Hybrid Sales Down As Demand Far Exceeds Build Capacity - USA Today

[hatrack]

Even as car buyers stampede for vehicles with better fuel mileage, there are fewer hybrids, the gas-stingiest, to go around.

While sales of conventional small cars soared last month, sales of the most popular gas-electric hybrids were flat or down because dealers had fewer left. There was plenty of demand, but hybrid assembly plants are running as fast as they can, and some are short of components, particularly batteries.

"Not only are they out of cars and out of inventory, but the capacity they have for the hybrid components was locked in a year ago," before $4-a-gallon gas, says George Peterson, president of consultants AutoPacific.

EDIT


Every little bit of supply will be needed with hybrids becoming hot sellers, Power Information Network says. The sales time for three hybrid models — Civic, Toyota Highlander and Mercury Mariner — fell by roughly half this spring compared with a year ago. The Saturn Vue hybrid that took 60 days to sell last year was snapped up in an average 16 days.

Production bottlenecks, particularly for batteries, have limited supply. General Motors (GM) has yet to catch up on production of its hybrid Vue and Saturn Aura and Chevrolet Malibu sedans. Batteries intended for them were used to replace recalled ones in 2007 models last year. Troubled supplier Cobasys, a venture of Chevron and Energy Conversion Devices, also had to shut down temporarily to fix the problem. Toyota, meanwhile, has reached the production limit at the Japanese Prius factory. It just announced it will build a new battery plant and expand another in conjunction with partner Panasonic.

EDIT

http://www.usatoday.com/money/autos/2008-06-10-hybrids_N.htm

[ET Awful]

1. I'm very happy that I bought my Prius in February before the prices and availability went to hell.

I'm lovin' it :).

[tinrobot]

4. I bought my Ford Escape Hybrid a little over a year ago

They were giving them away back then.

Glad I have it.

[annm4peace]

2. can we buy them in Canada ?

[Sal Minella]

3. Batteries are supplied by ....."a venture of CHEVRON....."??? Well Bunkie there's our problem.

It was Standard Oil and the tire companies that ripped up the streetcar tracks in the big cities so people would drive cars, remember?

[NNadir]

5. They can't get batteries?

I have heard many people say - and of course they are very realistic people - that we can save the car culture with electricity.

In fact, according to some sources, we should all be hopeful about our cars since all 250 million of them are about to be replaced by solar powered electricity.

In fact, everything in the world, from toasters to brazillion watt stereos was supposed to be powered by solar powered batteries.

Do you mean this isn't true?

[ElectricGrid]

6. What do your comments have to do with anything?

Since you are a nuke schill you should hope for widespread adoption of ele cars so more plants are built. Why do you let your love of everything nuke blind you?

[NNadir]

7. First of all, solar shill, "shill" is spelled "shill." I am very familiar with shilling.

There are zero dangerous fossil fuel shills who identify themselves as renewable shills who don't appeal to this argument.

Amory Lovins is the most famous, but hardly the only case of a dangerous fossil fuel shill who mirepresents himself.

I am not against electricity. What I am against is unrealistic expectations and denial.

I am also against distributed energy, of which the automobile is the worst, but not the only case.

I have reported on the correct spelling of "shill" here:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/6/10/171654/268

[ElectricGrid]

8. big deal on the typo.... There are no unrealistic

expectations among the majority of posters around this forum. It's going to take a mix of wind, solar, hydo, & nuke to solve our eco and oil reliance problem. You do yourself no favors in the credibility department when you jump on something just for the sake of arguement. Here is how I would like to see our ele generation spread:

30% wind
20% Solar
25% Nuke
15% Hydro
10% Geothermal

I think with the right governement incentives and reasonable debate we could get there in 30-40 years. If solar did somehow break through all the better, but with current tech I don't see the problem in this mix.

[ET Awful]

9. If you're going to harp on spelling, don't you think that the article you link to should have

impeccable spelling?

Hint: There is no such word as "priviledge".

[NNadir]

10. No.

I don't thunks so.

I am perfectly willing to be a hypocrite when the entire fundie "solar will save us" car cult is around. It goes with the territory.

I note that there are zero fundies on this website who power their lives by solar energy.

Of course, dumb anti-nuke fundies like "percent talk" of the type "solar power grows by a brazillion percent."

Of course, it is not very difficult to multiply 0.001, as in 0.001 exajoules, by 2 and to claim that 0.002 is a brazillion percent higher.

(This ignores the point of whether or not it is easy to increase something that is trivial by a braziilion percent when compared to increasing something that is

Thus I feel completely confident that our illiterate anti-nuke fundies will not object if I note that in percent of words used, my misspellings are a brazillion percent lower than those posted by the illiterate anti-nuke fundie in question.

In case you missed it, the point of my post was not to give 3rd grade spelling lessons, but to point out that it hardly a new business with me to be called a "shill" by dumb fundies who worship the likes of Amory Lovins, anti-nuke.

You do know who Amory Lovins is, don't you?

He's the dumb fundie anti-nuke guy who gets paid big bucks by Royal Dutch Shell, Rio Tinto, the Pentagon, Conoco oil, and, of course, Walmart.

He is, in fact, like all fundie anti-nukes, a dangerous fossil fuel shill.

But of course, the same fundies have no problem calling me a "shill."

Lovins, fundie anti-nuke, been declared a "liberal hero," sort of like the dumb fundie anti-nuke Ralph Nader, who worked so diligently for the Repukes in 2000 and 2004.

It makes an ethical person want to throw up.

Here's Amory listing the people for whom he shills:

http://www.rmi.org/images/other/StaffBios/BioALovins.pdf

The list:

Consulting and strategic advice. Mr. Lovins has advised, often at top levels,
such firms as Allstate, Anheuser-Busch, Baxter, Borg-Warner, BP, Carrier, Ciba-
Geigy, Coca-Cola, Dow, Equitable, General Motors, Hewlett-Packard, H.P. Bulmer,
Interface, Invensys, Lockheed Martin, Mitsubishi, Monsanto, Motorola, Norsk
Hydro, Phillips Petroleum, Prudential, Royal Ahold, Royal Dutch/Shell, Shearson
Lehman Amex, STMicroelectronics, Sun Oil, Union Bank of Switzerland, Westinghouse,
Xerox, major real-estate developers...

The major real estate developers is of course something to be very, very, very, very, very, very, very proud of, because Uncle Amory is famous for locating his shit hole RMI in a non walkable parking lot not served by Hydrogen HYPErcars.

In fact, the anti-nuke cults on this website are all car cults. In the last 6 years it is absolutely appalling the number of car cult fantasies I have had to endure from fundie anti-nukes.

[jpak]

11. Only nuclear power can save us from fundie walmart car culture

:rofl: