French motorwonk savages hybrid cars

Je crache sur le Prius, voiture des puanteurs

By Lewis Page • Get more from this author

Posted in Science, 10th February 2008 09:02 GMT

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A French automotive-industry researcher has published an attack on hybrid cars, suggesting that they aren't a good sustainable way to save the planet and will prevent other technologies from developing.

The author of Hybrid vehicles: a temporary step is Jean-Jacques Chanaron, Research Director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Chief Scientific Advisor at the Grenoble School of Management. The paper is co-written by Julius Teske, also of Grenoble, and published by an Inderscience journal. (One co-edited by Chanaron, in fact.)

Hybrids certainly come in for plenty of stick:

There is a general convergence of strategies towards promoting hybrid vehicles as the mid-term solution... Such a convergence is based more on customer perception triggered by very clever marketing and communication campaigns than on pure rationale scientific arguments and may result in the need for any manufacturer operating in the USA to have a hybrid electric vehicle in its model range in order to survive.

Indeed, Inderscience go so far as to say there is a "misinformed craze for hybrid vehicles especially in the USA". Take that, Prius drivers.

It seems that Americans' passion for hybrids could strangle hydrogen fuel-cell development; though the two Frenchmen aren't overly enthusiastic about fuel cells either. Presumably they favour all-electric, or perhaps the famous French hot-air powered car. ®

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