Americans are not interested in fuel economy or small, efficient cars. Americans want power, size, and styling. Says who? Says GM. Says Ford. Says Daimler-Chrysler. Says the analysts at JD Powers.
“All things said and done, I think power is more important to the typical American car buyer than fuel efficiency,” he said.
That’s the message we’ve been getting for years. Even as GM disintegrates, Ford finds no takers for their most monsterous SUVs, and Daimler-Chrysler declares that their 60mpg Smart vehicles are “too small” to interest the American consumer. Even as the market share of the “Big Three” heads toward the Big Zero, Conservative law makers (I’m looking at you, Kit Bond) continue to make fun of smaller cars at every opportunity.
Then GM finally did something that maybe they might have thought of years ago… they asked the American consumer what they thought was important in cars and energy policy.
Want to guess what real Americans answered?
Start the drum roll. Here’s the number one thing that interests American consumers:
See, they told you it was power. Now… Oh, wait.
Dependence from foreign oil? How did that make the top of the list? Let’s look at #2 and #3.
Reduced use of oil, better fuel efficiency, and fewer reductions. It almost sounds like they’re looking for plug-in hybrids, doesn’t it? Haven’t the American consumers been listening to the billions of dollars in marketing that the car companies have expended to tell them to want more power? Haven’t they been listening to Bond and others who say that only SUVs can satisfy our cravings?
American consumers have been listening. They’ve been listening to the ads, and looking at the products, and they have a very good ides of what kinds of vehicles the different car manufacturers are putting in their showrooms.
Ouch.
Maybe it would have been better if GM spent less time telling us what we want, and more time listening.
DS, my brother is an electrical engineer for Aerovironment and he agrees with you that plug-ins are the present and future. Nix the hydrogen.
I wonder about that survey. If there’s such a huge demand for hybrid cars (and just generally economical cars) then why do they sell so poorly? My local Honda dealership has a dozen hybrid Civics sitting on the lot right this minute.
Maybe the problem is that people want good gas economy FOR FREE. But that’s not how it works…
The Civic Hybrid is poorly promoted, IMHO, compared to the Prius. Most people I’ve spoken to thought that the ugly, impractical Insight was Honda’s answer to the Prius, and were entirely unaware of either the Civic Hybrid or the Accord Hybrid. Hell, I didn’t think the Civic Hybrid was for real until one of the guys who works for me bought one, and I could see that it’s not just a placeholder for a soon-to-come Prius-like hybrid.
Honda’s marketing department needs to be working from the same list of priorities that their engineering department is using. I read an article earlier this week (sorry, no cite available, I’m away from home) where a Honda engineer talked about how his first design for the MDX wasn’t “green” enough, and was ordered sent back for rework by none other than the Japanese VP of engineering.
Perhaps some of the issue for Honda is that the hybrids they’re producing aren’t just under-marketed — they’re not visually different from their non-hybrid counterparts. A lot of the impetus for buying a hybrid these days is the desire to make a political/social statement about your priorities. The Prius is visually distinctive, whereas Honda’s Hybrid badging is practically invisible.
-AG
bouth last year, each for under 20,000. Thye are the euqivalent of a Civic EX — fully equipped, incluidng side airbagts, good stero, a/c, cruise (which I never use), ABS, etc. An quivalnetly equipped Prius ran about 4-5,000 more.
They are well engineered cars, handle and ride well.
I don’t often use the A/C, and am not a speed demon. Myt major driving is 25 miles each way to work, which is mainly limited access roads, but not all superhighway. After 16,000 miles of driving, my overall gas consumption has average around 53 MPG.
Do I think plug-ins, or combined electric and byrid vehicles might be even more efficient? Sure, but given the options available late last Spring, I think we made the best choice possible.
But then, many ;people can’t afford that much for a car. Even with the 2k tax break per vehicle (and a much smaller break in Virginia), at current gas prices I will not recover the difference in cost for another 4 years. If gas increases to 3 or 4 / gallon, recovery would be much quicker.
Do you mean constant speed control or the 5th gear that Europeans often call cruise? The latter, of course, is highly fuel efficient.
Just because cars all have 4 wheels and an engine, doesn’t mean the engineering problems are the same. The skills needed to build a small tough light hybrid are from almost another industry.
GM, Ford et al are incapable of building small cars. That is why they are still touting monsters – because that is all they can make.
my toyota has two years left on the note and when/if i buy a new car (you know like if this job hasn’t been moved to taiwan like the last one was) i’m going hybrid. i’d buy all electric if they made one i could afford.
Anecdotally, I know quite a few people who, when purchasing new cars, have bought diesel engines and switched to bio-diesel. Doing so apparently voids the warranty – but this appears to be another sensible alternative (complementing other alternatives, I believe) to our petro-smack addiction.
Just wanted to give a shout-out to all the cars emitting that french-fried smell.