We’re off to a strong start in our month-long campaign to send a message to Toyota about the nature of the hybrid market. I’m happy to announce that we’re already over 13,000 signatures toward our goal of 14,000 petitions asking Toyota to bring a fuel-efficient minivan option to America. If you’ve yet to sign the petition or help spread the word, please get involved and get a chance at our “Cool Car – Cool Planet” prizes!
As I noted in the latest Driving Change Network Newsletter, I’ve had some very interesting back-and-forth with a number of participants in our campaign. Here’s some of the back-and-forth:
Q: I'm glad you're prodding Toyota to produce a fuel-efficient hybrid minivan, but why not also prod Honda? They're the other major producer of hybrid vehicles, with at least as much experience and as broad a range as Toyota, plus their Odyssey minivan has been top rated in the U.S. for quite a few years.
A: You're right about Honda, but Ford, GM, and DaimlerChrysler also have minivans and hybrid technology that could do the job. We are singling out Toyota because they have a hybrid minivan on the roads (two actually, as you’ll see below). That said, we hope that a petition of this sort will have ramifications beyond Toyota itself, and demonstrate to all the automakers that a hybrid minivan would be a smart business move, and, as importantly, that the public is concerned about the growing trend of using hybrid technology to boost power rather than efficiency.
Q: Many of us were anxious for Toyota to import the Estima to the U.S. The conclusion from Toyota seemed to be that since it is a smaller version of the standard US minivans, it would not sell in this market. We all thought them VERY wrong. My wife & I spent last month in Australia and saw many of the gas versions of the Estima. My understanding is that Toyota plans to introduce a hybrid version of the Sienna van, perhaps in 2009.
A: Consumers keep getting teased with vague promises about the Sienna Hybrid. We felt a concerted campaign might help get Toyota “over the top” on this important decision.
Q: Why are you focusing on just the Estima hybrid? Toyota actually has two different hybrid minivans in Japan, the Estima (available since 2001, was just redesigned with HSD [Hybrid Synergy Drive] a year or two ago), and the Alphard, available since 2003. (BTW: the Estima minivan (non-hybrid) used to be sold in the US under the Previa name.)
A: It’s because I can’t support any vehicle with a name as silly sounding as “Alphard.” Okay, not really. The Alphard is more of the luxury-end Toyota minivan in Japan. The hybrid has four wheel drive, and would get roughly high-20s or low-30s for Environmental Protection Agency-estimated gas mileage (it gets about 42 mpg on the Japanese test cycle as opposed to 47 for the Estima).
There are a couple of reasons why the Estima works better as the example vehicle for our campaign. First, at its essence, this petition is a statement to Toyota and the other automakers that Americans want fuel efficiency to come first when it comes to the expansion of hybrid choices. If Toyota acts on our petition, I would expect that the option we will likely see in the United States would be a Sienna Hybrid (likely built in Indiana). The key is to make sure that as they adapt the Hybrid Synergy Drive for the Sienna, they are thinking about how many miles per gallon they can squeeze out of it, not about making a more powerful Sienna that gets slightly better fuel economy.
Second, given that in America, Toyota is now putting out more high-end and muscle hybrid choices than fuel-efficiency hybrids (3 Lexus models and the Highlander Hybrid vs. Prius and Camry Hybrid), choosing the less “tricked out” version of a hybrid minivan makes a secondary statement—hybrid options should be made available to all consumers, and not just be seen as a luxury item. Toyota did a very good job of that with the Camry Hybrid, making its premium over the standard Camry quite reasonable. As the technology spreads and the per-unit cost drops, the goal should be to get fuel-efficient technology into as many hands as possible.
If you have any questions or comments about our campaign, please feel free to send them to me at hybridcenter@ucsusa.org. And don’t forget to take action and spread the word!
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