It doesn’t take a genius to determine that hybrid car sales are on the rise, but a new report confirms the trend and predicts that sales in North American will double in the next three years, as automakers increase hybrid offerings from 20 to roughly 40 different models.
R.L. Polk & Company, a leading auto industry market research firm, forecasts that more than one in 20 new vehicles sold in the United States and Canada will have a hybrid gas-electric powertrain by 2012. That’s up from approximately one in 34 new vehicles sold in 2008.
The report, based on new car registrations, claims the rate of growth will be even larger in Western Europe, where hybrid sales totaled only 0.5% of new car purchases in 2012. Polk predicts Western European sales in 2012 to be 5%–on par with North American sales in that year.
“You have a lot more environmental and political discussions throughout the EU and a much higher sensitivity with CO2 emissions,” Lonnie Miller, director of automotive studies at Polk, told HybridCars.com.
Polk also determined that the current economic crisis will not affect the sales of hybrid vehicles, and that owners of hyrid vehicles have demonstrated high levels of brand loyalty when purchasing another vehicle.
The report also shows that hybrids are no longer confined to major markets in the U.S., Canada, UK, France and Japan. Hybrids are now in 50 countries around the world with especially strong deman in the Netherlands, Greece and Israel.
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