, and almost never owned by privater parties.

A lot of people in Europe use Utility Trailers... It is a good solution, but the average US Driver wouldn't know how to safely tow a trailer, so let's not propose that as a soltution, unless we up the level of training, skill, and knowledge required to get a driver's license in the USA.

Are there plenty of people who have SUVs or Pickups who don't need them? Yes - lots. Are there also married couples and single people living in 4+ bedroom homes that don't need them? Yes.

It is all relative. And, no, I do not currently own a pickup or an SUV, but I have owned both in the past when I needed them. When the need went away, so did the vehicle.

MiniVans aren't cool, but many can haul 8 people or a few sheets of plywood and still get 24+ Mpg on the freeway. For many they are a soution.

I think the point is to not be wasteful.

Just as an aside, the Chevrolet Suburban was around long before the term SUV was invented. It is the longest running nameplate in automotive history - GM has built the Chevrolet Suburban every year since 1950something... It has stood the test of time. A purpose built vehicle for a specific market segment.

Joseph - station wagons blow away SUV's on mileage and there is nothing adolescent about considering the psychologic reasons people buy cars. There is really no getting around it - people buy cars that make them "feel" a certain way. So if people feel important or powerful driving a particular vehicle - so be it.

If certain people "need" to get that feeling from a car - and the practice is wasteful - then expect to get the ire of more reasonable folk. It is not necessarily about anger and jealousy

Driving a wasteful vehicle is a crime for humanity.

People generally drive the car that makes them feel good. As a 200 lb, 6 foot 2 inch male, i prefer a larger vehicle. I drove a honda civic for years but have certainly enjoyed my jeep cherokee much, much more.

however, with gas so expensive i wish i had my civic again, and that will probably be my next vehicle. The main reason i bought the jeep was safety...not being able to see ahead of the SUV in front of me.

But the bottom line is the price at the pump. So, i will gladly downsize in order to keep driving. I wish there was an all-electric available!
Can't come soon enough.

While statistics show people are buying less hybrids, they are also buying less SUV's. The town I'm in is offering set gas prices for two years with a purchase of an SUV. Not sure how they manage that, I think you get a card with the car, that keeps only charges the owner under $3.00 for fill-ups for two years.

Dagny McKinley
www.onnotextiles.com
organic apparel

Isn't it still "adolescent" to say that Minivan is ugly, so that's why people drive SUVs?

In any case, besides the "feel" of driving a vehicle help make purchasing decisions, so are the misconception of exterior size to interior size and safety. More than once people told me that SUV "X" is bigger than SUV "Y" just by looking at the outside of the vehicle, but then only admit that they are wrong when they see the measurements and actually sat inside "X". Same goes for Prius versus the Corolla.

The problem here is that so many have already made up their minds about certain vehicles that they would never even bother to test drive one, in order to make clear judgment in the first place.

If people can truly ignore the vanity factor in purchasing a vehicle, then by "needs" alone, hybrids and minivans should have been top choices for many consumers. But sadly, that is not the case, and that's just the market we have today.

While sales numbers for trucks and SUVs are down, it really still reflect that MOST Americans still prefer trucks and SUVs, but just aren't buying due to poor economic outlook. It may be true that high gas prices is here to stay, likely that every time there is a dip in price, sales of large vehicles will spike with it.

having children is not something that started in the mid-90's. neither are after school sports.

Child seats are new. In the 70s we'd pile my two sisters and I plus a few neighbor kids in our mom's Pontiac Catalina. Four kids in back, two up front, whatever. Forget about seat belts this trip, we're only going across town.

Do that today and you get arrested. All kids under age 5-9 (depending on state) must sit in securely buckled car seats. Front seat air bags can turn a fender bender into a fatal accident for a child. Our '98 Camry's back seat had three belts but not enough space for three infant seats, so we had to sell it. Our next-door neighbor's kids go to the same school as ours, but we can't carpool because neither of our minivans hold all seven kids legally. My wife's Honda Pilot crossover theoretically seats eight, but the 3rd row is too narrow for three child seats so we're really limited to our four kids plus one other.

I don't mean to imply people buy full-size SUVs solely because of child-seat laws. But you do need a much bigger vehicle to legally transport a bunch of kids now than 20 years ago.

doggy-

good call on the safety issue.

perhaps move to a system where if you drive a vehicle at less than full occupancy you are taxed for the difference between rated/actual? no reason for one person to be commanding an 8-seat behemoth for themselves.

by the way, the average household size per us census is around 2.57 people (we'll round up to 3 for argument's sake). assuming 2 of those are children in child seats, you still don't need anything bigger than a civic to transport them. so my point remains the same.

For all you SUV bashers:

We have a sailboat that requires a 3500# hitch (2000# boat and 600# trailer). We currently have an old Tahoe to pull the boat. Any better suggestions?

For daily commuting my wife drives a Prius and I just had to scrap my Saturn SC-1 which got 32mpg.

Bill