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Originally Posted by Money-pit SEL
A Brock Yates column from Car & Driver magazine several months ago quotes some industry sources as stating that hybrids will top out at around 3% of the market. Other sources think that's optimistic.
Your cell phone is an electronic device, and great savings have been made in terms of power requirements. Laptops, too. A car is, at the basic level, a mechanical device. It takes X amount of energy to move Y weight for Z distance at V speed. Not a lot of room for improvements there, other than slowing down, traveling shorter distances, or moving less stuff.
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I think I do understand the physics, and you're correct, electronic devices have become more efficient (although my powerbook can start small fires), but small batteries have also improved significantly in the last decade or so.
I don't pretend to know what is going to happen in any industry in 10-15 years. I'm lucky if I know what I'm going to be doing next week. I'm also not really trying to defend current hybrids, I think the design is less than elegant. However, I would not rule out a significant improvement in battery technology driving some version of hybrids to become mainstream in the future. 10-15 years is a LONG time when you are talking about electronics. I have no clue if the 3% value is correct, and I'm sure the industry guys are more qualified to predict this than I. I'm still not sure I would buy one anyway.
My original comment was based on my surprise that the current hybrids are all based on gas engines. It's not clear to me why a gas/electric hybrid is better than a diesel/electric hybrid. The only thing I can think of is the fact that gas/electric hybrids shutdown the engine and restart it on demand. A diesel/electric would probably have to be left running all the time.