The cool car Campaign: Find a James Bond type. Put him in a cool cary Grant suit and sunglasses and place him behind the wheel of a hybrid. Place a Brazilian model in the passenger seat.People make assumptions about those of us who drive hybrids. When I casually mentioned that everyone in Seattle seems to drive a Prius, an acquaintance sniffed: "Of course." We aren't all unshaven-armpit, Birkenstock-wearing, organic-food- eating environmental activists.
The War Connection Campaign: Show a U.S. Army tank rumbling down the streets of Iraq. Show a Hummer rumbling down the streets of Spokane. A voiceover says: "Separated at birth." As Crooks reported last week, the oil we Americans depend on is mostly found in "volatile areas of the world." We are in Iraq because of oil. We stay hand-holding friendly with the Saudis because of oil. When those areas rich in oil go nuclear, we're doomed in more than just the energy department.
Weaning ourselves from foreign oil, one vehicle at a time, drives us all into a better future.The Hybrid-for-Dummies Campaign: Show animated cartoon characters – Disney's Goofy and Homer from the Simpsons – climbing into a hybrid vehicle and looking befuddled. But after a few easy driving lessons, they roar off in the hybrid.
The War Connection Campaign: Show a U.S. Army tank rumbling down the streets of Iraq. Show a Hummer rumbling down the streets of Spokane. A voiceover says: "Separated at birth." As Crooks reported last week, the oil we Americans depend on is mostly found in "volatile areas of the world." We are in Iraq because of oil. We stay hand-holding friendly with the Saudis because of oil. When those areas rich in oil go nuclear, we're doomed in more than just the energy department.
Weaning ourselves from foreign oil, one vehicle at a time, drives us all into a better future.The Hybrid-for-Dummies Campaign: Show animated cartoon characters – Disney's Goofy and Homer from the Simpsons – climbing into a hybrid vehicle and looking befuddled. But after a few easy driving lessons, they roar off in the hybrid.
One of my fears about the Prius was its technology. The key doesn't look like a key. You push a button to start it. The gear shift looks like controlson a Nintendo game. It was intimidating at first, but after a few lessons, I had it wired.
Driving a hybrid feels different, especially at first. It falls eerily silent at stoplights, for instance, because it's on battery power. But you don't have to manually switch between battery power and gasoline, as is commonly thought, and you don't have to plug it in, either.My Prius has been in the shop for a few days, because a nice man (with insurance) accidentally changed lanes into me. My rental cool car is a PT Cruiser, a cool car I always thought was cute and looked fun to drive. We haven't bonded.
The cool car is cute, but it feels old-fashioned and not because the inside is designed to look that way. When I drive it, I conjure images from documentaries that show black-and-white footage of the first computers. They were as tall as filing cabinets. For me now, the difference between an all-gasoline engine and a hybrid is the difference between those filing-cabinet computers and a laptop. There's no going back.
Driving a hybrid feels different, especially at first. It falls eerily silent at stoplights, for instance, because it's on battery power. But you don't have to manually switch between battery power and gasoline, as is commonly thought, and you don't have to plug it in, either.My Prius has been in the shop for a few days, because a nice man (with insurance) accidentally changed lanes into me. My rental cool car is a PT Cruiser, a cool car I always thought was cute and looked fun to drive. We haven't bonded.
The cool car is cute, but it feels old-fashioned and not because the inside is designed to look that way. When I drive it, I conjure images from documentaries that show black-and-white footage of the first computers. They were as tall as filing cabinets. For me now, the difference between an all-gasoline engine and a hybrid is the difference between those filing-cabinet computers and a laptop. There's no going back.
