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...sticker price for a hybrid now. "If we could get all we could sell, it would be our best-selling model," says Steve Curtis, a sales manager at Landers Toyota in Little Rock, Ark. A typical scene at a dealership: folks come in, see the Prius, notice its EPA fuel-economy rating, take it for a spin and get hooked. But in reality, drivers rarely achieve the advertised 55 m.p.g. in combined city-highway driving; 43 m.p.g. is more like it. (The discrepancy results from EPA testing methods.) So far, that doesn't seem to be crimping demand...
...gasoline at $1.50 per gal. Gas prices are up 30% since then, but GM officials insist their strategy has not changed. The focus is still on delivering hybrid versions of SUVs and pickups while devoting the bulk of GM's future-power-train research into a commercially viable hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicle, which the company says is on track for 2010. (Ford was slow, too, having to license some technology from Toyota for its hybrid Escape...
...Miami-Dade County's government fleet last month, and plans to make the vehicles available to consumers this fall. Over the next few weeks, GM says, it will deliver 234 hybrid buses to the city of Seattle. GM executive Larry Burns claims that those buses will provide the fuel savings of 8,000 hybrid cars on the road...
...Three--Ford, GM and Chrysler--are even more reliant on SUVs and big pickups for profits, and if hybrids eat into sales of conventional models, the industry would be maiming a critical cash cow. So while auto executives talk of a greener future of hybrids and hydrogen-fuel-cell vehicles, they continue luring customers to gas guzzlers loaded with powerful engines, luxury amenities and gadgetry and moving them off the lot with generous incentives...
...more economical cars. "I get a sense that nobody is panicking about this, and that makes me a little nervous," says Steve Girsky, senior automotive analyst at Morgan Stanley. It has happened before. In the 1970s, when gas prices soared, the Big Three were caught flat-footed with large, fuel-hungry cars, allowing Honda, Nissan and Toyota to swoop in and grab market share. If it happens again, the pain will be shared by Japanese manufacturers. Toyota is planning to ramp up production of its full-size pickup, the Tundra, with a plant under construction in San Antonio, Texas...