Toyota Prius
The steady rise in gas prices has nudged up visits to Toyota's website by 42 percent from January through April 2006. Toyota is the market leader in hybrid cars with two popular models, Prius and Lexus RX400h, which together accounted for over 70% of all new hybrids registrations during the year 2005.
Data collated by Hitwise, an online competitive intelligence service, indicates a similar, albeit smaller, increase of 19 percent in visits to the Honda website. Honda's Civic hybrid accounted for 9.7 percent of all new hybrid registrations during the year 2005.
Honda Civic Hybrid
Both Toyota and Honda are increasing their offerings for hybrid cars. Toyota recently introduced a hybrid version of its very popular Camry sedan and Honda already has a hybrid version of its Accord sedan.
Hybrid cars are powered by internal combustion engines, but are also equipped with batteries recharged during driving and an electric motor to assist with power demand. Hybrids do not need to be plugged in, yet they deliver exceptional mileage compared to their gas-only counterparts. Hybrids are considered environmentally-friendly alternatives to traditional internal combustion vehicles.
An associated trend discernible in the Hitwise data is the growing interest in alternative fuels. The share of US Internet searches for the term ‘ethanol’ was up 212 percent for the four weeks ending May 13, 2006 versus the four weeks ending April 15, 2006. Additionally, the share of searches for ‘biodiesel’ was up 100 percent in that same period.
News Copyright © South Asian Women's Forum. May not be reproduced without explicit written permission