It might be - but you'll never catch me in a Toyota, let alone a Pious.
Toyotas are the most reliable cars you can buy. If you like breaking down then buy others. The Prius is fantastic to drive.
Hybrid technology is a bit of a joke as far as Green credentials go in my book.
Emissions are lower than the other filth and they return 65-70 mpg.
Filthy, noisy, diesels will be phased out. The way forward is all electric as batteries now can handle it. Hybrids are a stop-gap.
100% electric is now fully feasible. Lighter bodies, smaller lighter motors (we now have solid state motor-in-wheel-hubs), full reclaim of kinetic brake energy, computers to control all aspects...and smaller lighter batteries. All here now.
Yes, full electric" long-range" cars are feasible right now. All it needs is a lightweight dedicated body designed around the electric mechanicals and they are here.
However, improvement in supercapacitors can take them even further, either by using them to compliment chemical batteries, or if advances progress further, use them in place of batteries.
The future for city cars will be a toss between full electric with supercapacitors and an a car run on compressed air.
The great thing about compressed air tanks and supercapacitors, is that they do not wear out and will outlast the vehicle. All this is available NOW!!!!!
Supercapacitors is the way forward. The current supercapacitors store about 25% of the charge of a battery of the same physical size. That is in your car, the "battery" will be 4 times physically larger to have it replaced by a supercapacitor and it will never need replacing. That is available now and could be under the boot. If a car was designed to have the whole floor a supercapacitor bank, then it will have a hell of a range and a low centre of gravity. The car body will need to be designed around the capacitor of course.
Many companies are researching insulated bodies to keep the car cool or hot
to avoid taking current from the battery. Current cars are made from cheap
sheet steel.
The way forward is electric, so R&D is focused on that. Hybrids are a stepping stone to full electric, or a more efficient version of the Chevy Volt, out this year inn the US and to be made in Ellesmere Port, with an highly tuned engine that turns a generator and large battery pack.
What determines the future is battery and supercapacitor advances. Battery technology is actually here using Lith-Ion and Lith-poly. Initially supercapacitors and batteries will work in tandem then maybe only supercapacitors.
Current cars are made of rather cheap poor heavy materials. Pressed steel is the body. There is more pressure on cost, than weight with a substantial part of the cars weight made up of the heavy body. In carbon F1 cars the bodyshell weights almost nothing by comparison to its powertrain in percentage weight of the total vehicle.
Lighten a car body and add lithium batteries, regen braking and motor in wheel hubs, and you get to around 150-200 miles range. And that is ignoring advances in supercapacitors.
Initially electric car usage will be more urban/commuting than fast motorway cruising, as that is the vast percentage of driving, but every little helps and towns and cities will be cleaned up promoting better public health, cleaner buildings and far less noise pollution. Better aerodynamics can improve high speed economy, as can trading cornering performance by eliminating fat soft tyres, giving lower rolling resistance on taller wheels and harder tyres.
It is feasible to produce an electric car that is suitable for a second car at least right now, and the Nissan Leaf proves that. One that does the school run and takes you to work and the shops. It will not do a 400 mile trip if a 45 minute break and clipped into a charger. On-board fossil fuel chargers may be useful for "long range" vehicles, not coming in, in urban running.
With what we currently know, the single most important step is going from lead or nickel batteries at around 30-50 mile ranges, to lithium that will give 150 mile ranges or more.
Lithium batteries are at around the 700 MJ/ton mark now. The very best nickel metal hydride are less than half that. Nanogate capacitors are the same just below nickel metal hydride. A small car needs around a 50 Kwh, 180 MJ, energy in the "tank". In NiMh that's 3/4 ton, with Li-Ion it is more like a 1/4 ton.
A litre of diesel is about 10 Kwh, burned at around 20% efficiency. 50 litres of diesel is equivalent to 100 KWh of battery. So the equivalent of 25 litres of diesel in an electric power train at around the 400 kg mark is possible with Li-Ion batteries.
50 litres of diesel equivalent takes us up to equivalent of half a ton of battery. That is very comparable with the weight of a normal internal combustion engined powertrain. Electric cars require very little else besides the batteries, just small motors. No radiators, massive heavy, complex transmissions, exhaust systems, anti-vibration mounts and the miles of pipes and ducts that surround a current internal combustion engines vehicle setups. An electric car gives superior packaging of the batteries and mechanicals than the current internal combustion cars and can give superior handling, and safety, in a lower centre of gravity.
Then there is the spin offs to home and off-the-grid uses. The drive for electric cars, that is where the focus is, will cascade into homes.
Electric Mini that outperforms a Porche:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/08/the_hybrid_mini.php
Any electric car can be produced affordable. Insulated bodies and advanced glass drastically reduce the need for heating and a/c. The Mini has water cooled motors to reuse some wasted heat.
The 100% EV Chevy Impact is now old hat to what is being developed.
The Chevy Volt is a great leap in production cars, not in technology available. It is still a heavy traditional body, much better insulated, light bodies can be produced than that. It runs entirely on electric motors.
As I stated, the secret will initially be in supercapacitors - a capacitor is a battery as it stores electrical energy, while a battery stores electricity in chemical form. Putting electricity into and drawing out of a supercapacitor is instant as there is no state change losses, while in a battery is is slow to charge and slow to extract, but currently high storage per physical volume of casing.