Toyota rules out diesel hybrids
09-30-06, 07:17 AM
#1
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Toyota rules out diesel hybrids
By Jorn Madslien
Business reporter, BBC News, Paris Motor Show
Toyota has ruled out production of a diesel electric hybrid vehicle in response to plans for such cars from French carmaker Peugeot.
Environmentalists say a car combining clean diesel technology with electric motors could achieve carbon dioxide emission reductions that would make them cleaner than Toyota's iconic petrol hybrid Prius.
But doing so would push up costs far beyond what consumers would bear, according to Toyota Motor Europe chief executive Tadashi Arashima.
"Already the diesel [price] premium is quite high, then you'd have to pay a hybrid premium, so we're not seeing that there's a market," Mr Arashima told BBC News.
Polarised society
Toyota has sold 500,000 petrol electric hybrids worldwide since they were first introduced, and it aims to double the number of hybrid models on offer to further boost those figures.
Mr Watanabe says Toyota will sell 10 million cars by 2010
But despite its prediction that hybrid sales are still rising, the firm does not see much demand for it in the markets where its growth is the strongest, Mr Arashima said, speaking in an interview with a small group of journalists on the eve of the Paris Motor Show.
Within Europe, he said, Russia is seen as the strongest growing market, albeit with demand almost entirely focused on petrol engines.
Indeed, next autumn the company will open a new factory in St. Petersburg where it aims to produce 50,000 Camry's.
"The Prius is not available in the Russian market," Mr Arashima observed.
But he said he had been surprised by strong sales in Russia of hybrid models from Toyota's luxury subsidiary Lexus, such as its RX400h sports utility vehicle and its 600h luxury saloon.
The Russian market is peculiar, since "some people are really rich", Mr Arashima observed.
"It's quite a polarised society," he said.
"Even if the price is higher, the [very wealthy Russians] are willing to pay. They want to buy the highest price models."
European exports
The Russian car plant that will open next year should reach its maximum output of 50,000 in four or five years, Mr Arashima said, with the possibility of expansion if demand turns out to be greater than current projections suggest.
"This plant property is fairly big," he said.
Such an expansion could involve production for exports, he acknowledged.
"I would not rule out the future possibility of supplying the West," he said.
However, the Camry model which will be produced in Russia during the early years will not be sold outside Russia, the Ukraine and other former Soviet Union states.
Healthy competition
Toyota, which reiterated its goal to sell close to 10 million cars by 2010, said it expects the strongest growth to come in what group president Katsuaki Watanabe described as "emerging markets".
This would also be where it would expand its production capacity in the future, Mr Watanabe said in a speech on Wednesday night, dashing hopes - to the extent that there were any - that Toyota would raise production output in its Western European factories in the UK and France, or in the US.
But when pushed, Mr Watanabe declined to rule out the building of more factories in the US.
Indeed, Toyota's growth in the lucrative European and US markets remains strong.
In Europe, its market share has risen to 5.8%, and last year it sold more than a million cars there for the first time.
In the US, meanwhile, Toyota is set to overtake General Motors (GM) in terms of unit sales - perhaps as early as this year, according to some industry observers' predictions.
During the first half of this year, Toyota's sales in the US rose 7.1% to 4.36 million vehicles, while GM's sales slipped 2.3% to 4.6 million.
Toyota's profits rose 39% during the April to June quarter, to 371.5bn yen ($3.1bn; £1.6bn), while GM lost $3.4bn during the same period, in part due to more than $2bn in restructuring costs.
GM is in talks to join the Renault/Nissan alliance in an effort to sort out its problems.
"Healthy competition is always welcome," said Mr Arashima.
"If they think they can become more competitive by doing it, they should."
source : bbc.co.uk
Business reporter, BBC News, Paris Motor Show
Toyota has ruled out production of a diesel electric hybrid vehicle in response to plans for such cars from French carmaker Peugeot.
Environmentalists say a car combining clean diesel technology with electric motors could achieve carbon dioxide emission reductions that would make them cleaner than Toyota's iconic petrol hybrid Prius.
But doing so would push up costs far beyond what consumers would bear, according to Toyota Motor Europe chief executive Tadashi Arashima.
"Already the diesel [price] premium is quite high, then you'd have to pay a hybrid premium, so we're not seeing that there's a market," Mr Arashima told BBC News.
Polarised society
Toyota has sold 500,000 petrol electric hybrids worldwide since they were first introduced, and it aims to double the number of hybrid models on offer to further boost those figures.
Mr Watanabe says Toyota will sell 10 million cars by 2010
But despite its prediction that hybrid sales are still rising, the firm does not see much demand for it in the markets where its growth is the strongest, Mr Arashima said, speaking in an interview with a small group of journalists on the eve of the Paris Motor Show.
Within Europe, he said, Russia is seen as the strongest growing market, albeit with demand almost entirely focused on petrol engines.
Indeed, next autumn the company will open a new factory in St. Petersburg where it aims to produce 50,000 Camry's.
"The Prius is not available in the Russian market," Mr Arashima observed.
