As the administration and Congress micromanage the production of US auto makers by attempting to dictate the production line, their disconnect with reality calls into question their very ability to make astute marketing decisions.
Part of Obama’s bailout carrot for GM/Chrysler restructuring is revamping their production line to his satisfaction, manufacturing smaller, more fuel-efficient cars.
The president’s auto task force said Chrysler needs to partner with the Italian car company Fiat, which has “committed to building new fuel-efficient cars and engines right here in the United States,” Obama said in a speech at the White House.
“Fiat is prepared to transfer its cutting-edge technology to Chrysler,” he said.
He gave Fiat and Chrysler 30 days to reach an agreement and said the government will provide Chrysler with “adequate capital” to operate in the meantime.
Obama and his omnipotent auto czars are not the only ones demanding changes in the production lines. Madame Speaker Pelosi, saying GM CEO Wagoner had to go, and she was shedding no tears, peppered her spewing criticism of Wagoner’s GM income in salary and pension as undeserved… accusing him of not “foreseeing” that America wanted for fuel efficient vehicles.
“The performance of some of the management of the companies is stunning to me, so I’m not shedding a tear for Mr. Wagoner’s departure,” she said.
“You lose billions of dollars a year. You get millions of dollars in salary and you get $20 million to leave. … Pay for performance is something we’d like to see here.”
Since 2004, GM has lost $82 billion.
Wagoner is due to receive a $22 million pension. GM has said he technically remains with the company while the company’s board of directors reviews his pension and remaining compensation.
“Do we just keep sending checks to people who are soon to retire with a $20 million golden parachute?” she asked, declining to call for the government to seize Wagoner’s pension.
GM said in a statement that Wagoner is not eligible for severance. “Specifics of what will actually be paid to Rick are still being reviewed,” spokesman Greg Martin said. “GM does not provide golden parachutes. Rick will receive the retirement benefits he accrued based on his nearly 32 years with GM.”
Pelosi questioned why Wagoner and other auto executives did not foresee “that they had to compete, that the world was changing, that people wanted a more fuel-efficient cars that were friendlier to the environment is so beyond me. I don’t know how some of these people have lasted so long.”
There’s certainly a lot of smug marketing analyses are coming from the beltway of late. And I notice there’s no media in sight questioning their assertations. So I decided to have a look at just what the Top Ten best selling vehicles were in America since 2003.
2003 – Top Ten • Ford F-Series (includes F-150, F-150 Heritage, F-150 SVT Lightning, F-250 and F-350) — 845,586
• Chevrolet Silverado (includes 1500, 1500 SS, 2500, 2500HD and 3500) — 684,302
• Dodge Ram (includes 1500, 1500 SRT-10, 2500 and 3500) — 449,371
• Toyota Camry and Camry Solara — 413,296
• Honda Accord — 397,750
• Ford Explorer and Explorer Sport Trac — 373,118
• Ford Taurus — 300,496
• Honda Civic — 299,672
• Chevrolet Impala — 267,882
• Chevrolet TrailBlazer and TrailBlazer EXT — 261,334″Top Ten – 2004 • Ford F-Series 432,969 $19,920
• Chevrolet Silverado 322,907 $19,485
• Dodge Ram pickup 223,609 $20,365
• Toyota Camry 213,625 $19,560
• Honda Accord 192,106 $16,390
• Ford Explorer 168,059 $23,690
• Honda Civic 162,483 $13,500
• Ford Taurus 144,035 $20,320
• Chevrolet Impala 139,460 $22,395
• Dodge Caravan 131,367Top Ten – 2005 • Ford F-Series (includes F-150, F-250 Super Duty and F-350 Super Duty) — 901,463
• Chevrolet Silverado (includes 1500, 1500 Classic, 1500 SS, 1500 SS • Classic, 1500HD, 1500HD Classic, 2500HD, 2500HD Classic, 3500, 3500 Classic) — 705,891
• Toyota Camry, Camry Hybrid and Camry Solara — 433,703
• Dodge Ram (includes 1500, 1500 SRT-10, 2500 and 3500) — 400,453
• Honda Accord — 369,293
• Honda Civic — 308,415
• Nissan Altima — 255,371
• Chevrolet Impala — 246,481
• Chevrolet Malibu — 245,861
• Chevrolet TrailBlazer and TrailBlazer EXT — 244,150Top Ten – 2006 • Ford F-Series
• Chevrolet Silverado
• Toyota Camry
• Dodge Ram
• Honda Accord
• Honda Civic
• Chevrolet Impala
• Toyota Corolla
• Nissan Altima
• Chevrolet CobaltTop Ten – 2007 • Ford F-Series
• Chevrolet Silverado
• Toyota Camry
• Honda Accord
• Toyota Corolla/Matrix
• Honda Civic
• Chevrolet Impala
• Nissan Altima
• Dodge Ram
• Honda CR-VTop Ten – 2008 • Ford F-Series
• Chevrolet Silverado
• Toyota Camry
• Honda Accord
• Toyota Corolla
• Honda Civic
• Nissan Altima
• Chevrolet Impala
• Dodge Ram
• Honda CR-V
Seeing a pattern yet? What’s especially notable is trucks, still commanding the lead in a year of record high gas prices.
