Today’s much-trumpeted hybrid car is not the solution to our automotive green tomorrow. The Toyota Prius
is instead merely a clever, probably short-term, step.
That doesn’t mean the current Prius, to be superseded by an even more fuel-miserly model next month, or the new Honda Insight — the cheapest petrol-electric hybrid car on sale in the UK — are engineering blind alleys. Far from it. In the same way that Manchester University’s ‘Baby’ prefaced the Apple Macintosh and the Boeing 747 wouldn’t be the same without the de Havilland Comet, so the Prius and the Insight are early pioneers.
The next big jump is likely to be the Chevrolet Volt (to be called the Vauxhall Ampera in Britain), if General Motors stays in business long enough to make it. Due in 2011, it is likely to be the world’s first pure electric car suitable for everyday driving. Unlike the Prius and Insight, it runs on electric power all the time. A small petrol (or it could use biofuel) engine acts as on-board generator. It is also designed to be charged from the mains, cutting CO2 levels.
The Prius and Insight, on the other hand, still get the vast majority of their power from petrol. While the Prius can only run for about two miles on pure electric power, the Volt can run for 40. When the onboard generator is activated – and the Volt goes into ‘range extended mode’ — that driving range is boosted to more than 300 miles, same as a normal petrol car.
The Volt, of course, is a direct response to the Prius’s success; it’s also a logical next step. The Prius and early Honda hybrids have previewed many other technologies soon to go mainstream, including ‘stop-start’ engines which shut
down in stationary traffic and regenerative systems where batteries capture energy caused by braking. These so-called ‘soft’ hybrid technologies will soon become widespread on ‘normal’ cars, boosting mpg figures.
Meanwhile, the latest version of the Honda Insight is seeking to usurp the Prius as the world’s best-selling hybrid. At £15,490 — almost £3,000 less than a Prius — it uses a simpler and cheaper ‘parallel’ hybrid drive system, in which petrol engine and electric motor work continuously together. Overall fuel consumption is worse than the Prius’s, but Honda says most people will buy the car to reduce fuel bills over existing petrol cars. They buy to save money, not to save the planet.
There’s no doubting the hybrid’s reduced fuel consumption and CO2 emissions compared with normal petrol-powered family cars.
Yet I stepped out of the impressive new Insight into a cheaper (by £3,000), similarly spacious, feistier and better handling Ford Fiesta Econetic diesel. What’s more, the Fiesta does 12mpg better overall according to official government figures (probably more in real life) and, at 98 g/km of CO2, is the lowest carbon-emitting family car available in Europe. Or at least it is until the new Toyota Prius (89 g/km) goes on sale.
Gavin Green is a motoring journalist and consultant
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