Green Car Smackdown at Paris Motor Show
n the age of global warming, major global automakers are fighting over which company has the right technology to deliver all the power and style required by modern drivers, while emitting the least amount of carbon.
Peugeot-Citroen, Europe’s second largest automaker, says it has the answer with diesel-electric technology. The company will show a near-production version of the Peugeot 3008 HYbrid 4, a crossover vehicle that uses a 2.0-liter diesel engine to provide 163 horsepower to the front wheels, and an electric motor to supply 37 hp to the rear wheels.
Add it up, and you get a four-wheel-drive wagon-like utility vehicle that offers 200 horsepower while promising better than 60 mpg on a European test cycle. But does it pencil out in terms of economics?
The 3008 hybrid, which goes on sale next spring, will start somewhere around $40,000, compared with about $30,000 for the basic gasoline version. “We're convinced customers will be prepared to pay more for diesel because the price-gap is justified by their functionality and fuel efficiency,” Vincent Besson, Peugeot's product director, told Bloomberg. There are no plans to bring the vehicle to the United States.
By 2020, Peugeot-Citroen predicts that gas-electric and diesel-electric hybrids will account for 10 percent of all new-car sales in Europe. “Hybrids have a big future because they're much more versatile than ,” Besson said.
