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I was listening to the Forum on KQED (our local NPR affiliate) yesterday, and they started talking about gas prices and vehicle demand.  One of the guests on the show discussed consumer behavior, and how it changed as gas prices changed.  Specifically, she stated that compact and hybrid vehicle sales dropped with changes in gas prices – she was adamant about this.  So I looked around for some data and found the following post somewhat useful.

In the article, they claim hybrid sales dropped 45.5% in April 2009 (year-on-year, compared to April 2008).  Pretty shocking headline.  They even show the percentage of hybrid sales of total vehicle sales, but it’s quite useless.  So I took their hybrid data, and compiled it with two government sources, NIPA for auto sales, and EIA for gas prices.  Looking at the raw data, I can see how the KQED guest could look at hybrid sales and be quite disappointed at consumer behavior:

Hybrid Sales Compared to Gas Prices

However, it’s critical to measure the percentage of hybrids COMPARED to auto sales.  That seems like common sense to me.  Here’s the graph:

Hybrid Percentage Compared to Gas Prices

The second graph paints a significantly different story.  Auto sales increased in early 2008 as gas prices began to increase, and then dropped as gas reached its peak.  Not sure what explains the drop in hybrid sales – though it could be an anomaly, or it could be that non-consumer sales persisted through the peak and most of these are non-hybrid sales.  Either way, it doesn’t seem like there’s a ton of correlation between the data.   We often hear about how consumers react to market conditions with immediacy – yet in this case, it’s just not true.

PS – if you’d like the raw data, please email, happy to send it over.

Update:  Thanks to a coworkers suggestion, I derived the correlation coefficient between the two graphs.  For the entire period, the correlation between the percentage of hybrid sales compared to gas prices is .64, or moderately correlated.  However, the hybrid market was not mature in 2004-5, so it’s a bit inaccurate.  Comparing to 2006 onwards, the correlation coefficient is .25, i.e. there’s no correlation whatsoever.

I use my phone a lot.  I’ve had a smartphone since the Palm Treo 600, and have grown more and more dependent on my mobile device since then.  I use it for phone calls, texting, google maps, reading news/rss feeds, MLB gameday audio, yelp restaurant reviews, and much more.  As the devices became more powerful, I found myself using it more and more often – even while driving.  Instead of looking up the location of a restaurant ahead of time, I’d just wait until I was closeby, and out comes the blackberry.  Instead of calling folks and telling them that I was running late, I’d text them.  Most of the time, I’d think nothing of it.  But then the LA-train texting accident happened (among other texting-related accidents), and I realized exactly how dangerous it was.  

Yet, even then, it still proved very difficult for me to stop the occasional driving text or lookup.  However, California recently passed a measure that makes it illegal to text while driving (a very, very smart law).  Enter voice-enabled mobile apps.  I’ve downloaded Vlingo, Tellme, Yahoo oneSearch, and Google Mobile, all of which are voice-enabled.  Google’s voice recognition only works for Google search queries, so it’s not very useful.  Tellme (recently bought by Microsoft) is solid for map lookups.  If you’re on the go, instead of typing “Pauline’s Pizza, SF”, you can say it, and it will display the results (which still requires a dangerous glance away from the road) and allow you to easily map it.  Tellme also allows for voice-prompted calls.  

Vlingo, however, is the best offering.  Their voice recognition, while still needing improvement, is impressive (Indian names do not work super well, I’m tempted to give all my friends very common English names in my phone book.  Or maybe I cannot pronounce Indian names correctly).  The program allows you to call friends, SMS text (accurately), google search, launch applications, and more.  It’s great – I can text and drive legally!   It would be useful if it would allow searches within Google Maps (my favorite GPS app), but I’m sure that will come soon enough.  Vlingo’s technology also powers Yahoo’s oneSearch application, which only allows for lookups – i.e. it’s quite useless (it should at least work with Yahoo Maps).

All the apps could use work in playing back audio results.  Vlingo will replay SMS texts before it sends them out (thus avoiding awkward misses in the voice transcribing), but it needs to support playback of queries and location searches to avoid dangerous glances away from the road.

Vlingo has been around for awhile, but they recently upgraded and it’s voice-recognition is now much more usable compared to the rest.  Yes, it costs $17 (they have a limited free version) – but that’s nothing compared to the enhanced safety (I rarely need to look at my phone now, it’s all voice-recognition).  All the other apps are free, so I highly recommend trying/using at least one of these if you own a car- you never know when you’ll need it.   Or you could just avoid using your phone altogether while driving.

I won’t often plug personal things, but I’ve been helping put together some of the panels for TiEcon this year, and spent a ton of time doing it, so I’m just letting you know.  TiEcon is focused on bringing entrepreneurs together – last year there were over 4,000 attendees.  That’s the largest entrepreneur conference in the world, and it’s right in our back yard in Santa Clara.  If you are remotely entrepreneurial, this is a must-attend event.  Some of the speakers include Tony Hsieh (Zappos), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Brad Smith (Intuit) and many more.  The panelists (there are a ton of parallel panel discussions) include numerous venture capitalists (including one of my partners at Opus), lawyers, bankers, and successful entrepreneurs.  There are many ways to network (i.e. Power Connect), which you don’t often find at conferences.

I volunteered as a co-chair of Business BootCamp – a series of 6 workshops that will leave attendees with specific skills and tools.  The workshops consider the practical aspects of managing a company such as funding, cash flow, building teams, scaling sales networking and creating buzz.   And the workshop leaders are all great and have experience leading sessions like this in the past.

The conference is next Friday and Saturday (May 15th and 16th).  I hope to see you all there.  Oh, and the best part – if you want to save $220, use the code “TIE-FRIENDS”.  Enjoy!!

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