Thats a shame.

'Nuff said!

We have HOV-Lanes?

I don't think i've ever seen one in Ohio.

Does HOV stand for "not gravel based" in Ohio?

Cause it don't count as a efficient Hybrid if its still only pulling 25mpg.

These SUVs are half-ass, either do it or don't.

HOV: Another name for rap artist Jay-Z. he is alternatively referred to as "J-Hova" as he considers himself to me the messiah of hip hop music.

Hopefully they'll ban all hybrids from the HOV lanes soon, and old people. Old people don't seem to understand that HOV lanes are meant for speeding, not going slower than the traffic in normal lanes.

Ohio has traffic?

"50% better city mileage" doesn't mean much if you're starting from 10-12mpg.

Why percentage points? If you hybridized an Eldorado you'd be up 150%!

So if you had a hybrid SUV that had no petro-only equivalent?

Couldn't they just re-release the Tahoe Hybrid as the Chevy Homer Hybrid, and since there is nothing called a "Chevy Homer," they'd be golden?

Or was someone smart enough to write that XX% of shared parts make it the same car? I'd be surprised if they did.

We have HOV lanes in Ohio?! Where might these be?

I've never seen them in Cleveland or Cincy. They're probably just down in the Columbus area (though not on 270) so politicians can pass out HOV stickers to their cronies and enjoy themselves :)

Well, they might try something radical. Like carpooling. To qualify for the HOV--what's that stand for again?

I travel relatively regularly in Akron, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, and Dayton, and I've NEVER seen a HOV lane in these cities. Maybe I'm missing something.

In California, the lanes say "Alternative Fuel Only" or some such crap. Does Diesel qualify? It'd be a pretty horrible bastardization of sense if they didn't.

Then again, the fact that there are no diesel hybrids proves that the point of hybrids has nothing to do whatsoever with the environment, and has everything to do with making tree huggers feel all warm and fuzzy inside about their glorious righteous selves.

Diesels are more fuel efficient anyway, so if you really wanted to make something efficient, you'd start with a diesel. If I want to build a banjo, I'm gonna start with a drum, not a turnip green.

So wait, you're being douchebags about a hybrid with a 40% overall improvement on fuel economy just because it's an SUV?

Don't be douchebags. Seriously. Get over yourselves and use some sense.

What makes more sense? To use hybrid tech to take a small-type car that already got 32mpg average, and take it to 41; or, take a truck that got 9 and take it into the 20's? Which one's going to save more gas over a 12,000 mile year?

I suppose in a communist or socialist world, we "the people" who know so much about saving the earth, and aren't capable of fault, would ban all SUVs, so there'd be no reason to use new technology to make huge improvements on their efficiency. Until then, the vehicles that make the most sense to add hybrid tech to are the ones that start with the worst fuel econ.

They'll get the largest % benefit, and have the shortest payback periods.

Don't be stupid here, we can't have a perfect world by flipping any magic switches, so stop shi77ing on reasonable solutions that start to fix the problem.

@ CLEVERSHARK:

You're right.

1,200 gallons of gas in a 12,000 mile year @ 10mpg is awsome.

Using 50% of that is a totally lame thing to do. Who would want to save 50%? Everyone knows that 50% is lame when it's starting with a small number.

I mean, at $3.05 a gallon, that 50% savings is only $1,830. Total waste of everyone's time.

I've lived here in CA for 42 years, I've never seen anything about lanes for alternative fuel cars. I can tell you you can't drive an Escape in the HOV lanes.

@creigs9: An Escape or an Escape Hybrid?

The reason a normal Escape can't go in the HOV lane is it's not "alternative." The reason an Escape Hybrid can't is it's not "fast enough."

Good Afternoon Mrs. Soccer Mom. Would you like to be a beta tester for our latest stop gap solution to our fleet CAFE problem?

