A Chance to be Hybrid

We were surprised and delighted when we got to Hertz in San Francisco to find they had allocated us a Prius for our three days driving to meetings around Silicon Valley. This was a great way to see what it was like to drive a hybrid in case we could ever afford one (£20K in the UK versus $20K in the US – and in the US there is a one-year waiting list).

In was very pleasant to drive, being responsive while so quiet. What I didn’t like was the limited all round visibility. Also it’s a comparatively small car in terms of what you can haul around in it. So overall probably not for us. But people noticed it and commented, so we felt we were stand-in evangelists for greener driving.

Then strangely on the flight to New York SkyRadioNet had a feature on all-electric cars based on lithium batteries. The reference is www.hybridtechnologies.com. They have a number of concept cars and bikes – mostly claiming to do around 100 miles on the basic set of batteries, and with high performance. They don’t give prices for the cars, and the only bike for sale is $6K. But maybe in a year or so they’ll be a practical and affordable green car or scooter that we can change to.