Hybrid Review: Hybrid Sales were up in April
Interesting news on the hybrid car front just came out.
Hybrid Review: Hybrid Sales were up in April:
Hybrid sales were up from last April (20,974 units to 21,707 units sold, an increase of 3.5%). But as always, there were winners and losers. Ford increased sales by over 100% while Toyota increased their sales by 5.7%. Honda sales, on the other hand, suffered its second month of decreases.
I am pretty shocked that the number of hybrids sold during the previous month was only around twenty-thousand. Even more shocked that it is usually less than that. April was a high sales month.
Here is my rationale. There are a third of a billion people living in the US, and a huge portion of them drive cars! Many of them replace their automobiles regularly.
Rental agencies replace cars even more regularly. But they do not pay for the gas their own cars use! I can see why they would not feel a strong reason to buy hybrids, at least financially. Until people savvy up and realize renting/leasing a hybrid is way more sensible than one that uses a lot of $3/gallon gas every day.
After the sky-high gas prices that have mostly endured throughout the past two years, and the potential for recent developments to kick them up a little further - I would have thought that the transition of the American car fleet would be a bit further along.
After all, even if hybrids continue to be sold at the rate they were last month, it is going to take a century or two to get the country weaned off non-hybrid SUVs and cars and onto hybrids.
That is funny because the oil supply is not supposed to last that long.
Well, not actually funny. Kind of sad, really.
Meanwhile, the same article cited above said:
Honda, on the other hand, lost out on their performance hybrids. Sales on the Honda Accord Hybrid, especially, were way down from last year. Sales of the Honda Civic Hybrid were also down by 10.9%, but they still sold over 3,000 units, an increase over March sales by 38%. Sales of the limited production Honda Insight hit triple digits, the first time its done that since May, 2004. Honda has been considering reducing production of their hybrids.
That really has me stunned. Apparently, when you look at the April 2005/2006 sales figures, it becomes evident that the lost Honda sales actually were taken over by Toyota and Ford, and there was actually a very slight increase.
When I say, slight - that means a little over 700. Considering you are going to find that many cars in a single morning rush hour backup, it is not a big increase.
Maybe celebrating Earth Day a couple weeks ago will turn out to have served to wake people up. Everyone from the President on down was making speeches about how the country had to get its appetite for gasoline under control or else. I hope it is the former.
As people turn their thoughts to taking long vacation drives this summer, maybe they will be thinking it would be a lot more fun in a car they do not have to stop and buy $30 of gas every 200 miles. In a hybrid, you will still pay the same price for a gallon of gas - but you will only be stopping every 500 miles.
Picture that!
It is way better for the environment too, not just your pocket book. You will have to breathe what your car puts out every day on the way too and from work.
Even though lead is not the issue it once was, sulfur dioxide (just add water and it makes sulfuric acid) and smog are still a problem in the American west and northeast.
