I know our young Jedi refuses to see my USA articles, but yang lain yang inggin dapat point of view from the other side, pls read this article. Saya pernah cantumkan, tapi supaya anda tidak perlu korek dalam, inilah, sumber dari America. Toh hybrid orang America lebih ngerti dari saya. Di sini belum di jual, tapi orang Amrik yang sudah lebih ngerti, dan merekalah yang lebih bisa observasi sifat toyota di situ :
http://www.hybridcars.com/blogs/blog.ph ... number=296
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Toyota Land Cruiser (EPA city/hwy 13/17) in sand dunes: Is it delivering our great-great-grandchildren's inheritance to Saudi Arabia?
May 29, 2005: Why Won't Toyota Make More Hybrids?
Toyota is today the darling of the hybrid “cult.†Where is the healthy skepticism of the motives of corporate bosses with which environmentalists greet virtually any actions or announcements by GM, DailmerChrysler, Ford, or any American corporation? Is it that true believers can’t (or won’t) conceive of the possibility that the hybrid market leader could be motivatedâ€â€Gaia forfendâ€â€to achieve aims less pure than saving the planet?
There is an element of wishful thinking in believing that hybrids would ever save enough oil to make any difference in our imports from Saudi Arabia (much less save the planet), so it is understandable to put the best public light on anything the world’s largest maker of hybrids does.
I may not be privy to all that is discussed in the inner circles of the hybrid cult, so I could be mistaken in my impression that the internal is congruent with the public face. I am open to evidence that environmentalists have questioned Toyota’s motives as skeptically and vigorously as they have questioned GM’s. But, I am from Missouri. Show me.
Let me be clear about my bias. I am unapologetically skeptical of hybrid technology. Fewer than half a million hybrids have been put on the road in the world in the last half-dozen years. There are 870 million vehicles on the world’s roads today and we have more than 100 years of experience in adapting the internal combustion engine in powering our mobility on every continent and into nearly every climate, terrain, and situation we have wanted to take our cargo and ourselves. What reasonable person would not be skeptical?
This post is not intended to discredit Toyota or its hybrid program. It is laudable to experiment with new technologies, especially by putting the new technologies into real-world service. That is where we will find out what value they have. Spreadsheet simulations and purpose-built prototypes may reveal interesting possibilities, but are ultimately incapable of choosing the technology winners. Thank you, Toyota, for your hybrid experiments.
This post is directed at those who would make Toyota’s laudable and worthwhile experiments into more than they are and who would make Toyota into more than it is. Question authority. Question motives. Question experts. Question academics. Question everything. Question everyone. Question me.
Here are some examples to begin.
Question: Toyota started advertising the Prius recently. Why advertise a car when many shoppers are going to be disappointed to discover they will have to wait for delivery? The wait was the number one complaint about the new Prius in its first year, so why advertise and give more shoppers a reason to complain?
Answer: The Prius has increased showroom traffic. With supply constrained, many Prius shoppers end up buying a Corolla, Camry, or other Toyota model. Some could even end up with a Tundra Pickup that is cheaper than the Prius but gets 16 mpg in the city and 18 on the highway. The equivalent Chevrolet Silverado gets 16/21, so you had better hope the frustrated Prius buyer goes to the Chevrolet store if he decides to go with a pickup.
And if you are thinking, "Prius shoppers would never consider a Tundra," I feel your pain. The contra-positive is "Tundra shoppers would never consider a Prius," or, to generalize, "PICKUP shoppers would never consider SMALL CARS." Welcome to my world. People have different needs and wants they are trying to satisfy when they buy vehicles. And not everyone who shops at Toyota, not even everyone who visits the store because of the ads for the Prius, shares your values.
Watch out when the Highlander is in the showroom drawing in SUV shoppers. They might just buy a 15 city/18 hwy Sequoia. Pray that they don’t but the 13/17 Land Cruiser. I leave it as an exercise for the reader to find the GM, Ford, and Chrysler equivalents with higher MPG that should make environmentalists wish they had never elevated Toyota to infallibility.
Question: If hybrids were not a good idea then why would the world’s most profitable automobile producer want to be the hybrid leader? Profit is a clear sign that they are smarter than the other companies, so anything they do has to be smart, doesn’t it?
INI BAGIAN PENTING, BACALAH !
Answer: By selling hybrids, Toyota is given a pass by environmentalists to reduce the fuel economy of their new vehicle fleet relative to GM, Ford, and DaimlerChrysler without protest. I posted data comparing Toyota and GM last week. Have the environmentalists become apologists for Toyota, overlooking their move into gas-hungry SUVs and pickups? Toyota sold twice as many Tundras as Priuses in 2004 and has been building pickups in America for years.
Toyota will build hybrid Camrys in Kentucky soon, and some environmentalist should find out whether American taxpayers are being asked to subsidize investment by the world’s most profitable automobile producer to do what is supposed to be a smart thing. Are there grounds for concluding that environmentalists are acting toward Toyota like the mainstream media act toward the Democrat party?
Question: GM’s Bob Lutz was criticized for implying that the hybrid program was mostly a Toyota public relations success. Does Lutz just not get it or what?
Answer: Hybrids have given Toyota a government relations boost in DC and California. The AP story that earned me my first hate e-mail for the quote, "Most people don't think about where their vehicles are made," was about concerns that Toyota (and Honda) expressed that the declining fortunes of Detroit automakers could inspire anti-Japanese feelings in the U.S. The hybrid program certainly is seen in DC as a “good thing,†and has let Toyota and Honda position themselves as good corporate citizens to lawmakers.
For a few years now, our government has been taxing displaced auto industry workers in Detroit and sending the money to Toyota and Honda in the form of consumer incentives to buy hybrids. How much better can their image get than that? About the only people who don’t think they are heroes are the anti-government loonies. If Congress renews the Patriot Act, then the loonies will become even more marginalized (or incarcerated).
Toyota’s image in California would also be hard to improve upon. The company’s North American headquarters are in the Los Angeles area, and Californians buy a lot of Toyotas. Toyota’s market share (including Lexus) was 19.5% in California in 2004, but only 12.2% for the U.S. overall. GM hung onto first place (20.4%) in California in 2004, but next year look for Toyota to be first in sales in California. Californians and their state government are either crazy over green or advanced environmental thinkers, depending on your bias. It makes sense that most hybrids are bought by Californian, and that a “home-state†manufacturer would benefit most from giving Californians what they want.
Question: Toyota says that the Prius is profitable. What is wrong with GM and DaimlerChrysler? Don’t they want to make profits? And why doesn’t Ford make more Escape Hybrids? Don’t they want to make profits, either?
Answer: One wishes in vain that intelligent people would be more skeptical of unverifiable claims regarding costs and profits in the post-Enron, post-Global Crossing, post-Sarbanes Oxley world. Turn the questions on Toyota: What is wrong with Toyota? Why don’t they make more hybrids than they do? Don’t they want to make profits? Why are they so slow to add capacity to build hybrids?
If you believe that hybrids are the future of the automotive industry and that Toyota makes a profit on the Prius, then what is your explanation of their strange behavior? You believe that Toyota has the silver bullet, the Holy Grail, the killer app...
…Yet, they say they are going to build only 48,000 hybrid Camrys per year while also building more than 350,000 conventional gas-only Camrys and other cars per year in their Kentucky plant. Why not 100,000 hybrids? Why not 200,000? Why not 400,000?
…Yet, they have announced that want to sell their hybrid technology to other automakers. Why sell your competition a technology that could give you an insurmountable lead over them?
You tell me.
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