But he said he had been surprised by strong sales in Russia of hybrid models from Toyota's luxury subsidiary Lexus, such as its RX400h sports utility vehicle and its 600h luxury saloon.
The Russian market is peculiar, since "some people are really rich", Mr Arashima observed.
"It's quite a polarised society," he said.
"Even if the price is higher, the [very wealthy Russians] are willing to pay. They want to buy the highest price models."
European exports
The Russian car plant that will open next year should reach its maximum output of 50,000 in four or five years, Mr Arashima said, with the possibility of expansion if demand turns out to be greater than current projections suggest.
"This plant property is fairly big," he said.
Such an expansion could involve production for exports, he acknowledged.
"I would not rule out the future possibility of supplying the West," he said.
However, the Camry model which will be produced in Russia during the early years will not be sold outside Russia, the Ukraine and other former Soviet Union states.
Healthy competition
Toyota, which reiterated its goal to sell close to 10 million cars by 2010, said it expects the strongest growth to come in what group president Katsuaki Watanabe described as "emerging markets".
This would also be where it would expand its production capacity in the future, Mr Watanabe said in a speech on Wednesday night, dashing hopes - to the extent that there were any - that Toyota would raise production output in its Western European factories in the UK and France, or in the US.
But when pushed, Mr Watanabe declined to rule out the building of more factories in the US.
Indeed, Toyota's growth in the lucrative European and US markets remains strong.
In Europe, its market share has risen to 5.8%, and last year it sold more than a million cars there for the first time.
In the US, meanwhile, Toyota is set to overtake General Motors (GM) in terms of unit sales - perhaps as early as this year, according to some industry observers' predictions.
During the first half of this year, Toyota's sales in the US rose 7.1% to 4.36 million vehicles, while GM's sales slipped 2.3% to 4.6 million.
Toyota's profits rose 39% during the April to June quarter, to 371.5bn yen ($3.1bn; £1.6bn), while GM lost $3.4bn during the same period, in part due to more than $2bn in restructuring costs.
GM is in talks to join the Renault/Nissan alliance in an effort to sort out its problems.
"Healthy competition is always welcome," said Mr Arashima.
"If they think they can become more competitive by doing it, they should."
source : bbc.co.uk
09-30-06, 07:18 AM
#2
Super Moderator
Thread Starter
Cost Conundrum Holds Up Diesel Hybrid Cars
GERMANY: October 5, 2004
FRANKFURT, Germany/TOKYO - A car that can go 80 miles on a gallon of renewable fuel such as soy and canola would seem like an ideal solution to oil prices bumping around historic highs of $50 a barrel.
In fact, the technology already exists in the form of so-called diesel hybrid vehicles, which yoke a conventional diesel engine to an electric motor and battery to store unused energy for clean and quiet driving at lower speeds.
But automakers say such cars are unlikely to move out of the research lab any time soon, even as fuel efficiency becomes a must for more and more customers appalled by prices at the pump.
The main problem is that diesel hybrid cars cost too much to produce - thousands of dollars more than petrol-electric hybrids like Toyota Motor Corp's Prius, which is a sell-out U.S. hit.
"Diesel hybrid is one possible propulsion system that we are researching and testing, but no one can say whether this is the path to the future," said Edith Meissner, a spokeswoman for German-American carmaker DaimlerChrysler.
"It is certainly the most efficient method among the conventional powertrains ... but also the most expensive."
Standard diesel engines burn less fuel than petrol engines. Hybrid technology makes them even more frugal by letting cars run on stored electricity captured during braking and coasting.
But this lands a double whammy on costs. A diesel engine typically costs around 10 percent more than its petrol-driven cousin of similar power, even without the cost of adding an electric motor, batteries and the electronics to run them.
A Toyota diesel hybrid truck that went on sale in November 2003, for instance, costs around $10,000 more than its diesel-only version, a third more.
Whether consumers are ready to pay that kind of premium for super-efficient cars remains open. Toyota doesn't produce a passenger-car version of the diesel hybrid.
BETTER THAN FUEL CELLS?
A Bernstein Research study estimated that hybrid cars able to go 20 miles on electric power alone would still cost 20 percent more than conventional cars, even if manufacturing volumes rose to 100,000 a year by 2010. Fuel savings would recoup the price premium only after 300,000 miles - more than twice most cars' life expectancy.
Toyota, the Japanese carmaker that made petrol-electric hybrids a real hit, questions whether it is viable, practical or sensible to sell diesel hybrid passenger vehicles in the foreseeable future.
"Before adding a hybrid system to a diesel engine, we still think there's room for improvement in the diesel-only and gasoline-only engines in terms of fuel efficiency," a Toyota spokesman said. Honda Motor Co. Ltd., another force in hybrids, also played up the costs and played down the prospects of launching serial production of a diesel hybrid car.
General Motors, Ford and DaimlerChrysler all came up with fuel-sipping diesel hybrids in the 1990s under the U.S. government-backed Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, but never marketed them.
Still, some researchers think diesel hybrids could hold their own even against highly touted hydrogen fuel cells - widely seen as a candidate for powering a big portion of future cars, but which would need a huge energy infrastructure overhaul.
