Automobiles and Gasoline

Toyota announced today that it wants 25% of its U.S. sales to be hybrids within the next decade. This would amount to 600,000 hybrids being sold in this country in ten years. This goal resembles that of Honda, which announced last October that it wants to double its U.S. hybrid sales in the next year to 45,000 per year.

Back in the United States, where Japanese auto companies are coming up with permanent solutions to our oil crisis and our Congress is giving tax breaks to Texaco, United States Big 3 auto companies are bypassing hybrid research. They are instead moving cars off the lot by slashing prices and offering Employee Discounts to all consumers. GM is offering the discount because otherwise it would go bankrupt. Ford and Chrystler are offering it because otherwise everyone would buy GM cars and Ford and Chrystler would go bankrupt. But who is not going bankrupt? Honda and Toyota. Why? Because they already offer hybrids and other fuel-efficient vehicles, which are selling much better than Hummers and Expeditions in these $2.50/gallon times.

The U.S. auto industry invented the automobile, but its lack of true innovation since the time of Henry Ford is guaranteeing its own extinction at the hands of Japanese fuel-efficiency.