By contrast, how did those hybrids… already offered to a willing American consumer… fare in 2008? Answer… in the dumps. And the only thing that helped their deplorable sales figures were heavy discounts and incentives.
For all of 2008, hybrid sales tumbled 10.3 percent with 310,724 models sold. While nothing to boast about, the hybrid segment bested the overall market’s performance of an 18.2 percent drop for the year, according to Edmunds.com statistics.
The only bright spots were that hybrid sales in December actually rose a bit from November, and that 2008 hybrid sales were the second-best on record in the decade since 1999, when Honda introduced the first model, the now-discontinued two-seat Insight. The year’s sales trailed only 2007, when 346,431 hybrids were sold.
The 6.8 percent rise in sales volume from November to December was due to hefty incentives and discounting by most automakers and to an especially effective financing program that General Motors’ financing arm provided for almost all of the company’s lineup.
Let’s repeat that, shall we? 310,724 hybrids of any model sold in the year of record high fuel prices *and* a downturning economy…. compare that to the amount of trucks of all stripes sold the same year (not even including mid-size Hondas, Toyots and other popular top ten cars).
As the economy worsened, and American put a padlock on their wallets, all new car sales have tumbled over the past couple of years. But when they do buy, their choices remain consistent.
So how about this year, under a green Obama/Pelosi/Reid reign? Here ya go… And how about the top selling cars in March of 2009?
Top Selling Vehicles – March 2009 • Ford F-Series: 32,728
• Toyota Camry: 25,783
• Chevy Silverado: 23,508
• Honda Accord: 22,722
• Toyota Corolla: 22,257
• Honda Civic: 20,645
• Nissan Altima: 19,521
• Dodge Ram: 19,328
• Chevy Malibu: 14,772
• Honda CR-V: 12,959
What a surprise. Of course, one has to wonder if Chevy and Dodge moved down in the list slightly due to nerves over the fate of the manufacturers. But one thing is for certain… Americans still love their trucks and larger, heavier vehicles. Despite politically correct criticisms, global warming fear mongering, and high fuel prices, the American consumer remains consistent and loyal. In fact, Ford has held the #1 slot for 27 years running.
When it’s not trucks, America also favors Honda and Toyota over the American manufacturers’ mid-sized vehicles. Cost and dependability weigh heavily in a buyers’ decision.
Needless to say, Obama and Pelosi’s marketing grasp of vehicle sales leave much to be desired. But facts don’t get in the way of agendas. They are looking ahead, knowing that all legislation they are proposing are meant specifically to sink America’s favorite vehicles. But let’s not confuse their agenda with what Americans want to drive, shall we?
Now, back to the Auto maker-in-chief and Congress market team… Despite the fact that American’s don’t want to kick what our government terms a “gas guzzling habit”, they sure aren’t going to make our forced driving changes easy. If they don’t totally drive auto makers out of business with cars few want to own, they’ll drive up the prices with their mandates.
Any increase in fuel economy means an increase in cost for automakers. While GM’s (GM, Fortune 500) cars and trucks meet current efficiency requirements, the Treasury Dept. said its product lineup is more “vulnerable to CAFE standard increases than the portfolios of many of its competitors.”
The situation for Chrysler is even more dire, according to the Treasury Dept.
Chrysler relies more heavily than GM on sales of trucks and vans. “On a standalone basis, Chrysler will struggle to comply with increasing fuel economy standards, and it may even have to restrict the sale of certain models to make sure it’s in accordance with proposed standards.”
