lol, nah. If that was the case the UK would be a hybrid desert. I think it's a Japanese car thing. Jap cars have never sold well in Europe for whatever reason. The UK (being RHD like Japan) has a long established market for them. But it isn't just a Europe v the UK thing. Holland has a well developed hybrid market as has Portugal. Perhaps it's a home grown manufacturing thing? Germany, France and Spain all produce a wide variety of good diesel models and perhaps the public of these Countries prefer their own home made cars?
No prices released as yet. I understand from Peugeot that it will be 'competitive' which should read 'less than a Prius'
20+ years of being sold up the diesel river. One of the first questions people ask me about the prius is "is there a diesel version?". We've all been so heavily programmed that diesel means better MPG, that many people literally won't even consider a hybrid if it's not diesel. You can talk about atkinson cycle, emissions standards, nox, warmup times and everything else until you're blue in the face, they just don't/won't listen. It's not helped by the fact that the gen3 prius is the first to offer significantly better (as opposed to just "comparable") MPG than a similar sized diesel. it's earned a bad reputation. as people like grumpy can testify, it's hard to change peoples minds on something like that. my brother in law will be in the market for a new car soon, i said what about the plugin prius, "not until it's diesel". Mad.
It could also simply be the fact that all the local car makers promote the diesel way while Toyota stands alone when it comes to showing the advantages of hybrids. We are pretty much talking about Toyota vs. the rest of the World!
