My electric car

I tell people that I drive an electric car. But that's not entirely true, because my car, a Toyota Highlander, is a hybrid - it runs off a combination of rechargeable battery and gasoline. Sometimes though, it can act as an electric car, because it's a full hybrid. That means it can start at low speeds without using the gasoline portion of the engine at all. So there are actually times that I really feel like I'm driving a golf cart.

I've been reading about hybrid cars on their very own dedicated website. There are some interesting studies that are cited on the website about exactly who drives hybrid cars. No, I don't mean Tom Hanks or Leonardo DiCaprio - I mean the age, income, and location of people who chose hybrid cars over regular gas cars. In general, the average car buyer is 40ish years old; for hybrids, that average age is closer to 50ish. Hybrid car buyers are far more likely to be making $100,000+. And the highest number of hybrid car buyers are in the state of, you guessed it, California.

So why did I buy my electric car? (In fact, why did we buy 2 of them, because Cass has a Honda Civic hybrid as well?) Do we fit into the demographics of the average hybrid car buyer? Well, no, not really. However, the criterion that we do fit is that of a car buyer, that otherwise would have spent more money on a different gasoline car, who instead chose to invest in a hybrid. When I started car shopping, my list included the Acura MDX, the Volvo XC90, and the Lexus GX470. In the end, the coolness factor of the Toyota hybrid won, and we spent less money on a more environmentally friendly car. It's pretty, too!

Farewell to the minivan!

I'll leave you with a hybrid haiku from the website I linked to above:

Ensconced in silence
I pause a moment, and breath.
Traffic light turns green.

-- Joan