When you speak of "cars" what categories are you talking about? Do you consider a truck bought for business purposes a "car"? Are you talking about all automobiles or only vehicles for personal and/or household use? Also, what market are you talking about? Do you mean worldwide sales or the US market?

As there are a number of different options for improving energy efficiency I suspect that the timeline for seeing a majority of vehicle sales being hybrids is a lot greater than you suspect. Possibly by a factor of 10, if not more.

It would help to know some of the current statistics. Currently in the US, market share for hybrids has been well under 3.5% In Nov 2008, the percentage of hybrids sold in the category of light vehicles by brand was pretty low; Toyota's sales of hybrids were only 9.5% of total sales, whereas other brands were well below 2% of what they sold.

Considering all the potential options.. Diesel, SVO/Biodiesel conversions of diesel cars, Hybrids, electric cars, simply improving the design of vehicles to improve mpg, fuel cell vehicles, natural gas, etc. etc. people will have a large variety of choices for their purchases of vehicles and transportation.

This is without even considering options such as motorcycles and scooters.

Some hybrids don't even seem that great an impact in improving mpg (in particular the SUV hybrids seem to be only a very small improvement in my opinion.)

In addition, we have a number of current conditions which make the future relatively unpredictable in regards to the automotive industry. Right now, besides the possibility of large automobile makers potentially failing, we have unknown economic conditions through which people in need of new vehicles may consider the initial cost rather than the long term TCO (total cost of ownership) or environmental concerns.
Source(s):
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2008/12/us-sales-of-hyb.html

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