How faraway it Will Really Take to Go Hybrid

Imagine waking up one AM and finding that the only cars on the roads, in the parking lots and nestled in driveways were hybrids or electrics. 

CNW Marketing Research put pencil to paper — actually, it turned on its battery-powered calculator — to determine when the U.S. would be totally hybridized and could thumb its nose at Middle Eastern powers who would be forced to hold carport sales to prepare a few bucks rather than sell a few barrels of oil..

Based on the number of public living in the U.S. nowadays (300 million), the number of vehicles on U.S. roads nowadays (242 million), the annual scrappage rate (11 million), the number of new vehicles sold each year (15 million), and the number of those new vehicles that are hybrids, CNW concluded that 26 years from now, in 2034, there will be:

• 357 million people
• 381 million vehicles, all electric or hybrid
• 15.7 million vehicles scrapped
• 18.1 new vehicles sold, all electric or hybrid

CNW plus concluded that hybrids won’t reach 1 million new vehicles
sold annually until 2013, won’t reach 10% of all new vehicles sold
until 2014, won’t reach 50% of all vehicles sold until 2024 and won’t
reach 10 million unit

"The timetable seems very expanded and extreme, but it’s not
unreasonable considering it means not only every vehicle built and sold
would be a hybrid, but every vehicle now on the road would have to be
replaced by a hybrid," said Rebecca Lindland, director of industry
research for Global Insight.

Lindland famous that when the economy is weak, consumers hang on to
their older cars longer, and many public buy used cars rather than new,
which would plus delay the day when hybrids are in total control.

Another factor to consider is that while gas price spikes boost interest in hybrids, gas price declines cool demand.

"Going all hybrid additionally assumes a commitment by consumers to spend
the additional hundreds, whether not thousands, on those vehicles, and no one
knows how lengthy that may take," Lindland said. 

On a more optimistic note, CNW estimates that whether every vehicle
produced and sold starting that year were a hybrid, it would only take
17 years for hybrids to replace every vehicle now on the road.