Word: prius
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...constituency that isn't revved up about the cars is the car dealers. So far, they have little incentive to push hybrids because profit margins are higher on bigger, gas-only vehicles. Honda and Toyota dealers' splashy newspaper ads rarely if ever mention hybrids. Prospective Prius customers complain that since only trained salesmen are permitted to sell them, the untrained ones steer them away from the cars. Would-be Insight customers say they can't even find one to test-drive. "We don't direct people to the hybrid," allowed Honda salesman Neil Perlmutter at a North Hollywood, Calif., dealership...
Honda's peppy two-seat Insight travels 600 miles on a tiny tank, a boon to the greenhouse-gassed planet. Toyota's Prius, a sleek five-seater, gets 52 m.p.g. in city driving and is up to 90% cleaner than the average car. U.S. carmakers, reluctant latecomers, have been shamed into promising hybrid models. But will these fuel sippers sell to a pollutants-be-damned nation enraptured by showy sport utes...
...technology catches on, it could go a long way toward compensating for last week's stalled progress on the 1997 international treaty, originally negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, to cut carbon dioxide emissions. So far, Toyota has a five-month waiting list for its Prius (Latin for "to go before"), and it has logged 7,300 orders since the car's July launch. It will easily sell out this year's small production run of 12,000 cars. Sales of the Insight, introduced last December, are slower--about 3,500--partly because many dealerships can't get the cars, and partly...
...hybrids is that consumers won't have to make sacrifices in style, performance or comfort to drive them. Unlike battery-electric vehicles, which are plugged into the power grid, hybrids combine a small gasoline engine with an electric motor and travel under their own power. When the Prius advances slowly or idles in traffic, the electric motor takes over, thus minimizing the pollution caused by stop-and-go driving. The gasoline engine powers the battery and kicks in for acceleration. When the car coasts or brakes, the motor becomes a generator, capturing the energy that would normally be lost...
...size of the Insight and Prius is a potential turnoff for consumers, who fear collisions with gargantuan SUVs. "I'd like to use less gas," says Laura Blalock, a Memphis, Tenn., chemist. "But I can't enjoy saving Mother Earth if I'm worrying about getting squashed like a bug." Customers like Blalock won't have long to wait for heftier hybrids. In 2003, Ford will produce a hybrid version of its Escape sport utility, expected to get 40 m.p.g. By then, Toyota's hybrid minivan, the Estima, will probably have reached the U.S. market, along with a hybrid Honda...