This vulnerability is one of the reasons why more government money wasn’t immediately given to prop up the automakers. Those stricter standards are something Chrysler and GM, like other auto companies, have already been planning for.
“It’s a direction these automakers have been moving toward prior to this mandate,” said Jeff Schuster, executive director of forecasting at J.D. Power and Associates.
~~~“I don’t think we’ll see the complete end of the large vehicle,” said Schuster, “but their share has been declining and is declining.”
Unfortunately, as much as “green cars” have become a popular rallying point, it’s not clear that they’re the way to business success. Today, hybrid cars make up about 2% of all vehicle sales in the U.S., a tiny sliver compared to sales of just pick-up trucks alone.
And Michael Robinet, vice president of vehicle forecasting for industry consultants CSM Automotive, doesn’t think that hybrids will take a huge slice of the market anytime soon.
Never has the base theory of capitalism and the free market been so manipulated by government. It’s bad enough that Obama and Congress have decided to mandate America must change it’s driving habits to “save the planet” and conserve fuel that they refuse to allow us to explore and produce within our own boundaries and territory. But even more insulting, they stand in front of cameras and media daily, lying about these “fuel efficient” cars that supposedly Americans want.
Let’s call a spade a spade, shall we? Americans don’t want them. Our government prefers to dictate our wants instead, and will stop at nothing to do so.
Meanwhile auto makers – desperate for cash to pay off their union costs – quietly acquiesce to give Obama and Pelosi what they want, knowing full well their marketing statistics reveal leadership manipulating truth in order to push an agenda.
And no one in the media questions their rhetoric.
Vietnam era Navy wife, indy/conservative, and an official California escapee now residing as a red speck in the sea of Oregon blue.
Sometimes we can’t predict how history will judge certain actions of Presidents. Sometimes, it is obvious.
Forty years from now, when gasoline is selling for an inflation-adjusted $10 per gallon and US oil reserves are almost gone, save for the continental shelf and Alaskan regions that the Dems protected from drilling, historians will record the foresight, wisdom, and leadership of President Obama in pushing the US economy, kicking and screaming, into the 21st century.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach
There is a myth that capitalism can do no wrong and government can do no right.
In 1971, Richard Nixon declared war on cancer. This led directly to a revolution in molecular biology, which has resulted in a paradigm shift in biomedical enconomics — impacting virtually all areas of the treatment of human illness; creating more than a trillion dollars in pharmaceutical company wealth along the way and continuing to create new biomedical industries.
American companies do not look years, much less decades, down the road. CEOs are focused on the value of their stocks over a short term horizon. It doesn’t take a genius to realize that that the era of cheap fossil fuel will be coming to an end in the space of only a single generation. Some countries will be better prepared for this than others.
John Anderson, a moderate Republican, ran a credible campaign for President in 1980, on a third party ticket. One of his campaign planks was a 50 cent a gallon increase in federal gasoline taxes. This was in the era of 1 dollar per gallon gas; so this was a major increase. Every economist who has ever studied the issue has concluded that gasoline taxes should be increased, to force the automobile industry to do what it would never do on its own. Which is to drastically increase automobile fuel efficiency. When gasoline went from $2 a gallon to $4 a gallon, the market for SUVs dried up. Now that prices are down to $2, SUV purchases may increase, at least among car buyers with short memories.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
openid.aol.com, If Obama’s budget stayed for 40 years, the nation would be in debt $40 trillion and that’s with the increased taxs and minus the previous administrations and minus the debts from Social Security and Medicare. $10 gas at that point will be the least of people’s concerns at that point since Obama’s hyperinflation will raise the price of everything to the point that people couldn’t afford the clothes to go to work. People will not be looking at Obama in a good light no matter what the media says if the media is still around (newspapers, radio, and TVs would be too expensive).
There is no reason why we should abandon our big gas guzzlers for riding lawnmowers that are made to look like cars that are unsafe at any speed.
Over 90 % of the gasoline used to fuel all the German WW2 vehicles was made from coal. Germany had no oil but had lots of coal. When General Patton’s Third Army got ahead of its supply lines they siphoned the gas out of German vehicles, derived from coal, and it worked fine in American war vehicles.
Over 90% of all German tanks, planes, and other vehicles were fueled by coal via the German Synfuel program 70 years ago! The successful bombing of the German coal to gas plants was one factor in WW2 ending.
