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Hi everyone, Happy New Year to you. As I mentioned last month, we have a big hybrid announcement to make: we’re unveiling UCS’s brand-new Hybrid Scorecard today! I’m very proud of what the entire team has produced with this new resource. First and foremost we should thank our Senior Vehicles Analyst Don Anair (or “Sharkey” to those who remember HybridBlog) and our Program and Outreach Assistant Leah Parker who did much of the number crunching. It’s really a comprehensive, and quite unique, way to rate all the hybrid vehicles on the market today, so let’s get to it!
Enjoy the ride,
Scott Nathanson
UCS National Field Organizer &
HybridCenter.org Administrator
In this issue:
 After months of hard work pouring over automakers’ web sites and vehicle data, I am delighted to share our new consumer resource with you: the UCS Hybrid Scorecard.
Let me actually start by telling you what the Scorecard is not. Our Scorecard will not tell you that a Prius gets better gas mileage than a Chevy Tahoe Hybrid—that’s front-page news in "Duh Magazine." We believe that American drivers have many different vehicle needs—but all drivers should be getting the best that hybrid technology has to offer in any size and class.
And that’s exactly what makes our scorecard so interesting: it actually measures how well each vehicle has incorporated hybrid technology as compared to a similar conventional model using three very helpful, and we feel unique, metrics: Environmental Score, Hybrid Value, and Forced Features.
So for each model, you get a full snapshot answering the key question: How good of a hybrid is it? Let’s take a closer look at our three scores and I think you’ll see what I’m getting at:
Environmental Score (0-10, 10 best)
The Environmental Score measures the hybrid vehicle’s improvement in global warming pollution over its closest conventional counterpart, along with its smog-forming emissions performance. The Environmental Score tells us if the automaker is getting the most out of their hybrid models.
Hybrid Value (Very Low-Very High)
Hybrid Value measures how cost-effectively automakers are using their hybrid technology to get environmental performance. I like to refer to this as the “hybrid bang for your buck,” essentially how much money is the automaker charging for each percent reduction in global warming emissions. We teased out our most accurate assessment of what the automaker is charging just for the hybrid components to find this value.
Forced Features (None-$$$$$)
As we sifted through all of the vehicle components, we also found that some hybrids have added features that are not part of the hybrid drivetrain, but are standard on the hybrid vehicle whereas these same features are optional on the conventional counterparts. We therefore measured the “Forced Features” to show you how much automakers are adding to the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) of hybrids by making premium features (such as leather seats, DVD players, sun roofs, etc.) standard.
If you’re curious to learn more about how we determined these scores, please take a look at the methodology section.
What we found out
The good news is that automakers have proven they can make significant emissions reductions with hybrid technology, and they can do it across vehicle classes from compacts to large SUVs. To make things even better, they have shown that they can do this at an affordable cost. The bad news? This isn’t true for every hybrid out there. In fact, it’s not even true for every hybrid from the same automaker.
Some of the hybrids with the best Environmental Scores are:
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The Toyota Prius, coming in at a standard-setting 9.8 on our scale, achieved a 44 percent reduction in global warming emissions compared with its conventional counterpart. -
The Honda Civic Hybrid and Ford Fusion Hybrid, with a commendable 7.8 each, achieved a 31 percent reduction over their conventional counterparts.
 The combination of a powerful hybrid drivetrain and improved gasoline engine helped the Prius, Honda Civic Hybrid, and the Ford Fusion Hybrid deliver the environmental performance and fuel economy that consumers want. The fact that the Prius has broken the top 10 of all models sold in America, and the Fusion Hybrid is setting sales records for Ford, signifies that drivers are looking to hybrids for decreased emissions and maxed-out mpgs.
More of a surprise to me in this category was the Honda Insight, which managed only a 24 percent reduction in global warming emissions over its conventional counterpart, the Fit, meriting it a 6.8 on our scale. There are certainly advantages to a vehicle that gets over 40 mpg for less than $20,000, but the correlation between a surprisingly low environmental score, and surprisingly low sales so far, is to me more evidence of what consumers are really looking for in hybrid technology.
 Our Hybrid Value score really said something interesting about my own favorite subject—the 7+ passenger vehicle. Even in these very pages, we have maligned GM’s big SUV hybrids for prioritizing power over fuel economy. But, interestingly enough, the luxury Cadillac Escalade Hybrid amazingly merited a “High” hybrid value. Yet the 4WD Tahoe Hybrid got a “Low” value. But both use the same 6.0 liter V8 engine in the hybrid system. The difference? The Escalade’s conventional version features a 6.2 liter engine, so the hybrid is actually a downsized engine, whereas the standard Tahoe has a 5.3 liter engine, so they upsized the engine for the hybrid. And, yes, as we’ve recently seen with the new Mercedes S400 hybrid, when you downsize an engine, you can save money. But not only did GM have the 5.3 liter engine to work with for the Tahoe, but they also had two even smaller V8s on other Tahoe models they sell that they could have worked with.
