Green & Mean
Forget about those puny gas sippers. The hybrid in your future is all about hot-rod horsepower. How carmakers are re-engineering the clean machine
By Keith Naughton
Newsweek
Hybrid 2.0: The next generation of these cars have hype and horsepower on their side
Nov. 22 issue - Avnish Bhatnagar has always lusted after fast cars like racy BMWs. But when the California computer programmer and his wife had their first baby this year, they needed something more practical. A minivan was out of the question. So Bhatnagar, 35, searched online and found an SUV with neck-snapping speed and enough room for the baby stroller. What is this souped-up SUV? A Lexus RX 400h gas-electric hybrid. That's right. A hybrid. Those quirky cars that run on batteries as well as gasoline. But this hybrid is no golf cart. It packs 270 horsepower, making it one of the fastest cars in the Lexus lineup. Oh, and it goes 500 miles on a tank of gas and doesn't foul the air. He'll have to be patient, because the 400h doesn't go on sale for five months. For now, Bhatnagar will just have to dream of that electric power surge as he leaves other drivers in the dust. "If the 400h had less horsepower," he says, "I'd be far less interested in it."
Start your engines: the age of the hot-rod hybrid has arrived. No longer a funky little science experiment, hybrid cars are growing up and going mainstream. The megawatt success this year of the 60mpg Toyota Prius finally made hybrid cars legit in the land of the SUV. But now comes the auto industry's real killer app: hybrid cars that boost horsepower while pinching pennies at the pump. Forget about sacrifice; the coming wave of new hybrids is all about getting more—more power, more mileage, more credit for saving the planet. Of course, you also pay more—currently about $3,500 extra. And at that rate, getting a payoff at the pump takes years. But analysts predict prices will come down as sales go up. And carmakers are banking on their compelling new pitch—drives great, less filling—to take hybrids to the masses. No longer will they be bizarre larva-shaped cars for tree huggers and techno-geeks. The coming wave of hybrids will be versions of the cars, SUVs, minivans and pickups we already drive. The first of these have-your-cake-and-eat-it models arrives next month, when Honda rolls out a 255-horsepower Accord hybrid that races from 0 to 60mph in 6.5 seconds and still gets 37mpg on the highway. The only way to tell this stealth hybrid from a regular Accord: a subtle spoiler on the trunk. Next summer Toyota will debut a high-powered Highlander hybrid SUV. "It will be like enjoying a hot-fudge sundae," promises Toyota sales exec Don Esmond, "without the calories or the guilt."
It's a helpful analogy, since Americans seem to feel the same way about cars that they do about food. Just as we're a nation of obsessive dieters who keep getting fatter, we can't seem to stop ourselves when it comes to driving big-gulp cars. Lately, with the war in Iraq raging and gas prices soaring, it's become fashionable to talk about kicking our 4 million-barrel-a-day foreign-oil habit. Yet even with $2-a-gallon gas, SUV sales are up 5 percent this year. And the 20.8mpg average of new models today is at its lowest level in two decades, while the power under the hood has doubled. The new high-performance hybrids, though, are sort of like Atkins—indulge yourself and still look trimmer. Or, in this case, bump up your gas mileage even as you squeal the tires. By redefining the hybrid as a marriage of vice and virtue, carmakers could create a vast new market the way SUVs did in the '90s, minivans did in the '80s and Japanese cars did in the '70s. But this time, instead of tinkering with the size and shape of our ride, automakers are re-engineering what drives the car by appealing to what drives us as consumers. "These cars speak to our emotions and rationalizations," says psychologist Margaret Krikorian of auto consultant Iceology. "It's like being smart and beautiful."
