No that I'm in love with the selection of hybrids in the American market from the American manufacturers, but it's interesting to see that the European market can be deprived of the things we have, after we've been drooling over all the 50+ mpg small diesel cars that Europe gets for years ...

Payback's a bitch? That's not quite it. Even more frustration at the car companies? ...

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That is not particularly surprising, as GM and Ford already offer vehicles in Europe that are as fuel efficient as hybrids. Diesel engines are one reason, but they also offer lower horsepower, smaller displacement engines because, apparently, many Europeans aren't hung up on 0-60 times like many Americans are. They want a car to get from here to there with as little gas used as possible, probably because it's so expensive. We pay a lot less for our gas (right now anyway), so we want to go faster from here to there. Unfortunately, they have the more adaptive attitude in an age of decreasing oil reserves.

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amg, that adaptive attitude is because their gas comes with a large tax. If Europeans paid what we pay for gas, their driving habits would more closely mirror ours. I know it's popular to hate on America, but personally I don't want to pay $3.00 a gallon gas tax.

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It would be nice if they instead concentrated on diesel hybrids.

Who wants a petrol hybrid that gets 50mpg when any common or garden diesel easily pushes 60mpg for half or even a third of the price without any form of hybridness?

Looks like Peugeot has the right idea with their diesel hybrid approach. We'll be getting close to the 80-90mpg range sooner rather than later if they actually put these into production on the smaller cars.

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Diesel Hybrids do not make financial sense. The cost of the Diesel engine with hybrid powertrain would never be recouped by a consumer.

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Throwback:

I suggest going to Europe before commenting on European driving habits. :)

First of all, going for a long road trip in Europe used to require a passport before the EU was formed. If you drive for more than a couple of hours on the highway, you're going to be in a different country.

Second of all, the distance between towns is very much smaller. The population density of most of Europe is much like the eastern seaboard of the US.

Europe also has a much better public transportation system than most of America. They started creating rail links between cities and trolley lines before cities like Omaha and Seattle even existed.

Their cities are also much denser and ill-suited for cars. Think of residential streets four feet wide that wind up hills and are paved with cobblestones. Think of urban planning that wasn't planned, but just sort of happened over the course of a thousand years. Think of buildings that are four hundred years old, that noone wants to tear down because they've been in the family for generations. Nevermind historic monuments made in the Rennaisance.

With conditions like that, weird three-wheeled trikes like the ones Zap sells are more than welcome. They've been driving "cars" like that for as long as there have been gas motors.

Mind you, Europeans are hardly immune to the temptations of a luxurious sedan. And once the populace was wealthy enough to own lots of them, there was suddenly a tremendous problem. Traffic jams the likes of which Americans have never seen. Smog - again the likes of which Americans have never seen. And parking? You'd gladly sell your immortal soul for a parking space in downtown Rome.

Just from my own observations, I would say that nearly half of the motor vehicles in most European cities are actually mopeds.

And the $3 a gallon gas tax that they have is basically to discourage car usage overall. Because cars cause enormous, immediate problems in Europe, nevermind issues like global warming.

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Matt, if you looked at some real data from the UK, for example http://www.vcacarfueldata.org.uk/information/how-to-use-the-data-tables.asp#petrol

you'd see that there are lots of diesels in the 60s in terms of MPG (UK gallons), but so are the Civic Hybrid and the Prius. Not only that, but the gas hybrids have lower CO2 emissions, which is the REAL measure of energy efficiency since it looks at the amount of carbon burned.
So much for that delusion.

Also, there might be a few tiny diesel cars that really cost less than half of a Civic or Prius, but certainly none that cost one third. Also, at that point , you are trying to compare tiny, underpowered, slow and unsafe econoboxes to hybrids that are designed for 5 people plus trunk space, with tons of standard features that those tiny diesels don't have. Not exactly a relevant comparison. Duh.

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Ordinary hybrids don't make sense yet in Europe at the moment because there are so many ordinary cars which are just as efficient.

But plug-in hybrids would make much more sense in Europe than the US; we generally have shorter commutes with lots more stops and starts, and the differential between petrol (gas) and electricty is much, much bigger. We even have faster charging with 240V.

Looks like VW, Saab and the Chinese are going to get a lock on this market.

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Yes, GM and Ford can ignore hybrids, plugin and diesel and the other auto companies will eat them for lunch.

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