Let me put this in real-world terms: You know that I’ve long been looking to get a larger vehicle than my Saturn wagon to handle carpooling, in-laws, and such. It gets 24 mpg, and I have said that I do not want to get a new vehicle that gets less than that. Had GM combined their impressive hybrid drivetrain, and their aerodynamic tweaks to the Tahoe’s body with a downsized engine, they could have created a full sized SUV that in all likelihood would have matched my station wagon’s fuel economy. Yes, I might not have been able to tow my yacht (for the record, I don’t have a yacht), but think of how revolutionary it would be to have a large SUV that gets about the same fuel economy of a 4 cylinder station wagon! The Hybrid Value really shows the great opportunities, and missed opportunities, that automakers have given consumers so far.
So is there an automaker consumers can trust to consistently produce efficient hybrids with significantly reduced emissions? Oddly enough, there isn’t. The widest contrast is with Toyota. Toyota produces some of the best environmentally performing hybrids: the Toyota Prius, Camry Hybrid, Highlander Hybrid, and Lexus HS 250h. But then Toyota also produces the Lexus GS 450h and the LS 600h L, two of the worst performing hybrids with 13 and 14 percent reduction in emissions, respectively.
 When it comes to Forced Features, all the automakers have room for improvement. Our analysis found an average of a whopping $3,000 per car. While I recognize that automakers want to make money from this burgeoning market, piling on thousands of dollars in extras creates two significant problems. First, it keeps many consumers away from even considering a hybrid because the base MSRP is so high that dealers can’t even get some customers to nibble. Second, it artificially inflates the apparent price of a hybrid, making hybrid technology seem prohibitively expensive, when in actuality, we’ve shown it can provide good bang for the buck from compacts to large SUVs.
As an example, look at the Fusion Hybrid, where the hybrid system ($4,190) costs about the same as the Forced Features ($3,810). So consumers are forced to invest in one hybrid system (albeit a very good one) for the price of two. That’s not good long-term business for the Fusion Hybrid, or the hybrid market.
Well if you’ve made it this far, you might be surprised to know that this is just a small portion of what we found with the Hybrid Scorecard. There’s a lot more to look at, especially the varying amounts automakers are charging for the hybrid system and the number of forced features they are loading into their hybrids. If you own a hybrid, take a look to see how your hybrid fared and if you’re in the market for a hybrid, be sure to check out the Hybrid Scorecard before heading to the dealership.
 If you’ve taken a test drive of the Hybrid Scorecard and you like what you’ve seen, I really hope that you as a DCN member will help us let other people know about this new resource. DCN members have been so good about responding to our calls—be it for our petition campaign for a hybrid minivan or our need to get hybrid owner Letters to the Editor placed in local papers—I hope you’ll help us spread this new resource far and wide and help point consumers to the cleanest and most consumer-friendly hybrid choices.
So what can you do?
- Blog about it: Do you have a blog or do you frequently post comments on blogs? Now’s a great time to let people know about the Hybrid Scorecard. If you have a blogroll, please consider adding HybridCenter.org to it.
- Facebook and MySpace and Twitter, Oh My!: As you might expect, we have let folks know through our Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter accounts about the scorecard. Please link to our posts from your account, or Tweet away on your own about us!
- Bookmark Us: Do you use social bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, Reddit, or Stumbleupon? Please vote us up and let your friends know to do the same.
- Talk to People!: Yup, the old fashioned way often works wonders—just point them to HybridCenter.org. If you want to do it electronically, we have a handy-dandy Tell-A-Friend that can help you out, too!
If you can help, please send me an email either letting me know what you’ve done, or letting me know you’d like to help, and I can point you in the right direction.
As you can tell, the whole UCS Clean Vehicles team and I are really excited about the Scorecard, so thanks for anything and everything you can do to help us get it out to more people!
 So with the Hybrid Scorecard we’ve given consumers what I think is an extremely valuable new tool for looking at today’s hybrids. But what about the ones coming down the pike? Well, without detailed information on pricing and emissions, we can’t make any solid predictions. But some of the news from the 2010 Detroit Auto Show—especially from its much ballyhooed “Electric Avenue” corridor of hybrid and other advanced tech models—indicates that we can shine a scorecard-colored light on what may be coming ‘round the bend. Below are a couple of highlights, but as always I’d recommend hitting our comprehensive Hybrid Timeline which has all the latest news, specs, and speculation about what hybrids there are, and what’s coming up.
