With gas prices increasingly becoming a popular topic of discussion across America, it's no wonder that better gas mileage is a hot topic in Detroit. Even so, says a study commissioned by Johnson Controls, a maker of high-tech batteries used in hybrid vehicles, the pain at the pump isn't enough yet to start moving mainstream consumers toward hybrid vehicles. That, says the report, won't happen until the price per gallon is somewhere between $4 -$5. Despite the results of that survey, consumers definitely want better gas mileage even if they aren't ready to make the leap to a full-fledged hybrid vehicle.
The main concept behind the hybrid is simply providing some of the engine power that is normally supplied by burning gasoline with another source, often electricity. Even though, as CNET reports, the Union of Concerned Scientists believes that current hybrid aren't nearly as efficient as they should be, they still offer a 15-40 percent improvement over conventional gasoline engines.
That's a considerable gas mileage boost, and it's the reason why David Vieau, president and CEO of automotive battery maker A123, says we'll see as many as 116 car models with some degree of electric assist by the end of this year. The Detroit Free Press tells us that many of these new electric assist vehicles won't call themselves hybrids at all, but will simply advertise their increased fuel efficiency. Buick, for example, will be introducing an electric assist system, creatively called the eAssist Technology, in the 2012 LaCrosse and Regal models.
Going back to that Johnson Controls survey, we see that 75% of consumers are ready to consider a more fuel efficient car, while only 20% are ready to consider a hybrid. Detroit's solution is to give them hybrids under the hood, but not call them hybrids. Of course, for those of you who actually prefer leading edge green technology in your vehicles, there will still be hybrids that are actually called hybrids as well, but when every other car on the road is getting the same mileage (using the same technology by another name), what's the point?
When you think about, that's kind of the way it should be. A hybrid is defined a cross-breed between two different things, but if the offspring are fertile and breed true, the next generation is no longer called hybrid. The viability of the gasoline-electric engine has been proven in the first generation with offspring like the Chevy Volt, the Toyota Prius, and the Honda Insight. The next generation is coming, and even though it won't be a called a hybrid, rest assured that it carries the same power-train DNA as the Volt, Prius, Insight and all the other hybrids.