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Owners of Hybrid Cars Compete for Mileage Bragging Rights. May 2005Hybrid car owners are a devoted lot. Maybe even crazy.Greg King, a systems engineer at Northrop Grumman in Sunnyvale, Calif., 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, Calif., 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 San Francisco 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. 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. Gas prices 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. 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: Twin Cities.com | ||
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