Will lithium help sell mild hybrids? Just a glorified start/stop system? While Honda was the early bird in the hybrid game, Honda’s hybrids have never been able to compete with Toyota Prius sales, and Honda’s less electric hybrid powertrain is one big reason for this difference. Likewise, GM’s mild hybrid powertrain was even significantly less successful …

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Is there a future for mild hybrids?

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Are Hybrid Cars Too Quiet? – The Daily Beast

Most cost-effective hybrid to own A good hybrid deal Looking for the cheapest car to own? Then think Japanese according to the latest research by Edmunds . And if you are interested in a hybrid with the lowest cost of ownership, it’s the Honda Insight . Overall, according to the researchers at Edmunds, hybrid vehicles…

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Honda Insight – Cheapest to own hybrid

The 5-Series goes hybrid Not about hybrid sales Here comes another luxury hybrid. BMW has announced that it will offer a 5-Series hybrid by 2011, with a 3-Series hybrid to follow. As a hybrid fan, of course that’s great news. Unfortunately, it’s hard to get too geeked about BMW’s new hybrid cars when the company openly states the new hybrids are more about perception than fuel economy…

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For marketing only? Another BMW hybrid

Still just a marketing gimmick? But, can there be only one Prius? In April Toyota sold 26,482 Prius hybrids in Japan , where the Prius has topped auto sales for the last 12 months and where waiting lists top 6 months. Worldwide, Toyota has now sold over 1.74 million Prius hybrids, a simply stunning number, as most other automakers can’t even sell 26,000 hybrids in an entire year. I wonder if Bob Lutz still …

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Toyota Prius – 1.74 million sold and counting

The evolution of carbon fiber One of the greatest ways to increase fuel economy is to reduce weight. Thus, exotic materials, such as carbon fiber, have excited automakers with the possibility of much lighter, yet stronger, cars. Unfortunately, costs have kept these materials from mainstreaming. Recently, however, BMW announced that its Megacity electric car would use carbon fiber . As the Megacity is planned …

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Lightening the load to better fuel economy

Karma: Is this really the path towards efficiency for the masses? For decades the US has driven the world’s auto industry. If an automaker could make it here, they could make it anywhere. But, is America still that important? Recently, China topped the US in auto sales, yet the Chinese auto market has barely been scratched. Likewise, add in the potential of all 4 BRIC countries, let alone the rest of…

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Hybrids and the end of the American car

Only for the Delta platform Alan Taub, GM’s head of global research and development, recently told AutoCar that the Voltec powertrain powering the Chevy Volt is only viable for Volt-sized vehicles. According to Taub, GM’s range extended electric vehicle technology is too big for cars smaller than the Volt, and adding batteries for …

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Volt technology only good for Volt-sized cars

Citroen’s Chinese hybrid Yesterday, I flipped on CNBC and caught the end of Jim Cramer commenting on recent Chinese energy moves, during which Cramer roughly remarked that China doesn’t care about next quarter’s profits. Communists don’t think in quarters, he said, instead they think multi-year. Likewise, Cramer claimed that China is making moves based on 2020 supply projections. Can America compete with this? Just the other day 13 Chinese lithium battery related companies …

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75 percent of Chinese want to buy a hybrid

Only for large scale storage I’ve been following a story on Hitachi lithium magnesium batteries for the last week or two. When I originally read about this breakthrough , I was a bit skeptical. Just days earlier, I had learned that Hitachi desperately needed to derive new sources of revenue, so I suspected this claim of doubling the life span of lithium batteries might just have been an overly positive statement meant for…

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Hitachi battery breakthrough not for cars?

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I hate Prius drivers!

An HK concept I’m still not sure that I believe Hybrid Kinetics Motor Company will be around in 5 years, however, if everything goes as expected, HK will begin producing a family of natural gas hybrid vehicles in 2013 at it’s Alabama manufacturing facility. In partnership with the American Public Gas Association (APGA) and NGVAmerica,

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HK Motors to develop natural gas hybrids