Is there more to hybrid and electric cars than fuel-efficiency?

Automakers are pushing other aspects of their alternatively-fueled cars while gas prices stay low.

|
Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press/AP/File
The hybrid BMW i8 is on display at the 2016 Canadian International Autoshow in Toronto on Feb. 11.

After years of pushing environmental benefits and gas savings, automakers are now marketing hybrid and electric vehicles based on performance and speed, marking a shift in the alternative cars’ place in the market.

When mass-produced hybrid electric cars first hit the streets in the late 1990s, they didn’t make much of a splash. The unique design and capabilities of cars like the Toyota Prius or Honda Insight appealed to those looking to save money on gas or reduce their emissions, but sales were nowhere near traditionally-powered vehicles. While the hybrid trend eventually caught on, and carmakers developed alternative models of popular cars such as the Honda Civic and Ford Escape, hybrid marketing was still focused on fuel efficiency rather than power or form.

But now, electric and hybrid cars are seeing a redefined space in the auto world. It’s no longer about how far drivers can travel on a single tank of gas, it’s about how they do it.

“They've graduated out of the class of something that's a bit of an oddity to drive,” Mike O'Brien, Hyundai’s American vice president of corporate and product planning, told The Associated Press. “It's all about making these cars better.”

Hybrids, and electric vehicles from manufacturers like Tesla, are changing their image. The once boxy and plain Prius is now sleeker and sportier, with the car’s recent Super Bowl advertisement focused on the car’s quickness during a police chase rather than its mileage or environmental consciousness. And Tesla’s line of fully electric cars came onto the market beginning with its Roadster, a two-door sports car more in line with a Lotus Elise than a Civic.

Hybrid and electric carmakers are also adjusting the vehicles’ prices to better match the market. Hybrid versions of traditional cars usually sell for thousands of dollars extra, and manufacturers like Tesla have started their pricing at $60,000 to $70,000. This year, however, Tesla and General Motors will put electric vehicles on the market for as little as $30,000, with an additional tax benefit in the United States.

The gradual lowering of gas prices made the switch to more expensive, yet environmentally friendly, cars less desirable to consumers – especially as traditional vehicles’ mileage continued to improve. When gas averaged $3.50 per gallon in 2013, Americans only bought around 340,000 hybrid and electric cars. Last year, with gas dipping below $2 per gallon, only around 270,000 were sold in the US. Automakers recognized that if fuel efficiency wasn’t the draw it once was then cars’ performance would have to improve.

“It looks better. It drives better. People can have more fun behind the wheel, but it still has new technologies and safety in it, and it also gets the benefits of a hybrid,” Toyota’s US general manager Bill Fay said of the Prius, AP reports. The reimagining of the image of hybrid and electric vehicles has some consumers who made the switch ready to stick with the newer cars.

“It would be tough to go back to gas,” Indiana engineer Mick Roberts told AP. Mr. Roberts drives a hybrid Chevrolet Volt.

Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Is there more to hybrid and electric cars than fuel-efficiency?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2016/0323/Is-there-more-to-hybrid-and-electric-cars-than-fuel-efficiency
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe