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Sales of gas-electric cars jumped nearly 20 percent in May, compared to last month, outpacing the overall vehicle market that increased by 12.3 percent. Sales of the 2010 Toyota Prius, which continues to make up half of all hybrid purchases, increased by 13.5 percent to 14,248 units—despite a relatively poor showing by the entire Toyota brand. Industry observers believe that Toyota has yet to overcome negative publicity from safety recalls earlier this years, yet car shoppers are apparently excusing the Toyota Prius from those quality concerns.

2010 Toyota Prius.

Sales of the Ford Fusion Hybrid accelerated by a whopping 64 percent to 2,486 units. Ford also added nearly 25 percent more sales of the Ford Escape Hybrid. At this point, Ford has decisively leapfrogged Honda to become the number two seller of hybrid cars. Toyota owns 68 percent of the hybrid market; Ford holds 14 percent; and Honda has dropped to nearly 9 percent of hybrid car sales. The upcoming Honda CR-Z hybrid might help the company regain the second place spot—and Honda executives are promising a clean-slate approach for future hybrids.

Sales of the Altima hybrid, which is only available in eight states, soared by 253 percent. It’s unclear if publicity about the company’s all-electric Nissan Leaf helped raise the green perception of the entire Nissan brand.

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Popularity: 2% [?]

Deloitte Consulting said Thursday that pure electric cars will represent less than 5 percent of the car market in 2020. That’s only halfway to the 10 percent mark that Nissan expects.

Deloitte’s Robert Hill said the adoption of electric cars will match the slow acceptance of 20th-century consumer breakthroughs like washing machines—not the fast embrace of more recent innovations like the cell phone.

It took the washing machine from 1930 until 1975 to go from 10 percent use in US homes to 70 percent. On the other hand, the same jump for cell phones merely took a decade.

Brand Awareness for Electric Cars

The slow rate of adoption is not Deloitte’s only warning for Nissan. The consulting firm said that auto buying is mostly about brand, and that consumers don’t think of the Nissan (or GM) brands when they think about electric cars.

A Deloitte survey found that 17 percent of consumers would prefer to buy an electric car from Toyota, 15 percent from Honda and 12 percent from Ford. GM’s Chevrolet brand was fourth at 8 percent, and Nissan was ninth at 4 percent. Deloitte says that Nissan and Chevy will have to spend more on marketing to educate the public about their electric cars, the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt.

Deloitte estimates that Toyota and other automakers spent about $10 billion in the past decade promoting hybrid cars, which still make up less than 3 percent car sales in the US.

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Popularity: 1% [?]

For consumers who don’t want to wait for the plug-in vehicles that have been promised by major automakers, independent companies offer conversions of current hybrid cars.

Popularity: 1% [?]