Holman W. Jenkins Jr. is not a happy camper. The Wall Street Journal columnist begins his broadside by taking on the Hail Mary-shaped plug-in hybrid gas – electric Chevrolet Volt. Jenkins reckons it’s what the Brits call a “non-starter.” “Even as GM teeters toward bankruptcy and wheedles for billions in public aid, its forthcoming plug-in hybrid continues to absorb a big chunk of the company’s product development budget. This is a car that, by GM’s own admission, won’t make money. It’s a car that can’t possibly provide a buyer with value commensurate with the resources and labor needed to build it. It’s a car that will be unsalable without multiple handouts from government.” While Jenkins’ anti-Volt tirade isn’t especially accurate (you could even call it inaccurate), at least his rhetoric is a moving target, as he changes targets.

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The BMWblog offers us this picture of the Propeller People’s new hybrid BMW X6. I know what you’re thinking. Huh? First, no bonus points for you, Boyo, for missing the key visual ingredient separating the gas – electric X6 from the normal (and I use that word in the post-modern Chris Bangle is my owtowmobeel God sense of the word) gas-powered X6. “The body style is almost identical to the petrol versions,” the Bimmer boys report. “Except the slightly larger M3-style bonnet. The obvious changes appear under the hood, where a two mode hybrid system developed by a consortium formed of BMW, GM, Daimler and Chrysler, will power the X6 ActiveHybrid.” Dudes; if the changes are under the hood, they’re not obvious. (Obviously.) Anyway, who knew the X6 variant got a German-style mashed-up nospacebarneeded moniker all its own? But I did know about the consortium, which, by the way, did not include Daimler and Chrysler at the time. (It was, appropriately enough, DaimlerChrysler.) This corporate cluster-you-know-what was a multi-billion dollar joint effort that should have been used for joints, rather than hybrids, as nothing even remotely salable came from the collaboration. And while we await mpg figures (doh!), here’s some proper German humor… “Once again that great photos were brought to us by Palbay who also shared a funny story with us. Apparently the X6’s driver could have been a BMW executive from outside the U.S since he made several wrong turns getting to the test track and he was wearing a business suit, not a common thing for the BMW regular test engineers.”

To get answers to some of your questions regarding the refreshed Ford Fusion, I got in touch with one of the Ford PR folks, but rather than hide my findings in comments, we’ll post them here.

– The 2.5 liter 4-cylinder model will be available with a manual transmission, contrary to my previous expectations. For the other 98 percent of buyers, it’s a six-speed auto.

– AWD will still be available on the 3.0 and 3.5-liter V6 cars (proving Berkowitz’s guesses wrong again).

– The Fusion’s manumatic will be controlled with a +/- system on the gear lever base, not steering wheel buttons.

– On sale date is the nebulous “First Quarter 2009.” Considering that nobody is going to be buying cars this November, December, January, I don’t think it matters much that the refreshed Fusion isn’t going on sale for a few months.

– Ford is hoping/anticipating/guessing that the hybrid version will deliver best in class fuel economy. For reference, the Camry Hybrid is rated at 33/34.

– The Fusion Hybrid version will have slick/gimmicky SmartGauge system– two LCD screens surrounding the analog speedo gauge– to show instant fuel economy, etc. It’s good marketing to make hybrid drivers feel like they have a special car (i.e. the Prius’ space cadet interior).

– The Fusion’s cabin will be improved. I’ve tossed in one of KGP/Jalopnik’s spy photos of the Fusion’s refreshed interior into the gallery. SYNC will be available with or without the nav system.

Or not actually leaked. But since these are crappy photos of a brochure, it wouldn’t surprise me if this was an actual mistake, rather than covert PR work. Nevertheless, thanks to our friend Mr. Neff at Autoblog, we can see ’em. And on the basis of the blurry photos of photos, I think the next generation RX looks merely ok on the outside, and just awful on the inside. The pursuit of spaceship interiors continues, which will make Barrett-Jackon’s 2050 joint auction of the 2010 Lexus RX450h alongside a 1961 Impala SS.

Ford truck marketing manager Doug Scott had a little chin wag with Automotive News [sub]. No surprise there, given that the Blue Oval Boyz have just unveiled the new F-150 (recently reviewed on TTAC by our own JB). Nor are Scott’s opening comments about Ford’s full-size pickup startling in any way, shape or manner. Improved access to the bedside (via steps), rear-hinged doors gone because nobody gave a flip about the old version’s flip-out doors, yada yada yada. And then Dougie launches a salvo at The General’s plans to introduce a gas – electric full-size pickup, after the dismal failure of its hybrid full-size SUVs. “It is a publicity stunt,” Doug says, firing the first barrel. “It is no different than what you are seeing with their large SUVs,” he clarifies, loosing the second chamber. Reload. “They are not selling any Tahoe and Yukon hybrids.” Bang. “It’s about something to advertise.” Bang. And now, the knife… “In our case, we chose to have a democratization of technology like EcoBoost. Get more fuel efficiencies out there in mass and volume to as many people as you can, rather than focus all this energy on a very limited application that isn’t going to be really appealing to many people.” So much for that, then.