Bottom line with all the coal the US has and all oil we have in out oceans and places like Alaska, there is no reason why the United States cannot be energy independent, and drive whatever gas guzzlers we want. That’s what our goal should be in this country.
@openid.aol.com/runnswim:
“Every economist who has ever studied the issue has concluded that gasoline taxes should be increased, to force the automobile industry to do what it would never do on its own.”
References, please. Or are we to take that statement solely on your authority? And don’t tell me to look it up, because it’s your job to supply the proof of your assertions.
When someone I don’t know expects me to take what they say as fact without proof, that always raises a REALLY BIG RED FLAG, if you know what I mean.
“Madame Speaker Pelosi,. . . ,peppered her spewing criticism of Wagoner’s GM income in salary and pension as undeserved… accusing him of not “foreseeing” that America wanted for fuel efficient vehicles.”
Good thing for us Ms. Pelosi has her finger on the pulse of American car buyers.
What so many simple minded people fail to realize is simple physics…
You can only get so many BTU’s out of a gallon of fuel..that’s it done no argument.
It is what it is. BTU’s convert to Horsepower which converts to work which converts to miles down the road…
Energy can neither be created nor destroyed only changed from one form to another… look it up.
And every conversion has a loss.. We have hundreds of years of fuel in our country alone but the envrio/socialis/idiot wienies don’t want to use it..
F them and the idiot parents (for not having their state sponsored abortion) for their simple minded views..
A former Chemisty teacher of mine once remarked that if we had put the same emphasis on nuclear power that we did on the space program that we would have a nuclear reactor in every basement…
I think he was probably right….
@bigpapa:
YEP!
Obama’s & Congress’ pressure to build these more fuel efficient cars is redundant.
One-two years ago it was mandated that Auto makers have a Fuel Economy average of 35 combined (trucks & cars). This roughly translates to 25 MPG average for Truck and 45 MPG average for Cars, by 2020.
Econoboxes and Hybrids are in our future thanks to Democrats in Congress and Bush’s deferral to the bureaucrats at the EPA.
Fair enough, yonason.
Back with you on this one — hopefully today. But I won’t forget.
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
Larry W… WTF? First you say no one can predict how history will judge certain presidential actions, then you go ahead and predict $10 a gallon gas in an oil apocalypse. Perhaps you should have clarified that your apocalypse will deliberately be brought to fruition by our government. Most specifically by their refusal to utilize our oil shale deposits, or the new cheaper technology of making gas from coal… another plentiful US natural resource.
This isn’t about being energy independent… the feel-good nanny cry of the left leadership. This is about shifting the lucrative business of energy into the hands of their favored international few Al-Gore’ites and company – and controlled by government. If they genuinely cared about US security, they’d be using these oil alternative sources here in the US instead of locking such lands away in public land acts.
This wouldn’t even preclude advancing alternative energy technologies, and instead would buy them time to finesse the research and providing a more affordable option.
This rather negates your feel good legacy ramblings, and moral lectures on how wonderful government is, or has been. I may have bought that act in second grade.
Your own citation that government attempts to manipulate private industry by raising taxes … a burden that falls squarely on the shoulders of the consumer…. should be evidence in itself of government thinking of only more ways for gaining taxpayer cash to spend. What the heck do you think cap and trade is all about? It sure isn’t about global warming… it’s all about cash revenue.
And I will remind you one more time… despite the raised gas prices and additional burden on the consumer, they STILL opted for their pick up trucks and hated gas guzzlers.
There is absolutely no reason but agenda and greed for our shale and other oil resources not to be utilized. The technology is here. Takes care of centuries of supply. Supplies US jobs, and affordable energy. All the while, alternative energies can be honed to retrofit each home, and possibly large industry, as a grid independent entity for the majority of the time.
To yonason:
Here’s a reasonably good reference to my quote regarding unanimity among economists as to the value of a major increase in federal gasoline taxes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/business/yourmoney/08view.html?ex=1317960000&en=3a74952dac47fe79&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA
i own several cars, 2 get decent if not great milage, the third sucks. guess what i love driving the third car, it is bigger and far safer for my family if we are taking a road trip or going on the freeway. i would rather pay far more for gas and have my family safe than have them killed in a tin can. there is no question that hands down i will drive my largest, safest and least fuel efficient car. when government starts to control everyhting it never is a good thing. remember when nancy pelosi said she was trying to save the world? well guess what, she is destroying the world.
