Visitors to the Detroit Auto Show this week will have seen some unusual presentations alongside the regular razzmatazz of concept cars and new models. With America distraught about the security of its oil supplies, and petrol prices stuck well over $2 a gallon (more than 50 cents a litre) for the past year, the once-neglected term "fuel economy" has re-entered the country's vocabulary. It is not, however, an American firm that has led the change. Instead, Toyota, a Japanese company, has made itself the market leader, with its fuel-sipping petrol-electric hybrid, the Prius. Petrol-electric hybrids attain their fuel economy by using electric motors in stopstart city traffic and petrol engines when cruising on the highway. Toyota expects to sell 400,000 hybrids this year, and the Prius itself now has a waiting list of 18 months. In the wake of this success, every carmaker in the world seems to be touting an alternative to the petrol-driven, four-stroke engine invented by Nikolaus Otto (above left) that has dominated motoring for almost 100 years.
展开▼
