Jason C
06-22-2005, 01:56 AM
http://www.autoextremist.com/arrowdown.gifhttp://www.autoextremist.com/arrowdown.gifhttp://www.autoextremist.com/arrowdown.gif Hybrid Hysteria. There may be hope for Porsche yet. Jens Meiners, reporting in this week's Automotive News, says that Porsche executives are more than a little concerned that a Cayenne SUV hybrid would violate Porsche's purist approach to engineering (as if a Porsche "SUV" didn't already accomplish that). As Meiners reported, "The thought of a driver only hearing the faint noise of an electric engine or the prospect of simulating an engine sound through speakers while the vehicle is being driven, horrifies Porsche engineers." It horrifies us too. Thank goodness there's at least one car company out there with the cojones to realize and state publicly the ugly High-Octane Truth about hybrids (which we at AE have stated from the beginning) - that, at the end of the day, there's no "there" there. Hybrids are an interesting transitional solution to this country's long-term goal of energy independence. But hybrid technology is only one approach, and there are other ways to go about delivering excellent fuel economy - new, cleaner, more fuel-efficient and less costly diesels, for instance. The frantic frenzy surrounding hybrids, fueled by some lesser lights in the media who fanned the flames of hysteria early on, has caused an inordinate amount of attention to be paid to the high points of hybrids (excellent mileage in stop-and-go driving, official Mr. Green Jeans political correctness status), without enough attention being paid to the downside of hybrids (unable to deliver the EPA fuel mileage estimates promised and touted, high initial costs with no chance of recovering those costs over the life of a typical three-year ownership, long-term costs such as battery replacement, the need for aftermarket warranties to protect the used hybrid buyer from the frightfully expensive systems when they need replacing, and finally, the ultimate negative impact to the environment that comes with battery disposal). But the most annoying thing about hybrids to us is that they're transportation "appliances" that intentionally remove the experience of driving from the act of driving itself - which is exactly what Porsche engineers are getting at. There is no fundamental emotion associated with driving hybrids - other than the fact that you can smugly show your neighbors that you're saving the planet (even though you don't want to "go there" when you have to think about all of the negatives associated with hybrids once you get bored and move on to what's "next" - let the used car buyer worry about all of that bad stuff, right?). We've said in the past that the day a car company unleashes a genuine high-performance hybrid to the market will be the day that hybrids will finally gain acceptance by a wider audience - especially with the enthusiast community. But we're not so sure about that now. We believe that a burgeoning dichotomy is brewing in the market, with the anti-car intelligentsia on one side - the owners who blindly embrace the hybrid mania, no matter what the extra costs or long-term damage to the environment may be - and the people who still believe the automobile is an emotional, involving conveyance that will always be much, much more than just a transportation "device" on the other. It may just be that in the future, companies that build true, high-performance machines will choose to continue building and developing the internal combustion motor, while celebrating driving in its purest form, leaving the hybrid hysteria to the mass producers. We can only hope. And we also hope Porsche realizes that having a hybrid Cayenne in California (which Meiners mentioned they're discussing), just to appease a group of buyers who will never be appeased (short of having a car company pay them to drive their cars) isn't essential to their future as a car company. Hybrids indeed have their place, but they're only a small part of a larger solution and a bigger picture. And the more people realize that - dispensing with the needless hysteria - the better off we'll all be.
(sourced from AE)
(sourced from AE)