Hybrid car owners are a devoted lot. Maybe even crazy. Greg King, a systems engineer at Northrop Grumman in Sunnyvale, obsesses over the gasoline mileage he can eke out of his blue Honda Insight, which he bought in 2001.
Hybrid car owners are a devoted lot. Maybe even crazy.
Greg King, a systems engineer at Northrop Grumman in Sunnyvale, obsesses over the gasoline mileage he can eke out of his blue Honda Insight, which he bought in 2001.
Driving down to Stockton from Kirkwood Mountain Resort near Lake Tahoe, he managed to get 112 miles per gallon -- nearly double what the two-seater officially achieves. And he once drove to Los Angeles and back on a single tank of gas.
That's just an ordinary trip to Brian Freeman, who claims his 2000 Insight once got 1,098 miles on a single tank of gas. "I have one of the three highest mpg Insights in the country and hold the record for the most 1,000-mile tanks of gas," said Freeman, a former Saratoga resident who now lives in Chicago.
Freeman claims he's averaged 80 mpg over the 81,000-mile life of his car, spending 13.3 cents a mile on his ride.
Yup, hybrid owners are passionate about their cars.
As gasoline prices rise, sales of hybrids -- high-mileage, low-emission vehicles powered by both gas and electricity -- are rising. Last year, sales were up 94 percent in the Bay Area, 102 percent in California and 81 percent nationwide.
March was the best month ever for hybrid vehicle sales in the United States, and the trend will almost certainly continue. Three new models are hitting the market this year, including the $48,535 Lexus RX 400h, which went on sale last week. And five or six more models arrive in 2006.
The bottom line? Hybrid mania is at an all-time high. Interest in these cars and their environmentally friendly technology, combined with fans' enthusiasm and obsession over details like gas mileage, sometimes makes hybrid ownership seem like a cult.
Donnie Maley, a senior at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., calls it the "hybrid mentality." He surveyed hybrid owners, including King, for his senior thesis in sociology.
Maley found that 50 percent of owners earned more than $100,000 a year, and more than half had post-graduate degrees. And more than 90 percent "have encouraged others to buy hybrids."
Hybrid mania starts before buyers get the vehicles. Because demand continues to outpace supply, you have to get on a waiting list for many models.
Toyota confirms that some buyers have waited months to get a Prius, the bestselling hybrid, then turned around and sold them as used vehicles -- for a profit.
"If anyone plans on doing something like that, they'd better do it soon," said Sam Butto, a Toyota spokesman.
The wait to get a Prius, about six to eight months long in 2004, is shrinking fast. Adam Simms, co-owner of Toyota Sunnyvale, said the delay is now just two to four weeks at his dealership.
Hybrids are certainly popular fodder on eBay. A search of "hybrid" on the online auctioneer's eBay Motors site Wednesday found 60 hybrid vehicles for sale.
Thirteen people had made a bid for a 2005 Ford Escape with 35 miles on its odometer. The top bid was $19,300, and it had a buy-it-now price of $31,888. The vehicle costs $27,445 to $29,070 new at the dealer, according to edmunds.com.
A 2006 Lexus RX 400h with 24 miles hadn't gotten a single bid. Perhaps its $65,000 buy-it-now price stymied buyers. It has a $48,535 base price.
Some hybrid fans are so eager to get the latest models that they'll buy them without even knowing much about them. Simms said he is taking deposits on the hybrid version of the 2007 Toyota Camry that reportedly comes out in 2006, even though Toyota has not even confirmed it will make a Camry hybrid.
Gas prices, up as much as 70 cents a gallon in Northern California this year, contribute to hybrid fever, although experts warn buyers that it takes five to 20 years for the lower gas expenses to offset the higher upfront price of a hybrid.
Wired magazine, in a cover story in its April issue, reported that some Prius owners drive "shoeless" to be able to manipulate their accelerators more gingerly to save fuel.
Toyota and Honda kicked off the hybrid craze in the United States, but Ford Motor has now joined in.
Ford started selling a hybrid Escape sport-utility in 2004, and now reports that buyers wait about two months to get one. It'll sell 20,000 of them this year, said Bryan Olson, marketing manager for the vehicle. Perhaps even more important for the domestic automaker, which usually doesn't do well in California, about one-quarter of Escape hybrids have been sold in the Golden State.
Jesse Toprak, director of pricing and market analysis at the edmunds.com car-research Web site, acknowledges that automakers are selling every hybrid they make, and that they're getting sticker price or more for them.
That said, he does throw a bit of cold water on the hybrid hype.
"The overall size of the market is minuscule," he said. "It's 0.8 percent at this point -- less than 1 percent of the U.S. market." And, after another three or four years of steady growth, it'll reach only 5 percent.
So, it's a small market. But a proud one.
On a Yahoo chat site devoted to hybrids, one Colorado Prius owner mentioned a Boston Globe story headlined "Prius owners: These days they're downright smug."
Her reply: "Yes, I am smug."
Source: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