The Plug-ins are Coming: Two plug-in hybrids that are ready to hit the market in 2010 were shown off in Detroit. First was the Chevy Volt, as expected. The good news on the Volt was that Chevy execs are confident that with the federal $7,500 plug-in hybrid tax credit, the price of the vehicle will end up being somewhere in the low 30s (with an MSRP around $40,000). One of the scorecard questions we’ll have to tackle when the Volt comes out is whether we include the $7,500 credit in our Hybrid Value computations or not. I’m guessing not, but we’ll see.
 The down side was that our old friend Bob Lutz was kind enough to out something that most hybrid owners already know—temperature can affect the performance of hybrid batteries significantly. As I pointed out back in September, that’s not the only issue of variability regarding a plug-in hybrid’s efficiency. Lutz’s cautionary comment flies in the face of the fantastic 230mpg hype for the Volt we were hearing last fall from GM. As expected, the Volt hype machine did what very might well be a valuable contribution to hybrid technology no favors, as when a vehicle fails to live up to its hype, it is very rarely a success story.
The other plug-in that seems poised to enter the market is a Chinese entry, BYD’s F3DM. Now BYD’s cars have been going gangbusters in China, but so-far, the plug-in has not. Its high price kept the company from offering it directly to consumers, selling a few hundred so far to fleets. But all looks set for a late 2010 or early 2011 release in America, again attempting to take advantage of the federal tax credit. Statistics released at the Detroit Auto Show say that this series-parallel hybrid has an all-electric range of 68 miles and a total range of 340 miles when using its 1.0 liter gasoline engine with a 7.4 gallon tank. Unlike other hybrids, the F3DM uses iron-phosphate-based lithium-ion batteries, which are cheaper and can reach 50 percent charge in 10 minutes. They can also be fully recharged from a household outlet in 9 hours. It’s not exactly an exciting looking car, but it will be interesting to see if the plug-in hybrid is the technology that gives the Chinese auto market penetration here in America.
 Other Hybrids on the Horizon: Honda unveiled its sporty CR-Z hybrid in Detroit, but reviews were a bit mixed. There were early rumors that the CR-Z’s performance was not based on its 0-60 acceleration, which early links had at a very pedestrian 10 seconds. But this fueled excitement that perhaps this meant the CR-Z focused on a sporty looking car with breakthrough mileage. The end result was nice—not thrilling—but nice at an Environmental Protection Agency-estimated 36 mpg city/38 mpg highway split. A smaller car coming in at a lower MPG-point than the Insight does not bode particularly well for the CR-Z’s Hybrid Value, but we’ll have to see what price-point they come with.
 The little car that garnered big excitement was Toyota’s “mini-Prius” FT-CH. The “80s-retro” subcompact is currently a concept, but the word is that this vehicle will be hitting the showrooms in 2011 or 2012 to begin Toyota’s expansion of the Prius brand into a full line of vehicles. The Yaris-sized car is currently rumored to get 60 mpg. There are even some early rumors that it will cost less than the current Insight. No doubt a combination like that would set a new Scorecard standard, given the Yaris, which it would likely be compared to, gets 31mpg and has an MSRP of around $14,000.
And I have to give a shout-out to Ford, who swept the Auto Show awards led by the Fusion Hybrid’s North American Car of the Year honors.
As I noted earlier, far more on these vehicles, new VW, Audi, Lexus models on the way, and, yes, even some “good news-bad news” on my favorite subject—the hybrid minivan (hint: good news Honda, bad news Toyota) can be found over at the Hybrid Timeline.
We’ve got some excellent additions to our growing community of hybrid drivers! Please help us to expand this community even more by sending in a photo and telling your hybrid story. Also, please ask your hybrid-owning friends to join us.
 Ken Andrews of Reno, NV purchased his Ford Escape Hybrid 4WD three years ago. It averages 30 miles per gallon, more in the summer and less in the winter. He uses his hybrid for winter and off road driving and to launch his jet ski. He wanted something that was good on gas and the environment, and the Escape Hybrid fit those criteria perfectly without being a typical gas guzzling SUV. Also, he is able to get it up to 35 miles per hour on electric power only, and 40 when going downhill.
 Courtney Ward of Gainesville, FL just bought a new Honda Insight and she loves it. She always wanted her first new car to be a hybrid. Being a recent college grad, she feels lucky that Honda came out with an affordable hybrid. She’s eager to learn how to continue to increase her fuel economy as she gets comfortable in her new car.
Well, that’s it for this big month for HybridCenter.org! Have fun with the Hybrid Scorecard, and I hope to hear from you about helping us get the word out.
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