Hybrids sales stall could lead to lower prices

2007 Saturn VUE Green Line (Photo: General Motors of Canada)

Honda and Toyota will fight this, however, since they have grown accustomed to sucking billions of dollars of profits out of North American consumers over the past few years and want to keep that up. And when I say billions out of car buyers in Canada and the U.S., I mean enough to supply the Japanese auto industry with about two-thirds of the gigantic profits it makes.

For the most part, Honda and Toyota have taken this money from consumers who know and/or care little about cars. These folks buy the products of these two firms because they see cars as appliances and they believe that Honda and Toyota do a good job of creating them. To avoid dealing with the car-buying experience, these folks are even willing to pay more for new and used models bearing those two brands, even though the case for doing this weakens all the time. Other brands, like Chevrolet, have caught or passed them in initial quality, for example.

2007 Lexus GS 450h (Photo: Toyota Canada)

Naturally, Honda and Toyota want to maintain the premise that their products are worth paying more for, or a lot more for when it comes to hybrids. But General Motors has already announced that it will sell its Saturn Vue Green Line hybrid with a premium that will be easy for the consumer to recover, and we can expect the world's biggest car company to do the same with the flock of other hybrids it will unveil in the next couple of years.

So the smart play seems to be not buying a hybrid from Honda or Toyota until the two Japanese firms ease off on their avarice long enough to bring their prices down to a more reasonable level. That way more people will be able to afford them, and then hybrids can live up to their marginal abilities to help the environment, which is a story for another time.