The second struct
ural defect afflicting hybrids is their pricing. It could well turn out that unless auto companies ensure that the pricing levels of offered hybrids are in tune with mass market expectations – especially in markets like India and China, expected to be the world’s top two in the next five to ten years – they might well start failing. Hybrids are simply not cost effective, and will not be in the next seven to ten years, if at all then. A hybrid, to be rampantly successful, has to be priced in such a range that enables the consumer to perceive its ‘long term’ cost effectiveness over the ‘short term’, thus engaging his buying intent. Confusing? For better clarity, read what Deputy Editor Virat Bahri writes later on in the cover section: “Doubts are often raised about how cost effective hybrids really turn out to be. NuWire Investor’s Cali Zimmerman compared the [price of the] Toyota Camry hybrid with the normal version, and statistically proved that the cost difference cannot be recovered before 13.8 years!!! Even the first hybrid to be introduced in, say, a poor country like India – the Honda Civic – costs a huge Rs.18-22 lakhs.” How does one expect consumers in a poverty-ridden country like India (with per capita GDP just around $1000) to buy such a costly car? Isn’t it then quite a no-brainer issue to say that a hybrid, by its very definition, loses its USP once it is priced higher than even normal cars? Amusingly, not when you look at it from the perspective of billion dollar corporations who refuse to wink when drunk.
The no-brainer auto issue #3
Alternate fuel! In their blind quest for finding out god’s gift of a substitute for petrol, automobile companies are attempting to move the damned mountain when all they had to do was to change the course of the river. With hybrids getting beaten in hype only by this third dimwit of a concept called alternate fuel, car companies are only taking themselves and of course the customers for a royal ride attempting to create cars that run on grandiose non-market-tested ‘alternate’ fuel. Let me give you a primer on the alternate fuels available in the market and their ridiculous inconsistency. (a) Biomass: Fuel from plant matter or even waste material. Famous biomass fuels: methanol and ethanol. Unsolvable issues (for the next ten years) remain on how much arable land will be used (wasted) to host plant matter to produce required ‘cost effective’ ethanol. Pollution issues in ethanol production cycle are totally unresolved. Worse, methanol as fuel is not even efficient! (b) Hydrogen: Talk to me after 20 years and I’ll show you an affordable price-effective fuel cell that can logically power a car on the road. Currently, DuPont can fix one up for you in your car for the price of a mini-satellite. (c) Photo-voltaic energy from the sun; solar powered cars: Keep the windows open and make sure you don’t get embarrassed driving a car with no passenger seat at 10 miles an hour. (d) Battery operated hybrids: Been there, done that! (e) A cost-effective nuclear powered engine: Thirty years!
For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article
Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008
ural defect afflicting hybrids is their pricing. It could well turn out that unless auto companies ensure that the pricing levels of offered hybrids are in tune with mass market expectations – especially in markets like India and China, expected to be the world’s top two in the next five to ten years – they might well start failing. Hybrids are simply not cost effective, and will not be in the next seven to ten years, if at all then. A hybrid, to be rampantly successful, has to be priced in such a range that enables the consumer to perceive its ‘long term’ cost effectiveness over the ‘short term’, thus engaging his buying intent. Confusing? For better clarity, read what Deputy Editor Virat Bahri writes later on in the cover section: “Doubts are often raised about how cost effective hybrids really turn out to be. NuWire Investor’s Cali Zimmerman compared the [price of the] Toyota Camry hybrid with the normal version, and statistically proved that the cost difference cannot be recovered before 13.8 years!!! Even the first hybrid to be introduced in, say, a poor country like India – the Honda Civic – costs a huge Rs.18-22 lakhs.” How does one expect consumers in a poverty-ridden country like India (with per capita GDP just around $1000) to buy such a costly car? Isn’t it then quite a no-brainer issue to say that a hybrid, by its very definition, loses its USP once it is priced higher than even normal cars? Amusingly, not when you look at it from the perspective of billion dollar corporations who refuse to wink when drunk.The no-brainer auto issue #3
Alternate fuel! In their blind quest for finding out god’s gift of a substitute for petrol, automobile companies are attempting to move the damned mountain when all they had to do was to change the course of the river. With hybrids getting beaten in hype only by this third dimwit of a concept called alternate fuel, car companies are only taking themselves and of course the customers for a royal ride attempting to create cars that run on grandiose non-market-tested ‘alternate’ fuel. Let me give you a primer on the alternate fuels available in the market and their ridiculous inconsistency. (a) Biomass: Fuel from plant matter or even waste material. Famous biomass fuels: methanol and ethanol. Unsolvable issues (for the next ten years) remain on how much arable land will be used (wasted) to host plant matter to produce required ‘cost effective’ ethanol. Pollution issues in ethanol production cycle are totally unresolved. Worse, methanol as fuel is not even efficient! (b) Hydrogen: Talk to me after 20 years and I’ll show you an affordable price-effective fuel cell that can logically power a car on the road. Currently, DuPont can fix one up for you in your car for the price of a mini-satellite. (c) Photo-voltaic energy from the sun; solar powered cars: Keep the windows open and make sure you don’t get embarrassed driving a car with no passenger seat at 10 miles an hour. (d) Battery operated hybrids: Been there, done that! (e) A cost-effective nuclear powered engine: Thirty years!
For Complete IIPM Article, Click on IIPM Article
Source : IIPM Editorial, 2008
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