Transforming hybrids from 98-pound weaklings into muscle cars did not require reinventing the wheel. It just took the forehead-slapping realization that hybrids can be much more than gas sippers. After all, carmakers have always known that horsepower trumps fuel economy. In surveys, car shoppers rank horsepower in the top five reasons to buy, while gas mileage doesn't crack the top 10, even with the run-up in pump prices. When Honda and Toyota introduced the first hybrids in America five years ago, buyers were turned off by their lack of power and size. So now automakers are giving up some gas mileage in exchange for horsepower. The basic idea behind hybrids remains the same: couple an electric motor with a gas engine to boost mileage and reduce tailpipe pollution. The new twist, though, is to mate those gas-saving electric motors with bigger engines that many drivers demand for boat towing or off-roading. And engineers are now tuning the electric motors to create warplike torque—the off-the-line speed that pushes you back in your seat. "You can make these cars extremely fast or extremely fuel-efficient," says Lexus exec Denny Clements. "It's all just software." The downside to this re-engineering: instead of a 40 percent bump in mileage, you could get half that or less. That doesn't thrill enviros, but some see the glass as half full. "The alternative to a performance hybrid," says the Sierra Club's Dan Becker, "is a performance guzzler."
Eventually, car buyers will have the option to choose hybrid power on virtually any model in the same way they now can opt for a V-6 or V-8 engine. Over the next three years, just about every major automaker will introduce hybrid versions of cars that are already household names. By 2008, auto researcher J.D. Power predicts that car buyers will have a choice of 35 different hybrids—everything from a Nissan Altima to a Honda Odyssey minivan to a big Chevy Tahoe SUV. By 2012 the menu will grow to 51 models. Porsche and BMW are working on putting the technology into their SUVs. Mercedes promises to have a version on the market in five years. Lexus is even considering a $100,000 hybrid sports car.
Eventually, car buyers will have the option to choose hybrid power on virtually any model in the same way they now can opt for a V-6 or V-8 engine. Over the next three years, just about every major automaker will introduce hybrid versions of cars that are already household names. By 2008, auto researcher J.D. Power predicts that car buyers will have a choice of 35 different hybrids—everything from a Nissan Altima to a Honda Odyssey minivan to a big Chevy Tahoe SUV. By 2012 the menu will grow to 51 models. Porsche and BMW are working on putting the technology into their SUVs. Mercedes promises to have a version on the market in five years. Lexus is even considering a $100,000 hybrid sports car.
Estimates of how big the hybrid market will get have risen faster than gas prices. Oak Ridge Labs puts it at 1.2 million cars by 2008, a sixteenfold increase from this year. The biggest roadblock remains the $3,500 premium. But as more models compete for buyers, auto execs expect that to shrink to about $2,500 in two years and eventually to drop as low as $1,000. "For $1,000," says auto consultant Wes Brown, "who in their right mind would not to go for a hybrid?"
Behind all the buzz, though, there are still some bugs to be worked out. For starters, no one knows what a hybrid will be worth as a used car. A tough selling point: replacing the battery will run $3,000 or more (automakers guarantee them for the first 100,000 miles). Then there's the payoff problem. Even with gas at $2 a gallon, analysts figure it would take 100,000 miles to make up that extra $3,500 you pay. Worse yet, hybrids are creating a new kind of sticker shock: getting mileage that is nowhere near what's promised on the window sticker. The EPA admits its gas-mileage testing methods are outdated and can overestimate hybrid mileage by 30 percent if you drive with the A/C on. You don't have to tell that to Pete Blackshaw. The Cincinnati marketing exec bought a Honda Civic hybrid last year and proudly outfitted it with MO MILES vanity plates. But instead of the 48mpg his window sticker promised, he gets 33mpg. "All I want is a damn car that lives up to its promise," he gripes, "and that won't make my wife repeatedly tell me I'm a big fool."
Now the struggle for automakers is to find the perfect pitch for promoting mileage and horsepower. Behind the scenes at Honda, marketers wrestled over how to hit the sweet spot with its $30,000 Accord hybrid. Initially, it seemed obvious that they should push power. The light-bulb moment came during an eye-glazing ad-strategy meeting a year ago, when Honda's engineers first revealed the Accord hybrid's speed specs. "Whoa," said Honda marketing exec Tom Peyton, "this is big." Ignoring the rest of the engineers' presentation, Peyton huddled with his ad guys. They scripted a spot that cast the Accord as a hot-rod family car, careering along slick city streets and winding country roads. The punch line: "Surprise, it's a hybrid." But some at Honda wanted a more high-minded pitch about luxury and fuel economy. "It was a big debate inside the company," says Honda exec Robert Bienenfeld. In the end, the racy ad was shelved in favor of a spot showing the Accord hybrid on a tropical island. As the camera floats over its leather seats and satellite radio, actor Richard Dreyfuss talks of its "surprisingly fuel-efficient 255-horsepower" V-6. Still, the hot-rod ad might run later, Peyton says. "If horsepower is what turns people on, then that's what we'll promote."
