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Lowered Gas Prices Won't Squelch Hybrid Market Share

Just as we were growing afeared that declining gas prices might diminish consumer sentiment toward fuel-efficient automobiles, Booz & Company's strategy+business predicts that hybrids could accounts for 17% share of the total vehicle sales as early as 2010, and will grow even more quickly in subsequent years.

The prediction is based "an analysis of the theory of innovation and the history of the auto market." The author says that the market penetration hybrids form a nearly perfect S-curve since their introduction seven years ago. The S-curve is a mathematical model first used in biology to predict the growth rates of living things. Economists and management theorists have adapted it to describe the growth paths of innovations.

The story itself seems -- dare I say it? -- more succinct and straightforward than the typical piece by a management consultant (full disclosure: I've ghostwritten a few in my time, including for strategy+business). It turns out that the author, Christopher Giliberti, is an undergraduate at Tufts University whose father is a former Booz Allen vp. Bravo! May he never learn jargonese.

(By the way, Booz & Company is the new brand name for the commercial arm of the former Booz Allen Hamilton, which spun off a majority stake in its U.S. government consulting business to The Carlyle Group over the summer for $2.54 billion. This business retains the Booz Allen Hamilton name.)

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MSNBC , meanwhile, has a piece on the Environmental Protection Agency's SmartWay program, which attempts to sort out the "mind-numbing array of statistics" that are tossed about to determine which cars currently in production are actually the cleanest.

"So far only the natural gas-powered Honda Civic GX and the gas-electric Civic Hybrid are certified as SmartWay Elite," Dan Carney reports.

Read the whole story at strategy+business, MSNBC »

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