The Financial Times reports that Toyota’s suffered its first quarterly sales decline “since the months after the September 2001 terrorist attacks, underscoring that even Japan’s biggest carmaker will not escape the worldwide motor industry slump.” Uh, shouldn’t that be the world’s largest automaker? Anyway, ToMoCo global sales were yanked downwards by America’s carmageddon, falling by 4.3 per cent to 2.236m vehicles. As you might expect, the aforementioned worldwide collapse has hit Toyota’s share price hard. The AP reports that Japanese stockholders holding shares in export-heavy domestics are running for the exits, propelled by a soaring yen. “The U.S. dollar… plunged below 93 yen, a 13-year low, as traders reacted to dismal U.S. jobs data that spurred speculation the Federal Reserve might cut interest rates. The combination of the two — the yen’s surge and Sony’s revision — unnerved investors in Tokyo, who dumped shares of exporters like Toyota, Sony and Panasonic.” On the positive side, Toyota’s U.S. Prius production is sending jobs stateside. The Clarion Ledger reports that Mississippi is getting ready to welcome its sixth Prius-related supplier. “Toyota Tsusho America will open a joint venture steel processing facility on the Toyota site.”

I like Scott Brown. I spent six hours in Manhattan Motors’ parking garage with the ChryCo PR guy, waiting for NFL assassin Warren Sapp to appear for a Celebrity Car photo shoot featuring a [then red hot] 300C and a Rolls Royce Phaeton (neither of which Warren owned, natch). But then I tend to like all automotive spinmeisters. You couldn’t meet a nicer, friendlier, more auto-savvy group of people. Of course, they’re all congenital liars (although they’d probably call themselves “public relations professionals”). To wit: “The demand for our full-size SUVs has really dropped off this year,” Chrysler spokesman Scott Brown told Edmunds’ Inside Line. “Even though we got significant orders for the hybrids, it doesn’t make sense to keep the plant open for just the hybrids.” Of course, Edmunds isn’t a million miles away from the “never call a triangular-shaped digging implement a spade” philosophy. “Chrysler wouldn’t say how many of the hybrid SUVs it had planned to build at the plant in Newark, which is scheduled to close at the end of December.” The vehicles only went on sale at the end of September. But I bet Chrysler could count the number of Aspens and Durango HEMI-Hybrids sold this month on one hand and still have enough fingers left to salute TTAC. Not that Scott would ever do such a thing… [thanks to MK for the link]

Battery maker and hybrid powertrain dark horse BYD got quite a legitimacy boost when the Oracle of Omaha (and possible Obama cabinet member) Warren Buffett dropped $230m on ten percent of its stock. And that boost seems to be translating into accelerated plans to bring BYD cars to market. China Car Times reports that BYD will begin selling its “dual mode” (not to be confused with GM’s disasterous “two-mode”) hybrids (specifically, the Toyota Corolla F3DM compact) before the end of the year, several months before the previously-publicized release date. No plans have been announced to accelerate European sales, set to begin in 2010. And U.S. sales are still a gleam in Warren Buffett’s shrewd eye. BYD hybrids have been extensively tested in China, and the firm claims that its proprietary batteries are good for 62 mile of plug-in charge and will last over 300k miles before needing to be replaced.  The parallel/serial hybrids can be charged to 50 percent of capacity in ten minutes, while a 100 percent charge takes seven hours, according to BYD. If these numbers hold up and quality is up to snuff, BYD could soon be a big name in the hybrid game. After all, Ma Buffett didn’t raise any fools.

These guys can’t win from losing. I mean, first GM seeks to evade responsibility for its cratered bsuiness by claiming that “no one” could have forseen the sudden spike in gas prices (or, God forbid, planned for that contingency after, what, two previous oil price shocks). And now GM Car Czar “Maximum Bob” Lutz is telling the LA Times that low gas prices threaten its plug-in electric – gas hybrid Volt-shaped Hail Mary. “We may hate high fuel prices, but they’ve been driving us in the right direction when it comes to fuel economy,” General Motors Vice Chairman Bob Lutz told the Times. “The company’s leading cheerleader for its $500-million program to develop an electric car” said “If we suddenly went to $1 or $1.50 a gallon, that would be really bad.” Don’t get me wrong. Lutz is right. As he was when he called federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards a “crock of shit.” No wait; that was global warming. Anyway, the thing of it is, stop bitching Bob. As someone who’s followed Lutz’s career at GM– listening to every excuse for his employer’s dismal performance short of “the sun was in my eyes”– I would like to officially go on record saying that GM needs to builds vehicles, not sound bites. That is all.