A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Laboratory for Energy and the Environment found that even with aggressive research, fuel-cell cars won't beat diesel hybrids on total energy use or greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.
It concluded that intense research on a diesel-engine hybrid could produce by 2020 a vehicle that is twice as efficient and half as polluting as fuel-cell cars including the emissions and energy used to deliver the fuel and make the vehicle.
Many carmakers are pressing on.
"It is more difficult to hybridize diesel, but we are going to show that it is possible," Jean-Martin Folz, chief executive of Europe's number-two carmaker PSA Peugeot Citroen, told an industry conference in Frankfurt last month.
A spokesman said PSA was working with two British firms to develop a diesel hybrid version of the Citroen Berlingo car, but had not yet decided whether to make it commercially.
Volkswagen will enter an experimental diesel hybrid car at the Michelin Challenge Bibendum in Shanghai next month, a contest for alternative powertrain vehicles.
"The technology is there and has been well known for years. The problem with hybrid is the battery technology," a VW spokesman said, noting no one yet has come up with a hybrid battery that lasts as long as the car it powers.
Story by Michael Shields and Chang-Ran Kim
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
source : planetark.com
FRANKFURT, Germany/TOKYO - A car that can go 80 miles on a gallon of renewable fuel such as soy and canola would seem like an ideal solution to oil prices bumping around historic highs of $50 a barrel.
In fact, the technology already exists in the form of so-called diesel hybrid vehicles, which yoke a conventional diesel engine to an electric motor and battery to store unused energy for clean and quiet driving at lower speeds.
But automakers say such cars are unlikely to move out of the research lab any time soon, even as fuel efficiency becomes a must for more and more customers appalled by prices at the pump.
The main problem is that diesel hybrid cars cost too much to produce - thousands of dollars more than petrol-electric hybrids like Toyota Motor Corp's Prius, which is a sell-out U.S. hit.
"Diesel hybrid is one possible propulsion system that we are researching and testing, but no one can say whether this is the path to the future," said Edith Meissner, a spokeswoman for German-American carmaker DaimlerChrysler.
"It is certainly the most efficient method among the conventional powertrains ... but also the most expensive."
Standard diesel engines burn less fuel than petrol engines. Hybrid technology makes them even more frugal by letting cars run on stored electricity captured during braking and coasting.
But this lands a double whammy on costs. A diesel engine typically costs around 10 percent more than its petrol-driven cousin of similar power, even without the cost of adding an electric motor, batteries and the electronics to run them.
A Toyota diesel hybrid truck that went on sale in November 2003, for instance, costs around $10,000 more than its diesel-only version, a third more.
Whether consumers are ready to pay that kind of premium for super-efficient cars remains open. Toyota doesn't produce a passenger-car version of the diesel hybrid.
BETTER THAN FUEL CELLS?
A Bernstein Research study estimated that hybrid cars able to go 20 miles on electric power alone would still cost 20 percent more than conventional cars, even if manufacturing volumes rose to 100,000 a year by 2010. Fuel savings would recoup the price premium only after 300,000 miles - more than twice most cars' life expectancy.
Toyota, the Japanese carmaker that made petrol-electric hybrids a real hit, questions whether it is viable, practical or sensible to sell diesel hybrid passenger vehicles in the foreseeable future.
"Before adding a hybrid system to a diesel engine, we still think there's room for improvement in the diesel-only and gasoline-only engines in terms of fuel efficiency," a Toyota spokesman said. Honda Motor Co. Ltd., another force in hybrids, also played up the costs and played down the prospects of launching serial production of a diesel hybrid car.
General Motors, Ford and DaimlerChrysler all came up with fuel-sipping diesel hybrids in the 1990s under the U.S. government-backed Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, but never marketed them.
Still, some researchers think diesel hybrids could hold their own even against highly touted hydrogen fuel cells - widely seen as a candidate for powering a big portion of future cars, but which would need a huge energy infrastructure overhaul.
A study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Laboratory for Energy and the Environment found that even with aggressive research, fuel-cell cars won't beat diesel hybrids on total energy use or greenhouse gas emissions by 2020.
It concluded that intense research on a diesel-engine hybrid could produce by 2020 a vehicle that is twice as efficient and half as polluting as fuel-cell cars including the emissions and energy used to deliver the fuel and make the vehicle.
Many carmakers are pressing on.
"It is more difficult to hybridize diesel, but we are going to show that it is possible," Jean-Martin Folz, chief executive of Europe's number-two carmaker PSA Peugeot Citroen, told an industry conference in Frankfurt last month.
A spokesman said PSA was working with two British firms to develop a diesel hybrid version of the Citroen Berlingo car, but had not yet decided whether to make it commercially.
Volkswagen will enter an experimental diesel hybrid car at the Michelin Challenge Bibendum in Shanghai next month, a contest for alternative powertrain vehicles.
"The technology is there and has been well known for years. The problem with hybrid is the battery technology," a VW spokesman said, noting no one yet has come up with a hybrid battery that lasts as long as the car it powers.
Story by Michael Shields and Chang-Ran Kim
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
source : planetark.com
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