Google Says Hybrid Cars More Popular Than Diesels, Fuel Cells or Electric Cars

I've already noted how gas prices and interest in hybrid cars are highly correlated. It's not surprising, then, to find peak oil and hybrid cars are also highly correlated.

If you know what google trends is, skip ahead one paragraph. Otherwise, read the following quick introduction. Google trends is a nifty tool that allows you to see how popular a particular search term is. Google doesn't hand over the actual number of searches, but you can compare terms and get a good idea about trends, if not scale.

I just saw a trend comparison of peak oil and hybrid cars over at reddit. Not surprisingly, the number of searches for hybrid cars peaks at the same time as peak oil does.


The scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of peak oil in all years. The red line in each of the graph (and in each of the following graphs) indicate the term 'hybrid cars' while the blue reflects the other term.

Which made me curious about other trends. What about hybrid cars vs. electric cars?

And fuel cells?

And last, but not least, diesel cars vs hybrid cars?

Just goes to show you interest in alternative fuels, no matter what they are, tend to go hand in hand with the price of oil. But, at least according to google, interest in hybrid cars have overtaken diesel, electric and fuel cell cars.



You can clearly see how the search term hybrid cars has surpassed the others.