EclecticLip

Fiendishly busy at work — in a good way — so some quick notes on the intensifying rivalry in hybrids.

Honda wanted to pip Toyota’s lead on hybrids, by releasing the new Insight at a far lower price point.  For Canada at least, though, currency fluctuations mean the final price hasn’t been set quite yet.  Basically, since Toyota has the perception of “first and most advanced” Honda’s tried to carve out the spot of “most affordable”.  And for one month at least, in Japan, the Insight did wrest the Prius’ hybrid sales crown.

I’ve heard rumour that Toyota has dropped Prius prices to arrest Honda’s momentum in Japan — and they’re also releasing the new Prius in a few months.  So they should easily regain the sales title.  And it’ll apparently compete head-on with Honda’s “most affordable” hybrid claim by releasing a “budget” hybrid in a couple years’ time as well.

- - - - - -
In related recent automotive news, Ford publicized the sale of their 100,000th hybrid SUV; Toyota shortly followed with an announcement that they’d surpassed 1,000,000 hybrid sales in that country.

Nice to see carmakers fighting each other for the environmental halo — especially since, if one of them starts greenwashing, the others surely won’t hesitate to point it out. 

The new Honda Insight — which it clearly hopes will be the mongoose to the cobra of Toyota’s Prius — is coming.  Globe & Mail articles such as this seem to go behind subscriberwall, so here’s an alternate if lighterweight article.

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)

Got our BC Hydro bill in the mail this week — since a financial institution System Adminstrator friend staunchly refuses to do any web-based billing (!) we’ve only gradually started shifting to electronic.

The bill came with a leaflet explaining that in BC we’ve now got a new two-level Conservation Rate.  Relative to the previous rate, for each two-month period you get a 10% discount on your first 1350 kWh…   …but for any energy consumption in excess of that, you pay an extra 10%.

Hydro says about 70% of residential consumers will see reduced bills, based on current usage rates.  But with changes in consumer behaviour even from this very rough and approximate price signal, I’m sure many others — say 10% as a guesstimate? — will take steps to successfully reduce their net bills, also.
Exactly the kind of price-signal we want to drive in consumer behaviour! 

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)

My father celebrated his 60th birthday by buying a bicycle. It was the first time in his life he’d bought one brand-new. (He’s never bought a car, not even a used one.)
I on the other hand, plan to celebrate my 35th birthday by buying a brand-new hybrid. Depending when the new Prius comes out, and depending on availability, this might be an early or a late birthday present. And I’ll give my dad our trusty, only-100,000-km driven 1992 Sentra.
I’ll definitely consider the new Honda hybrid, and will take the Chevy Volt for a spin, but realistically think I’m captivated by the Prius cachet: they were hybrid before hybrid was cool, and I want to support that. Also, half the US grid is coal-based (with dirty, old-school coal plants at that) — so I don’t see an environmental benefit for plug-in vehicles: you’re switching from a dirty fuel (oil) to a very dirty fuel (coal).

It’s true the Canadian grid is much different — only 16% comes from coal — but our grids are interconnected.

- - - - -

The rumour seems to be that LG Chem has won the competition to be the Volt’s battery supplier. It’s a publicly-traded company, so if the rumour is true, there might be money to be made there… that is, if LG Chem is well-run, and the stock price doesn’t already reflect forward revenue expectations from the Volt…

Project Better Place has the noble goal of introducing electric auto fleets. They seem to have some momentum behind them: Israel has signed on to be the first market, and Renault-Nissan will manufacture the fleet. The plan is to deploy half a million battery recharging / replacing stations in the country.

__(’Read the rest of this entry »’)

At the turn of the millenium, the Think electric automobile company (or technically, the “Th!nk” electric auto company) gained Ford as a major shareholder.

After Ford exited the space in 2003, it was picked up by Norwegian investors. As such, its web domain is… “think.no“.
More (awkwardly) unfortunate domain names here, including semi-legendary office writing suppliers “pen island“.