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Hybrid Car Sales Statistics

A few years ago hybrid cars were being touted as the saviors of both the car industry and the environment. But Hybrid cars sales have been on the rapid decline since March of this year, and the sales are not performing to their expectations. If you were to guess that sales are off due to the stabilization of fuel prices, you would only be partly correct.

To believe that the sales drop has been due to fuel prices alone, you would have to assume that Americans are fickle. They follow fads and look to the present with no imagination towards the future. I believe that this is true in some cases, but it is a simplistic generalization.

Hybrid car sales hit their peak in 2007, at a time when fuel prices were at around three dollars per gallon. In mid 2008 fuel prices hit almost four dollars per gallon, yet the sales decline happened as the fuel prices were rising.

I believe the economic crisis has more to do with the decline of hybrid car sales than the price of fuel per gallon. Not only have hybrid car sales declined, all car sales have declined. Financial uncertainty has led to many people keeping there autos past a time when they would have turned them in. Hybrid cars tend to be more durable and they have such a high customer loyalty rating that hybrid car owners hold onto their cars much longer than their peers. To know that this is true all you need to do is search your local used car lots for hybrid cars. Chances are you aren't going to find any.

Hybrid car owners tend to be people who are into technological advances. Hybrid car technology hasn't changed too much since 2006. When hybrid cars first came out, dealers would sometimes charge as much as 10 grand over sticker due to the cars being a novelty. Some people who might have been interested in a hybrid car saw the over sticker price, shook their heads, and bought cars that were powered by a gasoline engine. When they come back to the dealership to purchase a new car, often hybrid cars are not even considered because they believe that dealerships are still charging the outrageous prices for them. The manufacturers and dealers have done a horrendous job of letting the public know that those days of charging 10k over sticker and taking a credit application before allowing a test drive on a hybrid car are long over.

If the economy starts to improve the sales of hybrid cars will go up. Fuel prices will also go up, as rising fuel prices are a sign of a robust economy. Instead of waiting for this incremental sales increase manufacturers and dealers need to get the word out that hybrid cars aren't that much more expensive than other cars when you count the savings, and they need to keep improving on the technology. If this is coupled with a growing public conscious over the environment, hybrid car sales will not only increase, they will start to gain ground on the regular gasoline powered cars.

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