Lexus, though, is not at all conflicted about how to promote its $52,000 RX 400h. Its "Lexus to the Power of H" ad campaign debuting in April is all about the unexpected power of its hybrid. Its Web site even brags that Formula 1 racers are interested in its electric motors. "Never in our marketing will fuel efficiency be the first thing mentioned," says Clements. "It's all about a great performance vehicle that's guilt-free."
Even the car-buff magazines are getting giddy about hybrids. This month, Car and Driver gives the Accord hybrid a rave, headlined HAUL ASS AND SAVE GAS. Editor Csaba Csere expects the Lexus to be even hotter. And with the Germans finally getting into the game, Csere is looking forward to redlining in BMW and Porsche hybrids. "When a hybrid starts lighting up the tires," he says, "we'll be celebrating."
But some environmentalists, seeing the glass half empty, sure aren't celebrating. The Union of Concerned Scientists' David Friedman scolds Honda for making a hybrid out of its V-6 Accord, rather than its more popular 4-cylinder model. The result is a hybrid Accord that is only about 5mpg more fuel efficient than its 4-cylinder sibling. "If everyone ends up driving around in souped-up family cars and SUVs," he says, "then hybrids have made a wrong turn."
But in Detroit, the horsepower hybrid is a great turn of events. Already miles behind the Japanese, Motown is playing catch-up with hybrids of the models it knows best: SUVs and pickups. And those rigs require some serious power. In September, Ford became the first automaker to sell a hybrid SUV, with the $27,000 Escape. GM and Chrysler are now nudging into the market with "mild hybrid" pickup trucks that improve gas mileage by only 10 to 15 percent (though they offer a nifty new feature: they double as rolling electric generators with enough juice to power a tailgate party). Greenies deride the pickups as "hollow hybrids." But GM argues it is putting hybrids where they are most needed—in guzzlers. "Let's lay hybrids down in vehicles that people in America actually like to drive," says GM marketing exec Ken Stewart. In 2007, GM will debut hybrid versions of its hulking Chevy Tahoe and GMC Yukon SUVs. If they catch on, GM is considering dropping a hybrid into its biggest gas hog: the Hummer H2.
Don't laugh. A hybrid just might inoculate SUVs against their growing social stigma. Sure, they won't get mileage anywhere near a Prius. In fact, a hybrid Hummer would probably get only 14mpg. But by going a little green, SUVs won't seem as mean, analysts say. Interior designer Ping Lin just bought an Escape hybrid because she needed an SUV to haul around bolts of fabric and furniture. "The Prius was just too small," she says. But so other drivers don't think she's in a gas-slurping SUV, Lin slapped a bumper sticker on her Escape that reads EAT MY VOLTAGE.
Hybrids were once thought of as a short-term solution, a footbridge to space-age hydrogen fuel cells that will one day replace the internal combustion engine and wipe out car pollution. But the utopian promise of electric fuel cells seems to grow ever distant, even as automakers pour billions into researching them. "At this point," says Ford product development chief Phil Martens, "I don't ever see hybrids going away." But they are changing to cater to conflicted consumers like Daniela Pavone. The L.A. law student has missed her SUV ever since she ditched it last year for a hybrid Honda Civic. Her next car will be a hybrid SUV, and she won't feel guilty about burning a little more gas. "I'm a proponent of the environment, but I'm not a nut about it," she says. "I mean, I eat meat." Now that the carnivores are taking over the hybrid market, sales and horsepower are bound to grow.
