I’ve noticed something since last week – Toyota is the only company that is really pushing the branding of it’s hybrid drive technology (after selling 1M, why not?). Sure, Ford has a few ads out as well, but Ford uses… yup Synergy (well a good portion of it anyway) as well. GM has a few vehicles as well, but they are not really being hyped at all and Honda (who is dropping the Accord Hybrid (GN) – a sweet car to be sure – for a diesel (GN)) only really pushed it’s hybrids for a few months at the start of the year and since then talks generally only about it’s improved emission control (the whole road as part of the world). So what is the deal with that?
Of course, this being an ed centric blog, there is a teaching angle here as well – when I read this, there was a related C|Net story about where the Camry is produced in Japan. And it seems at the factory there, it’s ok to stop the production line. The story compares this to stopping a line in the US as being a major issue. Being able to stop the line reduces the defect rate in the vehicles, so while the robots are the same in both North America and Japan, this is likely an essential difference in the culture of the plants. In Japan, risks (stopping the line) are better received than in NA.
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