General Vehicles and Hybrid Vehicles

General Vehicles and Hybrid Vehicles

Sport utility vehicles are the automotive nemeses of environmentalists, attacked as unpatriotic, gas-guzzling despoilers of nature by activists such as Arianna Huffington and conservative groups who wonder, "What would Jesus drive?"

But SUVs are still wildly popular. That, U.S. car makers believe, spells opportunity for them as they prepare to enter the high-profile hybrid-vehicle market—with SUVs and pick-up trucks.

"Everyone is entitled to play to their strengths, and ours is in trucks," said Ken Stewart, GM's marketing director for new ventures. "If you want to get a lot of hybrids on the road, you put them in vehicles that people are buying now. Americans like trucks more than they like small cars. So our strategy is to start with the bigger vehicles and work our way down, which also has the most benefit for society, because the bigger trucks consume the most fuel."

Consumers may be hearing more of that marketing pitch as U.S. car makers roll into the hybrid market, said Frank Markus, technical director for Motor Trend. "GM and Ford are able to say they are more environmental than thou, because more fuel will be saved by turning a big vehicle into a hybrid than a small one, and I can see their point," he said.

First out of the gate from Detroit: a hybrid version of Ford Motor Co.'s Escape SUV, and General Motors Corp.'s Silverado and Sierra truck hybrids, which begin hitting showrooms in the fourth quarter. They'll go up against the three hybrids now on the market—the Toyota Prius, Honda Insight and Honda Civic Hybrid. Neither ad spends nor sales are huge yet, but both are likely to rise as new competitors enter the segment and the niche continues to garner publicity from the media, as well as curiosity from consumers.

Prius, the top spender of the hybrids, was backed by more than $40 million in ad spending in 2003, while the Civic Hybrid spent about $7 million, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus. Meanwhile, the tiny...