With Patrick Crowley
Forget about those puny gas sippers. The hybrid in your future is all about hot-rod horsepower. How carmakers are re-engineering the clean machine
By Keith Naughton
Newsweek
Hybrid 2.0: The next generation of these cars have hype and horsepower on their side
Nov. 22 issue - Avnish Bhatnagar has always lusted after fast cars like racy BMWs. But when the California computer programmer and his wife had their first baby this year, they needed something more practical. A minivan was out of the question. So Bhatnagar, 35, searched online and found an SUV with neck-snapping speed and enough room for the baby stroller. What is this souped-up SUV? A Lexus RX 400h gas-electric hybrid. That's right. A hybrid. Those quirky cars that run on batteries as well as gasoline. But this hybrid is no golf cart. It packs 270 horsepower, making it one of the fastest cars in the Lexus lineup. Oh, and it goes 500 miles on a tank of gas and doesn't foul the air. He'll have to be patient, because the 400h doesn't go on sale for five months. For now, Bhatnagar will just have to dream of that electric power surge as he leaves other drivers in the dust. "If the 400h had less horsepower," he says, "I'd be far less interested in it."
Start your engines: the age of the hot-rod hybrid has arrived. No longer a funky little science experiment, hybrid cars are growing up and going mainstream. The megawatt success this year of the 60mpg Toyota Prius finally made hybrid cars legit in the land of the SUV. But now comes the auto industry's real killer app: hybrid cars that boost horsepower while pinching pennies at the pump. Forget about sacrifice; the coming wave of new hybrids is all about getting more—more power, more mileage, more credit for saving the planet. Of course, you also pay more—currently about $3,500 extra. And at that rate, getting a payoff at the pump takes years. But analysts predict prices will come down as sales go up. And carmakers are banking on their compelling new pitch—drives great, less filling—to take hybrids to the masses. No longer will they be bizarre larva-shaped cars for tree huggers and techno-geeks. The coming wave of hybrids will be versions of the cars, SUVs, minivans and pickups we already drive. The first of these have-your-cake-and-eat-it models arrives next month, when Honda rolls out a 255-horsepower Accord hybrid that races from 0 to 60mph in 6.5 seconds and still gets 37mpg on the highway. The only way to tell this stealth hybrid from a regular Accord: a subtle spoiler on the trunk. Next summer Toyota will debut a high-powered Highlander hybrid SUV. "It will be like enjoying a hot-fudge sundae," promises Toyota sales exec Don Esmond, "without the calories or the guilt."
It's a helpful analogy, since Americans seem to feel the same way about cars that they do about food. Just as we're a nation of obsessive dieters who keep getting fatter, we can't seem to stop ourselves when it comes to driving big-gulp cars. Lately, with the war in Iraq raging and gas prices soaring, it's become fashionable to talk about kicking our 4 million-barrel-a-day foreign-oil habit. Yet even with $2-a-gallon gas, SUV sales are up 5 percent this year. And the 20.8mpg average of new models today is at its lowest level in two decades, while the power under the hood has doubled. The new high-performance hybrids, though, are sort of like Atkins—indulge yourself and still look trimmer. Or, in this case, bump up your gas mileage even as you squeal the tires. By redefining the hybrid as a marriage of vice and virtue, carmakers could create a vast new market the way SUVs did in the '90s, minivans did in the '80s and Japanese cars did in the '70s. But this time, instead of tinkering with the size and shape of our ride, automakers are re-engineering what drives the car by appealing to what drives us as consumers. "These cars speak to our emotions and rationalizations," says psychologist Margaret Krikorian of auto consultant Iceology. "It's like being smart and beautiful."
