Hybrids: The German vs. the Japanese View

13 City, 18 Highway... hybrids "pay" for this car, Liberals!

Everybody is familiar with the Toyota Prius.  Although not the first hybrid (the Honda Insight was), the Prius is, by far, the most recognizable hybrid on the roads today.  This vehicle came at the cost of billions of dollars (much of it from the Japanese government and, by extension, Japanese taxpayers).

There are usually two types of buyers for a hybrid: those who want to show the world how “eco-friendly” they are and those who want better gas mileage.  Honda has sold the Civic Hybrid for years but it was always outsold by the Toyota Prius.  Part of the reason is because the Prius had more high tech features than the Civic but I think most of the reason is because when you drive a Civic Hybrid you cannot show the world you are “saving” the planet.

The batteries used in hybrids are very bad for the environment.  The mining of the metals causes huge environmental destruction, they cannot be recycled, and, in the case of the Prius, it is simply a dangerous car due to its poor visibility and skinny tires (meant to improve gas mileage).

And for those Liberals who buy the Prius to be “eco-friendly” (despite all the real environmental downsides) don’t realize that Toyota only developed that car so they could sell more full size, gas guzzling trucks and SUVs (whose profits pay for the hybrids).

Mercedes-Benz, BMW, and Volkswagen, being German, looked at the issues of fuel economy being forced upon them by the European Union and decided the best system was one already in existence – diesel.  They invested significant resources making diesel “clean.”  They accomplished this by squirting urea into the exhaust stream to remove the nasty Nitrus-Oxides produced by diesel exhaust (and the low-sulfur diesel helps in this).  The diesel gets better fuel economy than gasoline, has a longer range on the highway (something hybrids don’t achieve), produces huge amounts of torque which allows a smaller engine to be used, and it is a proven technology.

These new “clean” diesels are not selling well and they cannot be modified to run on “bio-fuel” without voiding the warranty on them.

So why aren’t diesels selling well?  There are a couple of reasons I think.  Firstly, Americans have bad memories of diesels from the 1970s and 1980s when there were a lot of slow, smelly cars on the road.  Secondly, diesels cost more than gasoline engines and hybrids (because the true cost of the hybrid is underwritten by truck sales and public funding).  Lastly, if you drive a diesel nobody will know you are “saving the planet.”

For the double-cappuccino-half-caf-mocha-tall crowd, being seen as “saving the planet” is very important (even though all those Starbucks coffee cups don’t help things).  The Germans (BMW and Mercedes) have made a stab at the hybrids with forthcoming models of the X-Series and the M-Class, however Mercedes is only building 1,700 of them and you can only lease it.

Mercedes has made clear that the hybrid M-Class may be their only true hybrid (the S Class is available with a Lithium Ion battery but it’s not a “full” hybrid).  From my understanding, Mercedes invested in this hybrid technology with GM, BMW, and Chrysler (which is now dropped out) because they needed to comply with the whims of Liberals in the E.U. and the U.S. who were demanding they cut CO2 emissions (to “save the planet”) which would threaten their production of V8, V10, and V12 engines in their highline cars.

So the German hybrids are really there to satisfy silly Liberals, not to serve any real purpose.  The hybrid effort has cost them millions of dollars which could have been better spent on hiring more people, developing better cars, etc.  But they couldn’t do that because they had to hedge their bets against whatever Liberal whims might come up in the future.

So on the one hand you have the Germans who don’t really want to play Liberal ball but had to and on the other hand you have the Japanese who were more than willing to appease Liberals with their “green” cars that are actually environmentally destructive and only allow them to sell more gas guzzling trucks and SUVs (Honda tried to stay out of this game by never building a V8 but they had to compete with the Prius so they launched a re-designed Insight).

And that is the irony of Liberalism… the law of unintended consequences.

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