Seriously, who will buy one of these, hybrid or otherwise when fuel is $5 a gallon? See this post today for clarification.
[jalopnik.com]

@billege: Your logic, although making perfect sense, has a major flaw - if the small car gets 41, and the truck gets in the 20's..... The car is still twice as efficient, and you should incentivize people to drive the car.

Yes, the truck will save more over the course of the year, but only because it was so bad to begin with. And you are still going to spend twice as much energy to get the same distance traveled - or are you driving the truck half as much because it costs more than the car?

@godai: +1, closest thing I've seen to an HOV lane in Ohio is the restricted bus lane in downtown C-bus, and that's only during rush hour. Interstates 70, 270, 71, 271, 77, 80, 480 and 90 are all sans HOV lane.

The people of Ohio would like to know how to pin this on Lloyd Carr.

The most responsible thing that GM and other makers of full size pickups and SUVs is to make those vehicles more fuel efficient, not come out with a 45 mpg econobox. Installing the dual mode hybrid on full size SUVs and pickups will save a lot more fuel than forcing Americans into smaller vehicles.

Toyota sold about 175,000 Priuses in the US last year. Let's say an avg driver goes 10K miles in a year. Assuming 50 mpg avg for the Prius and assuming 200K units sold a year, that works out to 400 million gallons of gasoline. Over 25 mpg cars, that saves 200 million gallons of gas.

Last year was not a good year for pickup sales in the US because of the housing & sub prime troubles, but there were still over 2 million F-150s, Silverados/Sierras, Rams and Tundras sold.

2 million vehicles at 10k miles a year at an avg of 15 mpg is 1,333,333,333 gallons of gasoline. The dual mode hybrid system improves fuel efficiency overall by about 25%. If the new pickup fleet was all dual mode hybrids, that would consume 1,069,518,716 gallons of gasoline, saving 263.8 million gallons of gas, 63.8 million gallons more than would be saved by introducing something to compete with the Prius.

And unlike a Prius, the Hybrid Tahoe can tow a trailer.

@Ellomdian: @billege: You're both right, in different ways.

IFF huge SUV's must exist, it makes a ton of sense to hybridize them. And only a 1/2 ton of sense to hybridize a small car.

In absolute terms, the small hybrid makes more sense. In relative terms, the SUV hybrid makes more sense. That is, in a world containing both large and small vehicles, your overall savings are better if you spend your efforts hybridizing the large ones first.

In HOV lanes, it makes sense to limit traffic to vehicles with high occupancy, if you are to stay true to the goal of reducing traffic congestion.

But since they've evolved into a political plaything, all bets are off.

"The car is still twice as efficient, and you should incentivize people to drive the car."

Incentivize = lefty speak for taxing someone else so my preferences are cheaper.

Still, no amount of "incentivizing" will get someone out of a large pickup / SUV if they have a need to carry heavy loads, many passengers, or tow something.

Right now the difference in what Europeans and Americans pay for fuel is almost all taxes. European refiners pay the same price for crude as American refiners.

Now, what are those $3-$4 a gallon in taxes doing to help promote alternative fuels?

Nothing. They just create an artificial market pressure for fuel efficient vehicles.

Imagine if all that money was available to research companies and entrepreneurs?

The problem with lefties is that they think you can only encourage people by using taxes to shape their behavior, a form of punishment. Reality teaches us, however, that the best incentive is cold hard cash. Rather than punishing people, let them reap the profits of their labor and you'll see how productive they can be.

What you tax, you get less of.

@bozoerrebbe: I got to "lefties" and after that everything was just buzzing.

I've spent my entire life in Ohio and have never ever seen a HOV lane, unless they're going to turn the curbs into HOV's kind of like they're letting the buses use them in Columbus now.

Here's another Ohioan who has never seen an HOV lane here.

The california HOV lanes are just called 'carpool lanes', which totally ruins the HIV lane joke. that, plus the single traffic light covering 2 or 3 lanes was the most disconcerting thing about driving there.