Transforming hybrids from 98-pound weaklings into muscle cars did not require reinventing the wheel. It just took the forehead-slapping realization that hybrids can be much more than gas sippers. After all, carmakers have always known that horsepower trumps fuel economy. In surveys, car shoppers rank horsepower in the top five reasons to buy, while gas mileage doesn't crack the top 10, even with the run-up in pump prices. When Honda and Toyota introduced the first hybrids in America five years ago, buyers were turned off by their lack of power and size. So now automakers are giving up some gas mileage in exchange for horsepower. The basic idea behind hybrids remains the same: couple an electric motor with a gas engine to boost mileage and reduce tailpipe pollution. The new twist, though, is to mate those gas-saving electric motors with bigger engines that many drivers demand for boat towing or off-roading. And engineers are now tuning the electric motors to create warplike torque—the off-the-line speed that pushes you back in your seat. "You can make these cars extremely fast or extremely fuel-efficient," says Lexus exec Denny Clements. "It's all just software." The downside to this re-engineering: instead of a 40 percent bump in mileage, you could get half that or less. That doesn't thrill enviros, but some see the glass as half full. "The alternative to a performance hybrid," says the Sierra Club's Dan Becker, "is a performance guzzler."
Eventually, car buyers will have the option to choose hybrid power on virtually any model in the same way they now can opt for a V-6 or V-8 engine. Over the next three years, just about every major automaker will introduce hybrid versions of cars that are already household names. By 2008, auto researcher J.D. Power predicts that car buyers will have a choice of 35 different hybrids—everything from a Nissan Altima to a Honda Odyssey minivan to a big Chevy Tahoe SUV. By 2012 the menu will grow to 51 models. Porsche and BMW are working on putting the technology into their SUVs. Mercedes promises to have a version on the market in five years. Lexus is even considering a $100,000 hybrid sports car.
Eventually, car buyers will have the option to choose hybrid power on virtually any model in the same way they now can opt for a V-6 or V-8 engine. Over the next three years, just about every major automaker will introduce hybrid versions of cars that are already household names. By 2008, auto researcher J.D. Power predicts that car buyers will have a choice of 35 different hybrids—everything from a Nissan Altima to a Honda Odyssey minivan to a big Chevy Tahoe SUV. By 2012 the menu will grow to 51 models. Porsche and BMW are working on putting the technology into their SUVs. Mercedes promises to have a version on the market in five years. Lexus is even considering a $100,000 hybrid sports car.
Estimates of how big the hybrid market will get have risen faster than gas prices. Oak Ridge Labs puts it at 1.2 million cars by 2008, a sixteenfold increase from this year. The biggest roadblock remains the $3,500 premium. But as more models compete for buyers, auto execs expect that to shrink to about $2,500 in two years and eventually to drop as low as $1,000. "For $1,000," says auto consultant Wes Brown, "who in their right mind would not to go for a hybrid?"
Behind all the buzz, though, there are still some bugs to be worked out. For starters, no one knows what a hybrid will be worth as a used car. A tough selling point: replacing the battery will run $3,000 or more (automakers guarantee them for the first 100,000 miles). Then there's the payoff problem. Even with gas at $2 a gallon, analysts figure it would take 100,000 miles to make up that extra $3,500 you pay. Worse yet, hybrids are creating a new kind of sticker shock: getting mileage that is nowhere near what's promised on the window sticker. The EPA admits its gas-mileage testing methods are outdated and can overestimate hybrid mileage by 30 percent if you drive with the A/C on. You don't have to tell that to Pete Blackshaw. The Cincinnati marketing exec bought a Honda Civic hybrid last year and proudly outfitted it with MO MILES vanity plates. But instead of the 48mpg his window sticker promised, he gets 33mpg. "All I want is a damn car that lives up to its promise," he gripes, "and that won't make my wife repeatedly tell me I'm a big fool."
Now the struggle for automakers is to find the perfect pitch for promoting mileage and horsepower. Behind the scenes at Honda, marketers wrestled over how to hit the sweet spot with its $30,000 Accord hybrid. Initially, it seemed obvious that they should push power. The light-bulb moment came during an eye-glazing ad-strategy meeting a year ago, when Honda's engineers first revealed the Accord hybrid's speed specs. "Whoa," said Honda marketing exec Tom Peyton, "this is big." Ignoring the rest of the engineers' presentation, Peyton huddled with his ad guys. They scripted a spot that cast the Accord as a hot-rod family car, careering along slick city streets and winding country roads. The punch line: "Surprise, it's a hybrid." But some at Honda wanted a more high-minded pitch about luxury and fuel economy. "It was a big debate inside the company," says Honda exec Robert Bienenfeld. In the end, the racy ad was shelved in favor of a spot showing the Accord hybrid on a tropical island. As the camera floats over its leather seats and satellite radio, actor Richard Dreyfuss talks of its "surprisingly fuel-efficient 255-horsepower" V-6. Still, the hot-rod ad might run later, Peyton says. "If horsepower is what turns people on, then that's what we'll promote."
