GM’s Cadillac brand won’t have a presence while  Chrysler’s Dodge and Jeep have moved to the Fiat stand.  GM’s European brands, Opel and Saab, will only serve to remind that GM is selling them. Other notable absences include Mitsubishi, Honda and Nissan’s Infiniti, which are instead focusing on the upcoming Tokyo Motor Show.

Many attendees at the show will focus on advances in electric cars and hybrids, and for improvements that might bring the vehicles into the mainstream. They’ll also look for clues about forthcoming small-car offerings from U.S. carmakers aiming to improve their line of fuel-efficient vehicles.

Top new product offerings include four new electric vehicles from Renault, with one headed for consumers by 2011, including one with no internal combustion engine at all; a hybrid Mercedes B-Class, called the F-Cell, which sports a fuel cell and an electric motor; and the first plug-in version of Toyota’s Prius hybrid, meaning its batteries can be charged from a household outlet.

GM will tout its Chevrolet Volt, a plug-in electric that uses an internal-combustion engine to extend its range beyond the distances that the batteries are capable of handling.

Those cars are headed for consumers soon, but BMW AG gives a look farther down the road with its low-slung supercoupe, the Vision EfficientDynamics. It’s a high performance, plug-in diesel-electric hybrid powered by a three-cylinder 1.5-liter turbo engine, and by not one but two electric motors, one for the rear wheels, one for the front.

Those looking for an idea of U.S. automakers small-car offerings can see Ford’s redesigned C-Max.

Ford said it hasn’t scaled back at the show, as its European division vehicles are better sellers than GM and Chrysler brands.  Opel has a new version of its Astra, its mainstay in European markets. The Astra will also give a preview of GM’s plans for small cars in the United States.

“There will be an electric car at almost every stand,” at this year’s Frankfurt show, Ferdinand Dudenhoeffer, an industry expert at the University of Duisburg-Essen said, although it would be some time before they are on the production line and in dealer show rooms.

“Like in hybrids, the Japanese are ahead of the Germans in electric cars,” he said. “One of the reasons is the battery technology which in Japan is systematically further developed.

“Another reason is Germans’ strength in diesel,” Dudenhoeffer said. “Large parts companies like Robert Bosch, for example, are behind the curve in batteries and electric cars,” compared to the Japanese, he said.

He said Toyota has already built its 2 millionth hybrid car this year — an important link in the electric car chain — while Daimler’s Mercedes S400, the only German hybrid on the market so far, has built less than 200 of the cars to date.

In August, Nissan Motor Co. in Japan unveiled the Leaf, an electric car scheduled to go into mass production for a global market in 2012. And U.S. President Barack Obama committed $2.4 billion in federal grants to develop next-generation electric vehicles and batteries in the U.S.

Last month, Germany’s government said it would commit some euro500 million over the next three years on a plan to put 1 million electric cars on the road by 2020, including euro170 million into battery research.

The heavy batteries that take the place of international combustion engines and gasoline are expensive to produce, and countries like South Korea and Japan are far ahead in research and development. Improving them is key.

Analysts expect global production of purely electric cars to expand rapidly in the coming years. IHS Global Insight forecast that it will grow from nearly 9,500 this year to more than 58,000 in 2011.

Germany’s Volkswagen AG, Europe’s biggest automaker, has said it hopes to introduce its first electric cars on the market in 2013. It’s expected to show off an electric version of its “Up!” city car. Daimler AG, which has been testing an electric version of its two-seater Smart, is working with California-based electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc. on developing better battery and electric drive systems.

Ford Motor Co. will also offer an all-electric commercial van in 2010 and plans to have three other electric vehicles available in the U.S. by 2012.

The industry remains in flux with sales still down because of the global economic crisis and the landscape has change since the last show in 2007. General Motors Co. sought and emerged from bankruptcy protection, has agreed to sell its Opel unit to Canada’s Magna International Inc. and Sberbank. Chrysler Group LLC and Fiat SpA are now partners and Volkswagen AG dodged a takeover bid by Porsche SE, then turned the tables by initiating a takeover of Porsche.

Hybrid Cars Are Environment Friendly: Hybrid cars use the combination of a gasoline engine and an electric motor for the generation of power. Unlike other sources of electrical energy, the electric battery in a hybrid car gets charged without burning any kind of fossil fuel. The NiMH battery used in hybrid cars gets charged by the energy that is generally lost as heat and noise in a normal car while braking and decelerating. Since at least one source of power used in a hybrid car is absolutely clean, these cars are extremely environment friendly and produce considerably lower emissions than that produced by regular cars.

You Save Tax On Hybrid Cars: When you buy a hybrid car, then you become eligible for a tax saving of $2000-$7000 depending upon the price of your car. Apart from this tax rebate offered by the federal government, you may also become eligible for a state applicable tax break by buying a hybrid car. These tax breaks balance the higher price that you pay for a hybrid car vis-à-vis a regular gasoline run model.

