Photo: SchwabenFolia
Despite the fact many Europeans prefer to buy diesels instead hybrids, Japanese luxury brand Lexus says the oil burners won’t have much to live as regarding the next decades to come.
This of course means that Lexus is not investing much in diesel research and instead it’s pushing forward with improving its hybrids, as Lexus vice president Mark Templin said at this year’s Geneva Motor Show.
“It depends on whether you want to look at short term sales potential or you want to look at long term, where the market is going," said Templin. “If we look 10, 20, 30 years down the road we don’t see the future in diesel. It’s kind of like a feather in our cap that the Germans are now starting to sell their first hybrids.”
The consumers are already embracing Lexus’ green machines as about 80 percent of models sold in Eastern Europe are hybrids. And this applies to Japan too and in a bit lower percentages in the US and Middle East markets.
And Lexus seems to be already looking for ways into improving the actual hybrid systems according to Mark’s hints: “There’s some technology that’s coming for hybrid in future that’s going to make it even more exciting,” he said. “You’ll have to wait and see.”
The Lexus lineup isn’t offering a diesel engine now and there aren’t even turbo gasoline units. However, the all new Lexus NX compact crossover will be offered with a turbocharged four-pot which is said to achieve the same performance as the classic 3.5-liter V6 unit the automaker offers in many of its current models.
Who knows? Maybe Lexus plans to adopt something similar we saw on the Toyota Yaris Hybrid-R - a turbocharged engine aided by three electric motors. That would be sweet.
“It depends on whether you want to look at short term sales potential or you want to look at long term, where the market is going," said Templin. “If we look 10, 20, 30 years down the road we don’t see the future in diesel. It’s kind of like a feather in our cap that the Germans are now starting to sell their first hybrids.”
The consumers are already embracing Lexus’ green machines as about 80 percent of models sold in Eastern Europe are hybrids. And this applies to Japan too and in a bit lower percentages in the US and Middle East markets.
And Lexus seems to be already looking for ways into improving the actual hybrid systems according to Mark’s hints: “There’s some technology that’s coming for hybrid in future that’s going to make it even more exciting,” he said. “You’ll have to wait and see.”
The Lexus lineup isn’t offering a diesel engine now and there aren’t even turbo gasoline units. However, the all new Lexus NX compact crossover will be offered with a turbocharged four-pot which is said to achieve the same performance as the classic 3.5-liter V6 unit the automaker offers in many of its current models.
Who knows? Maybe Lexus plans to adopt something similar we saw on the Toyota Yaris Hybrid-R - a turbocharged engine aided by three electric motors. That would be sweet.
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