Lexus, though, is not at all conflicted about how to promote its $52,000 RX 400h. Its "Lexus to the Power of H" ad campaign debuting in April is all about the unexpected power of its hybrid. Its Web site even brags that Formula 1 racers are interested in its electric motors. "Never in our marketing will fuel efficiency be the first thing mentioned," says Clements. "It's all about a great performance vehicle that's guilt-free."
Even the car-buff magazines are getting giddy about hybrids. This month, Car and Driver gives the Accord hybrid a rave, headlined HAUL ASS AND SAVE GAS. Editor Csaba Csere expects the Lexus to be even hotter. And with the Germans finally getting into the game, Csere is looking forward to redlining in BMW and Porsche hybrids. "When a hybrid starts lighting up the tires," he says, "we'll be celebrating."
But some environmentalists, seeing the glass half empty, sure aren't celebrating. The Union of Concerned Scientists' David Friedman scolds Honda for making a hybrid out of its V-6 Accord, rather than its more popular 4-cylinder model. The result is a hybrid Accord that is only about 5mpg more fuel efficient than its 4-cylinder sibling. "If everyone ends up driving around in souped-up family cars and SUVs," he says, "then hybrids have made a wrong turn."
But in Detroit, the horsepower hybrid is a great turn of events. Already miles behind the Japanese, Motown is playing catch-up with hybrids of the models it knows best: SUVs and pickups. And those rigs require some serious power. In September, Ford became the first automaker to sell a hybrid SUV, with the $27,000 Escape. GM and Chrysler are now nudging into the market with "mild hybrid" pickup trucks that improve gas mileage by only 10 to 15 percent (though they offer a nifty new feature: they double as rolling electric generators with enough juice to power a tailgate party). Greenies deride the pickups as "hollow hybrids." But GM argues it is putting hybrids where they are most needed—in guzzlers. "Let's lay hybrids down in vehicles that people in America actually like to drive," says GM marketing exec Ken Stewart. In 2007, GM will debut hybrid versions of its hulking Chevy Tahoe and GMC Yukon SUVs. If they catch on, GM is considering dropping a hybrid into its biggest gas hog: the Hummer H2.
Don't laugh. A hybrid just might inoculate SUVs against their growing social stigma. Sure, they won't get mileage anywhere near a Prius. In fact, a hybrid Hummer would probably get only 14mpg. But by going a little green, SUVs won't seem as mean, analysts say. Interior designer Ping Lin just bought an Escape hybrid because she needed an SUV to haul around bolts of fabric and furniture. "The Prius was just too small," she says. But so other drivers don't think she's in a gas-slurping SUV, Lin slapped a bumper sticker on her Escape that reads EAT MY VOLTAGE.
Hybrids were once thought of as a short-term solution, a footbridge to space-age hydrogen fuel cells that will one day replace the internal combustion engine and wipe out car pollution. But the utopian promise of electric fuel cells seems to grow ever distant, even as automakers pour billions into researching them. "At this point," says Ford product development chief Phil Martens, "I don't ever see hybrids going away." But they are changing to cater to conflicted consumers like Daniela Pavone. The L.A. law student has missed her SUV ever since she ditched it last year for a hybrid Honda Civic. Her next car will be a hybrid SUV, and she won't feel guilty about burning a little more gas. "I'm a proponent of the environment, but I'm not a nut about it," she says. "I mean, I eat meat." Now that the carnivores are taking over the hybrid market, sales and horsepower are bound to grow.
With Patrick Crowley
