This beats the entire concept of electric engines all to hell.

if it is so good why so long before they make these vehicles available?

30% is better than coal / steam Rankine, but not a large gas turbine, particularly if it has a bottoming steam cycle.

The metric is CO2 production, which is not meaningful, but of course it is necessary to legislate FAFE rather than let the consumers vote, since clearly these misled peoples can not be trusted to do the right thing, unless they are forcing it on others.

Go nuclear!

And if it craps out before the "typical" lifespan, you're SOL. If your commute is that bit longer above average so you have to recharge more often, frex.

I wonder if they also included the CO2 footprint of locating, removing and refining the oil to create the gasoline and the CO2 footprint of getting the gasoline to the consumer... some might even include the CO2 footprint of the US military defending various oil sources... just to get the full CO2 footprint of any gasoline fueled vehicle. Perhaps this is not an important metric for anyone's car purchase since it is largely speculation including not knowing how each vehicle is going to be used by the end user which can vary energy use significantly.

No surprise here. In addition, electric cars require a relatively huge amount of highly toxic rare earth metals. The mining and disposal of these is ignored by proponents of electric cars. Don't forget that the electric utility still has to produce the electricity for recharging the batteries.

FYI. Consider selling a hybrid after seven years because the hybrid battery will need to be replaced typically at year eight.

Prior to purchasing his last car $5Au calculated relative costs of all compact cars sold in USA, including purchase price; gasoline vs diesel, hybrid, etc. #1 was Honda Insight, a hybrid. Because the model wasn't selling well, he bought it at a deep discount. Score! With that said, most hybrids only make economic sense if you keep the car for several years and gas prices are high.

The only real reason to do hybrids is to meet emissions/efficiency regs.It doesn't make economic sense for them as a smaller car manufacturer otherwise. They won't do hybrids because their new engines already exceed the regs until 2020.

5$Au,

They probably are working on their own hybrid system, that way they won't have to license one from Toyota or someone else.

(Is there anyone else currently?)

Odd that Mazda won't introduce hybrids until 2020. Makes one suspect they are working on an improved hybrid system.