For people in my line of work, automotive truths are usually revealed in places like Tokyo or Stuttgart or Detroit as part of a corporate program to make them clear to you.
But if you pay attention as you drive around places like Scarborough or Mississauga or anywhere else in this country and you're thinking beyond the corporate message, you can often see truth in a strikingly different light.
I had that experience recently as I rolled around Toronto in a GM hybrid pickup for a week, watching people go about their lives and thinking about what their actions did to the environment.
Recent events involving Toyota hybrids had me thinking about the subject in general, it must be noted, and those thoughts need expressing first.
It occurred to me that what the $6,500 surcharge for a 10 percent improvement in highway fuel economy on the Toyota Highlander hybrid couldn't manage, the reports of Toyota Prius hybrids simply shutting off and rolling to a halt just might.
That would be to bring the media and public around to the thought that Toyota hybrids may not be as great a gift to society, or their owners, as is widely believed, and that there are other pollution problems just as worthy of our consideration.
While this may disappoint the folks in Toyota's PR and marketing teams, they shouldn't really be upset since the public misconception about their company and its record on saving fuel through hybrids or anything else is probably the greatest snow job in the history of the auto industry, and it's not dead yet. But it's surely limping.
From the very beginning, the high-profile Toyota Prius has never even come close to matching the lower fuel economy levels suggested by government tests in Canada or the U.S. That was an unpleasant surprise for the many Prius buyers who wanted to look like they were concerned about the environment but who thought they'd be saving lots of money on gas.
This did not stop Toyota Canada from charging a lot more for the new hybrid models that followed. The Highlander hybrid costs $6,645 or $7,305 more than a regular internal-combustion model, for example, and scored only a 10 percent improvement in highway fuel economy on Transport Canada's tests. There's no way the first buyer would recoup the extra cost without running the vehicle a lot longer than Canadian consumers do.
On top of all that, there now lots of reports from Prius owners about the sedan stalling or simply shutting down at highway-driving speeds and not starting again. Toyota blames a ''programming error'' for the trouble and says it has a fix available.
This problem comes as no surprise to anyone who has watched new technologies roll out over the years, but especially in recent times as increasingly sophisticated vehicles push ever harder at the limits of human fallibility. Almost certainly this is not the last time we will hear about problems with Toyota hybrids, and that doesn't even begin to address the issue of the inevitable battery replacement and how its steep cost will be covered.
This stuff is perhaps beginning to chip away at the media mindset that casts Toyota in the savior's role and results in stories about how the Japanese firm is ''willing to share its hybrid technology,'' as if it were an absolute and problem-free cure for pollution that the rest of the world was too stupid to think of.
In truth, Toyota desperately wants to sell its hybrid technology to other companies to help offset the enormous losses it has incurred in developing a system which doesn't really deliver the kind of results its consumers want, and costs a lot more, and isn't all that reliable. Commerce, not conscience, is at the heart of Toyota's actions with offering its hybrid system up.
But if you pay attention as you drive around places like Scarborough or Mississauga or anywhere else in this country and you're thinking beyond the corporate message, you can often see truth in a strikingly different light.
I had that experience recently as I rolled around Toronto in a GM hybrid pickup for a week, watching people go about their lives and thinking about what their actions did to the environment.
Recent events involving Toyota hybrids had me thinking about the subject in general, it must be noted, and those thoughts need expressing first.
It occurred to me that what the $6,500 surcharge for a 10 percent improvement in highway fuel economy on the Toyota Highlander hybrid couldn't manage, the reports of Toyota Prius hybrids simply shutting off and rolling to a halt just might.
That would be to bring the media and public around to the thought that Toyota hybrids may not be as great a gift to society, or their owners, as is widely believed, and that there are other pollution problems just as worthy of our consideration.
While this may disappoint the folks in Toyota's PR and marketing teams, they shouldn't really be upset since the public misconception about their company and its record on saving fuel through hybrids or anything else is probably the greatest snow job in the history of the auto industry, and it's not dead yet. But it's surely limping.
From the very beginning, the high-profile Toyota Prius has never even come close to matching the lower fuel economy levels suggested by government tests in Canada or the U.S. That was an unpleasant surprise for the many Prius buyers who wanted to look like they were concerned about the environment but who thought they'd be saving lots of money on gas.
This did not stop Toyota Canada from charging a lot more for the new hybrid models that followed. The Highlander hybrid costs $6,645 or $7,305 more than a regular internal-combustion model, for example, and scored only a 10 percent improvement in highway fuel economy on Transport Canada's tests. There's no way the first buyer would recoup the extra cost without running the vehicle a lot longer than Canadian consumers do.
On top of all that, there now lots of reports from Prius owners about the sedan stalling or simply shutting down at highway-driving speeds and not starting again. Toyota blames a ''programming error'' for the trouble and says it has a fix available.
This problem comes as no surprise to anyone who has watched new technologies roll out over the years, but especially in recent times as increasingly sophisticated vehicles push ever harder at the limits of human fallibility. Almost certainly this is not the last time we will hear about problems with Toyota hybrids, and that doesn't even begin to address the issue of the inevitable battery replacement and how its steep cost will be covered.
This stuff is perhaps beginning to chip away at the media mindset that casts Toyota in the savior's role and results in stories about how the Japanese firm is ''willing to share its hybrid technology,'' as if it were an absolute and problem-free cure for pollution that the rest of the world was too stupid to think of.
In truth, Toyota desperately wants to sell its hybrid technology to other companies to help offset the enormous losses it has incurred in developing a system which doesn't really deliver the kind of results its consumers want, and costs a lot more, and isn't all that reliable. Commerce, not conscience, is at the heart of Toyota's actions with offering its hybrid system up.