Toyota Warned Germans: Hybrids Are Hard!

Why are German automakers so late in bringing "full" hybrids to market? Because they misjudged the difficulty of developing hybrid systems on their own — despite a clear warning from the Japanese that building a hybrid was no no-brainer.

German companies decided to follow the Japanese lead more than two years ago, Spiegel Online reports. Porsche hoped to jump start the process by getting hybrid technology from Toyota, but talks sputtered when Toyota insisted on providing the whole platform or nothing — and warned Porsche not to underestimate hybrid systems' complexity. Porsche and Volkswagen engineers got schooled on that topic when they tried to develop a hybrid engine at VW's research center in Isenbüttel:

The company has barely managed to come up with prototypes of the first construction stage, which suggests that actual production would not begin for at least another two years. System supplier Bosch has developed a power supply unit that can handle high-voltage current of up to 300 ampere, but it takes up most of the trunk.

The transition from pure electric to combined gas-electric mode is also far from smooth, largely due to engineers' use of a drivetrain far less sophisticated than Toyota's. Those hiccups would obviously be a dealbreaker for consumers, and VW says it will fix them. The question is, will the solution will be too costly — or come too late?

German Hybrid Efforts Plagued by Problems [Spiegel Online]