Hybrid car technology and applications

¶ … Bias Critique

Thackery, John. "Hybrid autos REV up: but will SUV-addicted buyers opt for an environmentally friendly car that saves on gas but commands a premium price?" Electronic Business: Automotive Electronics. Oct 2002 v28 i10 pp. 64(5)

Even before reading the article, "Hybrid autos REV up" an informed consumer of the media should know that quite often automobile and electronics magazines are highly favorable of the industries they chronicle. The industry is essentially their 'bread and butter' of such magazines -- i.e. without cars, fancy car gadgets, and car aficiandos, there would be no audiences for such segmented magazines. The credentials of John Thackery, the article's author, are not immediately obvious, but the article's title "Hybrid autos REV up: but will SUV-addicted buyers opt for an environmentally friendly car that saves on gas but commands a premium price?" suggests a highly positive slant is being given to the vehicles, for in addition to its context in the magazine, the article's title stresses the rev-ing up of the presumably previously puny engines of the electric vehicles. Hence, the imminent revving up of sales, suggests Thackery.

However, the article does provide credible statistical evidence to suggest the car's popularity, noting "Toyota has sold a total of 100,000 of all types of HEVs worldwide in the last five years and boasts that it will crank out 300,000 HEVs annually by 2005, as more car buyers show a preference for lower emissions and better mileage." As further testimony to the likely future popularity of the cars it also notes as well that in addition to Toyota, Honda and Nissan have also begun to offer hybrid cars. Other automotive manufacturers plan to introduce electric cars in the next few years, including Ford, General Motors and Daimler Chrysler. All of these manufactures, incidentally, have linked advertisements to this article on the World Wide Web.

The intended audience of this article, however, is clearly more interested in the car's purported power than environmental impact. Although the article does quote a director of alternative power technologies at J.D. Power & Associates, Westlake Village, who notes "the total HEV industry could be as large as one-half-million units by 2007," instead the author is more keen to emphasizes that forward-thinking car makers are "building a new breed of HEVs with smaller sticker premiums and more modest emission-reduction and mileage-enhancement targets." Thackery gently mocks the Toyota Prius, for example, stating that the car "sells on its appeal as a statement of the driver's environmental piety," but the more revved up HEVs, of the future, which are incidentally are more likely to be made by American car manufacturers, "are more attuned to market realities in a country where gas guzzling is an accepted addiction. 'If you do the math, you can see that we can actually save significantly more fuel converting a 20-mpg vehicle into a hybrid than a 30-mpg vehicle, especially if it's a vehicle that sells in high volumes, not a niche vehicle,'" one GM executive is quoted as saying, in defense of GM's future, more modest emissions standards for its electronic vehicles, in contrast to the Toyota Prius.