Today’s Hybrids Deliver Better Performance Than Their Gas Only Versions: Gone are the days when we used to think that gasoline cars always gave a better performance than hybrid ones. Hybrid car manufacturers have come up with models that deliver a better performance than their gas only versions. Examples in case are some of the latest Lexus and Honda hybrids whose gas engine power is supplemented by the electric motor in order to deliver better power and performance than their non-hybrid counterparts.

You Become Applicable For Other Local Perks: Since the government is trying to promote hybrid cars because of their low emission rates, people who own hybrid cars are being offered a number of different incentives in different states and towns like free parking at certain places or HOV access for hybrid owners etcetera.

You Can Hyper-Mile With Hybrid Cars: Hybrid cars generally give a much higher gas mileage than their gas only counterparts. As a result, you easily end up saving at least twenty to forty per cent on your regular gas bills. On the other hand, hybrid support groups have come up with techniques that let you get mileages that even surpass a hybrid car’s EPA ratings. You can apply a few simple changes to your driving patterns to exceed your car’s manufacturer mileage and save even more with your hybrid car.

Fiction: You have to plug in your hybrid car in order to charge the battery.
Fact: Hybrid cars never need to be plugged into an external source of power to be charged. This is because hybrid car batteries get charged by the power that is generally lost as heat when a vehicle brakes or decelerates through a process known as regenerative braking. So unlike an electric car, you will never need to charge your hybrid car by plugging it in.

Fiction: Hybrid car batteries are very costly to replace and last a max of two years.
Fact: In the first place, hybrid car batteries nowadays are guaranteed to last for at least eight years and generally do so without any problems. In case you face battery problems during the warranty period, then your manufacturer will repair or replace it free of cost. On the other hand, even if your battery misbehaves after the warranty period is over, then you can easily replace only the malfunctioning modules (and pay somewhere around $60 per module) instead of replacing the whole battery pack.

Fiction: You can drive your car on the electric motor whenever you run out of gas.
Fact: Well…not exactly! If your battery gets discharged or your electric motor stops working, then you can easily go on driving your hybrid vehicle as a normal vehicle using only the gas engine. However, the same thing does not apply to a situation where your gas engine gives up. This is because the electric motor is designed to work in conjunction with the gas engine, where it keeps getting charged continuously during the process of driving and braking. The electric motor works on its own only for very short periods of time, so it is almost impossible to keep driving around with only your NiMH battery for power. Even if you do manage to drive on electric power for some time, you will be harming your battery for life.

Fiction: Hybrid cars give you a fuel economy of more than sixty miles per gallon.
Fact: Not our hybrid cars. No. the maximum increase in fuel economies that most hybrid car manufacturers promise you is 30%-40%. As such, most of the hybrids being sold today give you fuel economies of thirty to fifty miles per gallon, provided you drive them as per instructions, which you might not be able to do in most cases. Generally, a hybrid will save you a max of 15%-20% fuel in real life with real driving conditions. Your fuel economy with a hybrid will be greatly influenced by driving conditions and you will get higher mileage while city driving than what you would get while driving on the highway.

When it comes to defining hybrid vehicles, then we can easily say that any car or vehicle that uses more than one source of power is a hybrid. Almost all the hybrids available in the market work with a combination of gas and electricity, both of which are used to provide power for running the vehicle. In spite of the fact that almost all hybrid manufacturers are offering gas-electric hybrids, you can expect diesel-electric hybrids in the market very soon. Some people are also using do-it-yourself kits to convert their cars into gas-water hybrids, where hydro-energy is used as an alternate source of power. However, since most of us only manage to come across or plan to buy gasoline-electric hybrids, these are what we will discuss here.

Hybrids work on the principle of the seamless integration of 2 power sources- the gasoline run engine and an NiMH battery. Unlike electric cars, a hybrid does not run only on an electric battery and neither does the battery need to be plugged in to be charged. Batteries in hybrid cars are charged through a process called regenerative braking. What this means is that the car’s battery gets charged whenever the vehicle decelerates or brakes by using energy that is otherwise lost as heat in other vehicles.

In almost all the hybrids available in the market today, the electric battery can be charged even while it provides power to the vehicle. However, the electric battery does not provide propulsion at all times. Instead, power from the battery is used only while starting and stopping the vehicle, when speeds are low and the gas engine is shut off. The gas engine in hybrid cars automatically shuts off whenever you stop the car and starts automatically once certain speeds, generally higher than fifteen mph are reached. In many cases, power from the battery powered motor is combined with the power from the gas engine to provide propulsion at very high speeds. On the other hand, the electric motor might work independently when the vehicle is running at low speeds while the gas engine shuts off. 

Most hybrids manage to provide fuel economies that are at least fifteen to twenty per cent less than that of only gas powered vehicles. Apart from saving on fuel costs, they also greatly reduce emissions, so you actually get double benefits by buying one. It is important to consider the kind of driving that you are planning to do with a hybrid before buying one, since this would greatly influence the kind of fuel economy you get from your vehicle.  Some of the most popular hybrids in the market are Honda Insight Hybrid, Honda Accord Hybrid, Toyota Prius, Toyota Highlander, 2007 Toyota Camry hybrid, Honda Civic Hybrid and the Ford Escape Hybrid and most of them provide fuel economies ranging from 30 to 50 MPG.