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PSA Peugeot-Citroen will delay fitting its Hybrid4 technology to any more vehicles, instead focussing on building towards a critical mass to bring costs down.
The system launched in Peugeot's 3008 Hybrid4 last month, and the Citroen DS5, Peugeot 508 RXH and 508 saloon will all follow by the summer.
But use of the market's first diesel-electric hybrid won't be extended any further as yet. "We want to watch the effectiveness of the technology and then we can look at others," said PSA's hybrid programme manager Vincent Basso.
"We began with premium cars and we will wait and see volumes before making other applications."
He said using the technology on smaller cars would offer the opportunity of a "very aggressive" emissions figure, but at prohibitive cost.
"If you intend to rapidly do a 308 or C4, I don't think customers would buy the car due to cost," he said. "It's a different type of customer and for those customers e-HDI is doing a job for them."
Basso said the hybrid system is built for the same longevity as a diesel car - 15 years or 150,000 miles - and Peugeot has extended the warranty on hybrid components to five years or 100,000 miles, compared with the standard factory offering for its vehicles of three years or 60,000 miles.
Basso also said the much-criticised EGC gearbox has been fine-tuned for smoothness rather than ultimate efficiency, as was the case with the 3008 Hybrid4.
"The gearchange in the 508 is smoother - we wanted it to be more premium, and comfort was a higher priority than in the 3008," he said. "The 3008 was the first in the [hybrid] family and we wanted a very aggressive fuel economy.
Plus we have had more months of fine tuning with the RXH."
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