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While everyone else has been going ga-ga over November car sales, which rose an impressive 17.6 percent from last November and seemed to be pointing to better times ahead, we here at Green Car Advisor were looking at the numbers for hybrid sales and scratching our heads.

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Several new luxury gas-electric vehicles, like this 2011 Mercedes-Benz S-Class Hybrid, didn't help the segment in November as hybrid sales trailed far behind the pace set by conventionally powered vehicles.
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Like beauty, ugly's in the eye of the beholder, but the month - for the hybrid sector - sure looked ugly to us.


Sales of gas-electric cars and trucks rose only 4 percent from a year earlier while all those conventionally powered gasoline (and a few diesel) models were flying - relatively speaking - out of dealers' showrooms at more than quadruple that pace.


And while November sales almost always fall from the previous month's  tallies - November's typically the second slowest month of the year for car sales - conventional passenger vehicle sales were down just 8 percent from October volumes, while hybrid sales plunged 14 percent.


You can blame it on a couple of things including low dealer and factory incentives, the evaporation of federal tax credits for what had been the most popular hybrid models and a dearth of new hybrid models with lots of the appeal - in the right combination of price, fuel economy and looks - needed to pull buyers into showrooms.
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Tags: BMW, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Ford, GMC, General Motors, Honda, Hybrid, Lexus, Lincoln, Mercedes-Benz, Mercury, Nissan, Saturn, Toyota, November 2010 Hybrid Sales, November Hybrid Sales

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November Hybrid Sales Picture - Depends on How You Define 'Ugly' was originally published by Green Car Advisor. Read the full story by clicking here.