The figures you’re presenting are a little misleading. Hybrid cars sales dropped in 2008, by 18%. Now look at the overall drop in sales? Notice how car sales dropped a lot more than hybrid car sales?
Also, if you look at the number of hybrids sold and look at the number of hybrids produced, right up until May of last year when the economy finally caught up to hybrids, you’ll see them selling out at record paces. Just find a record of days to sell for these vehicles. Prius were selling at less than 3 days on the lots, which means they were pre-selling all of them. It just took up to three days for people to come and pick up the car they bought months ago.
In other words, the car makers who were manufacturing them were selling them as fast they could make them. Which means there was a desire for hybrid and fuel efficient cars that wasn’t being satisfied, right up until the economy tanked.
I don’t disagree with your general thesis, that trucks and SUVs are what people want to buy. What I disagree with is how you interpret how many hybrids are being sold is mandated by desire. More hybrids could have been sold last year and the year before. They just weren’t being made.
Mike, INRE your comment “more hybrids could have been sold last year (2008) and the year before (2007)” if they were made. Not true.
First, from the article I linked in the post above from Edumnds/Green Car Advisor about 2008 This the two paragraphs before your quoted 18% annual.
They were made, and sitting on lots available for sale… yet the sales still went down. November, it seems, is a particularly bad month. To make it worse, there were more hybrids sold in 2007 than 2008… the year of the big price ticket at the pump.
But I do agree that an 18% drop in cars that make up less than 2% of the vehicles on the US highways is certainly less than 40% of the other 98%. Hang… that said, the hybrids could fall 100% and still be less in numbers than the 40% of the light duty vehicles. But then, time is marching on, and life still isn’t looking so good for the hybrid world. (let along the electric sewing machines they want us to buy…)
Below is a graph of hybrid sales since 2004, courtesy of Blogowogo You can zoom in easier at the site, but below will give you an idea of the numbers.
As of March this year, hybrid sales are down 44%, compared to other vehicles at 36.8%. In February, they were down 30%. Per Hybrid Review, sales for hybrids have dropped to 2006 levels despite having twice the amount of vehicles available for sale. Not to mention, GM’s got some hybrid trucks hitting the market.
Funny how the car manufacturers are providing more “fuel efficient” product lines over the years without Obama’s input, eh? But it does take time to get these models debugged, up and running for mass production.
None of this bodes well for Obama’s hopes for an electric vehicle to become the car of choice by Americans. Hang… I’m wondering how they’ll get up some of my hills, run thru the weather and gravel roads, etc. At best, they could be considered a city bar hop. And for that, they can take the bus, train or a taxi. But there’s a lot of land inbetween Obama’s city dwellers.
Personally, I wouldn’t mind a hybrid 4 wheel drive. But you have to drive a lot of miles annually to make up for the extra sales costs and battery changes. They are just not appealing for the dollar. And these electric sewing machines? I’ll be on my bike year around before I climb into one of those!
What does Obama get driven around in ? What does Pelosi, Reid, Geithner drive around in ?
If ‘green cars’ are so wonderfully fuel efficient and super safe why aren’t our Democrat leaders leading by example and driving around in them instead of forcing these rattletraps on to us ?
.
mataharley:
It’s kind of ironic for you to use my quotations against me. I’m not sure if you knew that when you quoted from hybrid car review or not.
Anyways, what I meant to get across was every single Prius being built in 2007 was sold. There was a huge amount of pressure on production, resulting in very short days to sell and very long waiting lists. In 2008, for the first few months, the same could be said. If Toyota had increased their production (and they were planning on doing that with a new plant in the US) prior to the economic meltdown, they would have sold more hybrids than they did. They weren’t keeping up with demand.
Then the meltdown did occur (say Feb ’08), and sales melted away across the auto marketplace. Hybrid cars took longer than other cars to catch up to the meltdown because dealerships still had long waiting lists to fill. It wasn’t until May of 2008 when hybrid car sales started to decline. You can see it clearly in the graph you supplied.
The hybrid trucks from GM aren’t exactly the same as other hybrids. It’s a common mistake to classify all hybrids into one group, but they simply aren’t all built the same. Some are built for luxury, some are built for performance, some are built just to say they were built (see any mild hybrid) and a few are built for fuel economy.
