When Ferdinand Porsche came up
with the idea to improve his electric car by putting in a internal
combustion engine, in order to feed the batteries, he had no idea that
his hybrid car concept, the Mixte, would be picked up almost a century
later and that a sheer craze would ensue, completely shifting the whole
automotive industry and force every single car manufacturer to rethink
the plans for the future. Where aerodynamics and fuel efficiency were
the main consideration recently, suddenly the emissions are a factor
and how to deploy the new concept in the best possible way, perhaps
pulling a fast one on the competition.
While Toyota still holds a pole position, because they started the
whole craze first, with the release of the Toyota Prius in 1997, other
competitors are rapidly gaining, even bringing own innovative ideas.
For instance, Honda has the idea to push the fuel cell technology,
obliterating the need for a internal combustion engine altogether. They
even have a concept how to avoid the destruction by missing
infrastructure to fuel the vehicles, like it happened with the hapless
EV1 electric vehicle from General Motors, back in the nineties. The
fuel cell uses hydrogen as fuel, the fuel cell and batteries can both
power the engine, fuel cell can also load the batteries, or in Honda's
case the capacitor envisioned currently.
Toyota on the other hand, plans to offer all vehicles from the full
range with a hybrid option, providing a full fleet of cars featuring
the new technology, including the popular small car Yaris and the
worldwide market leading model, Corolla, one of the best selling cars
throughout the world with over thirty million units sold to date. It is
expected that the new hybrid lines will shake up the market
considerably, forcing the hand of all other car manufacturers to do
something or simply get plowed over. Although in the last few years
many manufacturers provided their own hybrid cars, some more reluctant
car manufacturers just came out with their hybrids, like for instance
Mercedes-Benz, with the BlueZERO series, or BMW with the few tentative
mild hybrid models. Interestingly enough, the house of the inventor,
Porsche, is still fiddling with their own release, 2009 is supposed to
be the year where the long awaited Porsche Panamera was supposed to be
unveiled. Porsche Cayenne, which was presented to the world in a hybrid
version back in 2007, is still not available for purchase. The first
ever real hybrid model from BMW, the Concept X6 ActiveHybrid is still
being tested. Opel, Hyundai, Kia, Daihatsu, Peugeot and Mahindra's
diesel electric hybrid are announced.

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