Marketwatch reports that Honda and Toyota are warning against using their hybrid vehicles as taxi cabs, on safety concerns. Ford, GM and Nissan have also refused to certify the crashworthiness of their hybrid vehicles as hire cars. The story starts with an August 29 letter, sent from the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), asking automakers to certify that their hybrids or alternative fuel vehicles are manufacturer-approved to be used as taxicabs and safe when modified with partitions and other TLC requirements. This letter in turn came from a Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade (MTBT) legal challenge to TLC’s mandate that all new NY taxis be hybrids or other vehicles that achieve 25 miles-per-gallon. Citing a 2008 engineer’s report that finds hybrids to be unsafe and unfit as New York City taxicabs, the MTBT have held up TLC’s mandate in court, and now that automakers won’t certify their safety, the TLC mandate may be DOA. Issues over safety partitions and their interaction with side-curtain airbags and other safety equipment prevent automakers from certifying the safety of their hybrids when modified for taxi use. Since nobody crash-tests hybrids modified with safety partitions, nobody will take any legal responsibility for them, and thus they may well die on the vine. Meanwhile, in less hellishly violent corners of this great nation, cabbies are turning to hybrids with enthusiasm. As long as you don’t need several inches of bulletproof glass between you and your customers, hybrids are a safe, efficient choice for taxis.

We’ve got this Green.MSN.com website.
So let’s do something with it! I hear this hypermiling thing is big.
It sure is. What is it?
No idea. Some crap about getting great mileage without having a hybrid.

“When you first start hypermiling, I find, you really wish you had someone to ride along with you to show you the ropes. Sadly, that’s not yet an option for most people. Until then, we can learn from some of the best.” Rather than suggest you not play with fire (like turning off your car while coasting, thus killing your power brakes), MSN asks self-confessed “efficiency nerd” Darin Cosgrove some broad questions and calls it good. I repeat: the article does not contain a single tip (although you now know to avoid Darin Cosgrove at parties). Not only is the article useless, but it is part of the irresponsible practice of telling people they should do something dangerous without even understanding it completely, or having someone “show them the ropes.”

Toyota begins assembling its Prius hybrid in Tupelo, MS sometime late in 2010, and you can expect this development to spawn some form of flag-waving PR from ToMoCo. After all, repositioning itself as an “American” company has been the central project of Toyota PR for a solid decade. But Automotive News (sub) reports that the Prius’s top supplier Denso has no plans to initiate production of hybrid components in the US… or anywhere else, for that matter. “Components used for hybrid vehicles are now experiencing very dramatic change and advancement,” says Denso CEO Nobuaki Katoh. “Given this timing, I still think the activities of development and production of the hybrid components should be concentrated here in Japan for the time being. After that, we may have to consider local production of components in overseas countries.” Quality, it seems, is the rallying cry keeping high-value hybrid component manufacturing jobs in Japan. With new lighter, smaller and less costly components being developed for the next-generation Prius, Katoh insists that Japanese production processes must be refined before they can be exported. Though an obsession with quality and process refinement has launched ToMoCo to its current dominant position, capitalizing on its early hybrid investments require driving costs down and production up. America has bought every available Prius for years now, and establishing top-to-bottom NA production of the Prius as soon as possible has got to be a priority for Toyota.

Warren Buffet’s recent investment in BYD has conferred a new legitimacy on a dual parallel-serial hybrid drivetrain, which combines features from both systems. And now VW has revealed its own PHEV third way called “TwinDrive.” Ohne transmission, VW’s concept car uses a small electric engine– powered by a 350 lbs. Sanyo lithium-Ion battery pack under the trunk floor– to launch its Golf testbed to 30 mph. (At which point the gasoline engine kicks in.) Electric acceleration helps overcome the limitations of a single high gear; reverse is electric-only. And drivers can engage an EV-only mode. Motor Trend reports that VeeDub’s testing the TwinDrive system with diesel engines, but gas-powered TD’s are destined for production. Production ICE is said to be a 100hp  turbocharged 1.05-liter turbocharged triple. A smart navigation-based system will calculate energy use priorities, saving battery capacity if urban driving appears ahead on the planned driving route, thus ensuring battery depletion at the destination and keeping the TwinDrive away from gas pumps unless absolutely necessary). The basic components of plug-in hybrid systems seem to have become fairly standardized. But concepts like the TwinDrive show that there are more development options than simply parallel or serial configurations.

While Chrysler jumps headlong into the concept car vaporware EV game, Toyota is taking its usual evolutionary approach. Bloomberg reports that ToMoCo will stick with its Prius strategy, augmenting it only with a Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) burning hybrid version of its Camry sedan. The CNG Hybrid is a response to lower natural gas prices in the US compared to normal gasoline, and the modest success of Honda’s CNG Civic. No pricing or efficiency information is currently available for the CNG Hybrid Camry. Meanwhile, Toyota is still driving down the replacement cost of its Prius-powering NiMh battery packs, which now set first and second-gen Prius owners back $2,299. Calling the Prius “as close to a silver bullet as you’re going to get,” Bill Reinert, national manager of advanced technology for Toyota Motor Sales claims “the reason the Prius was such a successful car is that the customer didn’t have to do anything to it.” And to those who say that hybrids are a “transitional technology,” Toyota will be selling a million Priora per year by 2010, before Chrysler and GM even start selling their highly-touted EVs. Slow and steady, as they say…