Go Go Green Cars

Both Toyota and Honda are assaulting the green car market in 2009 with major launches this summer in Japan – “Japan!” I hear you say, “What has that got to do with me in the US?”

The answer is simple – Japan is leading the advance into green car development and the chances are you and me are going to be driving Japanese (and possibly Korean) green cars in 10 years time unless something very radical is done with our markets and most of all, our car makers and even more than them, the political will to effect change.

In Japan, Honda launched the hybrid Insight in February and it has become the first hybrid car to lead new car sales in that country – that is some impact to make in one of the leading car making and car using economies in the world. Meanwhile, Toyota is moving forward with developments and refinements to its best seller, the Prius and this is due to be launched there now (May) – it has 40,000 advance orders for that month alone! More than this, the price gap between hybrid and gas models is narrowing – making more sense for consumers to move to the green alternative vehicle and this gap is only going to get narrower and probably will be extinguished altogether as mass production and volumes bring with them economies of scale.

So far, Honda and Toyota are the only car makers who are achieving the pricing levels with the fuel performance and this underlies the huge sums and efforts they have already tied up in R&D; something Capitol Hill is desperately trying to make good and bring US manufacturers to heel.

They have a long upward struggle to match the foreign car makers lead but with Chrysler marrying Fiat (or being adopted) this will start giving US manufacturers access to the green technology reserves while the Government and bankruptcy courts sort out the debris of these huge companies, wallowing like sulky hippopotamii.

You aren’t misreading the title – you are seeing TDI (Turbo Diesel Injection) in the post title but before you think another foreign car manufacturer is coming up with some fancy foreign vehicle for tree huggers which looks like a box on wheels and has no poke, just feast your eyes on this:

No-one who sees this machine is going to think “green” – they are going to be thinking “WOW!”

You can’t get your hands on the Audi R8 as it is a concept car – a manufacturer and their design team pushing the boundaries of engineering, design, technology application and most of all, imagination.This really shows what can be achieved if a great manufacturer puts their collective mind to the issue – I want a green car, I really do and more than this, I want you to have one too!

How else are we going to eke out the finite natural resources available to us if we don’t take some time and energy and apply the technology to our advantage?

I do not want to be hostage to $5 a gallon gas prices; foreign oil or dirty oil companies forgetting who made them rich – I want good, clean air with a product which gives me a great deal of pride and satisfaction and that doesn’t mean it has to be a Prius! I want to look cool no matter what the energy powering the vehicle is and this is where Audi have hit the nail on the head.

Being green is not for nerds – it’s for all of us and developing green technology and green automobiles is the way jobs are going to be created in the future, it’s way to get our economy back on track and it’s a way for the country as a whole to benefit from.

My question is – Audi is a German company -why hasn’t an American company come up with a concept green car that looks half as good as this or do they want all those green car making jobs to be based somewhere else other than here in the US of A!