Hybrid Car Review

After seeing the google trends, I had to try it out using some common hybrid car terms. I found the following search interesting:

If you take a look, I searched for trends for the following terms: toyota prius, highlander hybrid, honda insight, ford escape hybrid, and hybrid cars. You can see how interest in hybrids peaked last year with the corresponding spike in gas prices.

You can also see that the Toyota Prius outranks the other cars I searched for by a significant amount. And that searches for Prius and hybrid cars are basically equivalent in size. To me, this indicates that the Prius is distinctively hybrid and continues to be the most popular hybrid car, despite the entry of so many new hybrid vehicles.

I also noted that searches for the Honda Insight seems to distinguish itself when the gas prices spiked last year. This shouldn't be surprising since the Insight is the most efficient hybrid car available, even though it's low production (only 110 made in April) and is only a two seater.

You may have noticed I put 'hybrid' in with ford escape, toyota highlander and honda accord. I was attempting to distinguish between the hybrid and the conventional gas engine. If I take hybrid out, you can see that searches for the Honda Accord are much higher than any of the others. But, what I find interesting is how searches for these three cars dropped drastically with the spike in gas prices. But if you look carefully, searches for the Honda Accord have climbed dramatically recently.

One last note. The bottom of the graph shows trends in news stories for these terms. The big spikes seem to correspond to releases of their hybrid versions. But, there is no corresponding spike in search terms.