A Hankering for Hybrids Aug 4th 2013, 18:26
Erich Schlegel for The New York Times
Pandian Athirajan and his Toyota Prius Hybrid sedan in Austin, Tex., earlier this week. He bought the car in May. The car's license plate has been redacted by The New York Times.
DETROIT — When automakers rolled out their new electric cars three years ago, they had big plans. Even President Obama, in his State of the Union address in 2011, predicted there would be as many as a million of them on the nation's roads by the middle of the decade.
Results have, so far, fallen way short of expectations. Only about 36,000 battery-powered vehicles were sold this year through July, according to the auto research site Edmunds.com. And many of those sales were spurred by heavy discounts from car companies desperate to move electric models off the lot.
But for hybrid cars, it has been a different story. Automakers have sold about 298,000 hybrids, which alternately run on gasoline engines and battery power, so far this year.
And while electric vehicles may be considered greener and more glamorous, hybrids have quietly entered the mainstream of the American auto market.
Today, more than 40 conventional hybrid models are available, from mass-market automakers like Toyota and Ford to luxury brands like BMW and Mercedes. Hybrids account for about 3 percent of overall industry sales, with the market-leading Toyota Prius cracking the Top 10 list of best-selling passenger cars.
By contrast, automakers offer only about a dozen all-electric cars or plug-in models — which run on battery power with assistance from a gasoline engine — although more are on the way.
Industry analysts say that hybrid models are now showing up on the shopping lists of a broad range of consumers.
"Conventional hybrids are mainstream now," said John O'Dell, the green-car editor at Edmunds. "You can envision almost anyone buying one."
The reasons are many. Hybrids cost less than most electric models. There are no limitations on driving range based on battery power. And the technology, once seen as exotic and possibly unreliable, has been proved over time in real-world driving conditions.
One of the hybrid converts is Pandian Athirajan, an I.B.M. product manager in Austin, Tex. He had been considering buying a Prius for years before finally taking the plunge in May.
He bought the Prius to save gas and reduce vehicles emissions, but only because its hybrid system had been perfected by Toyota since it was introduced in 2000. "I wanted to buy a third-generation hybrid so that all kinks were ironed out," Mr. Athirajan said.
For many consumers, price is the biggest factor in choosing a hybrid over a vehicle that runs primarily on battery power.
For example, the base price for a regular, gasoline-powered Ford Fusion sedan is $ 21,900. The conventional hybrid version of the car goes for $ 26,200. But the plug-in variation costs $ 38,700. Faced with sluggish demand for electric vehicles, auto companies have increasingly been forced to slash prices to stimulate demand. Ford, for example, recently cut $ 4,000 from the price of its all-electric Focus.
Manufacturers are also fighting an uphill battle to win over consumers worried about the distances they can travel before recharging an a purely electric car.
That was one reason Mr. Athirajan chose a hybrid. Even though his hometown has several public charging stations, including one at his local Walmart, Mr. Athirajan was concerned about making the 300-mile drive to Houston twice a month to visit his daughter.
Mr. Athirajan said he was prepared to look into buying an electric vehicle in three or four years but that he thought the electric technology still needed to mature. He also said that four to six hours to charge the battery was too long.
"Most of the E.V. cars give anywhere between 75 to 125 miles between charge," Mr. Athirajan said. "It will be O.K. for weekday office trips but not O.K. for weekend shopping and other trips, and definitely not suitable for my weekend trips to Houston."
Despite the lukewarm acceptance of electric models, automakers are nevertheless pushing ahead with more of them. One critical consideration is the increasingly stringent fuel-economy rules set by the federal government, which mandate that a car company's total fleet must average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, nearly double what it is today.
The pressure is even more acute in California, which has a zero-emission-vehicle program intended to cut pollution and increase sales of electric cars.
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