The Honda Accord Hybrid, for instance, was built for performance and was a lousy seller. The original Insight was built for two and never made it despite it’s phenomenal fuel efficiency. The Malibu hybrid increases your fuel economy by 2 mpg, but it’s built on ‘mild’ hybrid technology and isn’t worth the money. The hybrid trucks from GM aren’t exactly cheap, even though they do a great job of increasing fuel economy on such large vehicles. GM loaded them with extras and luxury options to help obscure the cost and sales have been lousy so far. Despite my quote above, I don’t have a lot of hope for GM’s hybrid trucks. They’re too expensive with all those luxury options. But I would look for success from the Escalade Hybrid. The Luxury SUV already has a market that doesn’t mind paying for all the extras. Why not throw in the hybrid engine as well? At that price range, it’s only a couple percent extra over the base model.
Mike, I wasn’t using your quotes “against you”… rather it was pointing out which statement in your post I wanted to address.
There is a big difference between Prius production not keeping up with the demand, and hybrids overall having two bad years. I wasn’t discussing one model, but the critter itself… regardless of manufacturer.
My sister has a Camry hybrid. Interesting technology and frankly, I wish it would pencil out for the average user. Since she travels for business, piling on over 25K annually, she’ll get her money’s worth from the extra purchase price, the gas savings and the inevitable battery replacement costs. It does not pencil out for me, or many others. And she missed out on the tax incentive by a couple of months to boot.
All in all, I do like the hybrid approach. Tho I do not think they should be mandated by government as the lone choice. I haven’t seen much on the hybrid pickups yet. The only GM pickup truck that’s hybrid is the Sierra… not even on the top 10 list. The #2, Chevy’s Silverado, is only available in hybrid this year. It’s not been off the assembly line long, so I wonder if it will become an affordable choice.
I confess I do not know what and how these pickups will accomplish the switching back and forth between battery and fuel operation. But, unless I’m mistaken, that’s the gist of any hybrid, yes? Do correct me if that notion is incorrect.
The hybrid pickups should run similar to the Camry Hybrid your sister owns. It’s a different technology, with GM developing a dual-mode hybrid system with BMW and Chrysler, but the premise is the same. The electric motor handles the car at lower speeds, while the gas engine runs at higher speeds or to recharge the battery pack. They also have regenerative braking. The electric motor helps out at higher speeds, improving your highway mileage, but the GM trucks also shut off cylinders when they’re not needed (cruising).
Overall, by having a hybrid engine, you go from 14 (or so) mpg to 20 (or so) mpg. Doesn’t seem like much, especially when you think about 50 mpg for the new Prius. But going from 14 to 20 mpg can save you more than going from 35 to 50 mpg.
Whether it becomes affordable will be a big question mark. GM has to sell a lot of hybrids before they can cut the costs down enough to make a big price drop. The battery packs are expensive. But with more and more battery companies making more and more battery packs, the price has begun to drop. Toyota and Honda both announced their battery pack prices were dropping by $1,000 or so in the past six months.
BTW, the batteries have been shown to be very reliable, so the ‘inevitable’ battery replacement is something your sister probably won’t have to worry about. Just recently in SF, the original hybrid taxis (about 12 of them) passed the 300,000 mark without any worries. They’re being forced into retirement (all taxis are after 300K miles in SF). Which seems to indicate your sister has little to worry about, even with her high mileage.
Check out this hybrd. The testbed vehicle is a Hummer H3.
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/100-mpg-hummer-h3/
If this prototype is even partially successful, big trucks and SUV’s will be around quite a lot longer, and be a lot greener:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/FEV-Inc-to-Unveil-Hummer-H3-prnews-14908198.html
“The Hummer H3 ReEV is the first range-extended electric vehicle based on a full-sized SUV. The Raser scalable plug-in series hybrid design provides 40+ mile all-electric range and 100+ mpg fuel economy. FEV performed the full vehicle integration including electrical and mechanical design. Additionally, FEV developed all software for the hybrid control unit and in-vehicle graphical display. Propulsion comes from Raser’s 200 kW traction motor mated to a 4-speed automatic transmission. Raser’s 100 kW generator, driven by a 2.0L SIDI turbocharged engine, provides electrical power. Although a full-sized SUV, the concept has been achieved with only minimal sacrifice of acceleration performance, cargo space, or towing capacity. Additional utility is provided by the availability of exportable AC power generation.”
The last means you can drive out to a remote work site that is off the electrical grid and plug your AC power tools into the output of the vehicle’s generator.
Is this cool or what?