A new study by R.L. Polk & Co. shows that the overall percentage of hybrids sold into the new vehicle market has fallen from 2.9 percent to 2.4 percent over the past three years. Moreover, approximately two-thirds of hybrid owners who returned to the market in 2011 did not buy another hybrid.
"Intuitively, you would expect the numbers to be higher, given how many hybrid vehicles are available in the market place today," Brad Smith, director of Polk's loyalty management practice, told us.
Polk's study revealed that only 35 percent of hybrid owners chose to purchase a hybrid again when returning to the market in 2011. The repurchase rate was even lower -- under 25 percent -- when owners of the Toyota Prius were excluded from the statistics.
Toyota Prius' customer loyalty had a significant effect in Polk's study. When repurchase behavior of Prius customers was not factored in, overall hybrid loyalty dropped to less than 25 percent. (Source: Toyota)
Industry experts familiar with the study don't believe that the low percentage of return buyers is a reflection of dissatisfaction with hybrids. Most hybrids, such as the Toyota Prius and Honda Insight, have performed well in reliability studies and have offered fuel efficiencies as advertised.
But hybrids now face competition from conventional gasoline-burning and diesel-burning vehicles that are boosting their fuel efficiencies. As a result, prospective buyers whose main concern is vehicle operating costs may be less inclined to choose a hybrid.
"People who buy hybrids because they are eco-friendly are more likely to stick with it and buy another hybrid," said Lacey Plache, chief economist for Edmunds.com. "But hybrids are facing really strong competition in terms of attracting consumers who are just looking at the bottom line."
FrankWye : I know what determines a country, and it is not the politcal sturcture or entity. It the commonality of culture of the people and shared resources.
That is why Yugoslavia should still be the country, and not Serbia, Bosnia, and Croatia. That was a horrific mistake, which lead to lots of ethnic cleansing. Just as the artificial separation of India and Pakistan.
And if you would argue Palestine should not be a country because it is composed of Greeks, Akkadians, Phoenicians, Jews, etc., you would be wrong, not only because they are intertwined in geography, but because they share so much culture.
It is Israel that should not be a country, because it defines nothing. It is a incompatible merger of disparate Ashkenazi, Shephardic, and Hassidic cultures, on Arab land, that attempts to claim religion as the basis, when there are historically more Muslims and Christians than Jews there.
{ ... The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country [ Palestine] under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish National Home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion."10 (Article 2) ... }
Clearly it is calling for the Jewish National Home to be within the Arab governed Palestine. It would have to be. That is because even with the millions of Jewish immigrants, the population was over two thirds Arab. So while you can declare a country to be a national homeland, where members of that ethnic culture could always be allowed in and find a home, they could never be allowed to rule.
The minority, especially a non-indigenous recent imported population, can never rule. That should be obvious.
And clearly that is what all documents say. At not time was there ever legally supposed to be an independent Jewish nation. It makes no sense and violates the normal definitions of legal conventions.
Yes, what the UN did was probably illegal. The allies had promised the Palestinians independence, that was the right thing to do, and the UN had no right to give half of Palestine to recent, illegal, European immigrants.
FrankeWye : You wrote, "So, if I get the majority of people in my neighborhood to sign a declaration, we can become our own country?"
I don't get it, because that would make no sense if the majority of the people in your neighborhood were not indigenous, or were not the major culture in the larger, country sized entity.
That has no bearing on Palestine, which clearly is composed of indigenous people, is of country size, and was only prevented from previously being an independent country by Turkmen invaders. It has all the qualities necessary to be a country.
"The Mandatory shall be responsible for placing the country [ Palestine] under such political, administrative and economic conditions as will secure the establishment of the Jewish National Home, as laid down in the preamble, and the development of self-governing institutions, and also for safeguarding the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion."10 (Article 2)
YES! These is a law that countries can only be made according to the indigenous people. It was an unwritten law when this country revolted from England, is what the Declaration of Independence was based on, and has been written into everything since then.
The majority of Arabs left because they were being robbed, raped, and murdered.
The Palestinian Arabs took no part in any of the hostilities, not only because they were unarmed, but because they had absolutely no military training, and because they had families and livestock to take care of.
In contrast, the Zionist gangs were all hardened veterans, fully armed with the latest US weapons, like tanks, bombers, artillery, machine guns, etc.
FrankWye : Small correction, in that only individuals have rights. And they are inherent. States have authority delegated to them by individuals, based on individual rights. So the federal government can also have delegated authority, as long as it does not conflict with that delegated to state governments.
Tesla Motors plans to roll out a “compelling, affordable electric car” that will sell for about half the price of its high-profile Model S by the end of 2016, company chairman Elon Musk said last week.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
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For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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