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Heywood 13 (1:58)
Topic(s): Auto Industry / Efficiency / Future
Transport
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Video Transcript
So what is the future outlook? Well, I'm a mix of optimistic
and then I'm cautious, because this is not going to be easy.
We're seeing signs where I think the manufacturers are working
hard to compete. Given type of vehicle, is the fuel
consumption of my vehicle - manufacturer X—is that fuel
consumption better than my rival's? That's starting to be
important.
We're seeing, with Toyota's success with this Prius hybrid,
how a promising technology, marketed well, that does deliver,
gets a really good public image. And Toyota's got as many big
pickups, big sport utility vehicles, big vans, as anybody
else. But it's got a broad range of products, and it's
strongly emphasizing these hybrids. So they've got—
people don't dump on them for saying, "Why have you got these
giant SUVs?"—and they do. They've got positives to
offset that. And that's real. So there is starting to be
competition on fuel consumption in the marketplace.
We tend to want things to change by tomorrow. That's not
realistic. Time scales for attitudes changing are 5 to 10
years. And then time scales for technology changing in
significant ways, they're just as long and maybe even longer.
So it is going to take time. That's why we really need to
provide incentives to change the technology, and then provide
incentives so people buy as a market develops for this more
efficient technology. And then people think more carefully
about sort of how they drive, how much they drive, and what
they drive and so we're going to need a whole series of
innovations, changes, improvements, to get somewhere.
