GREEN AND COMFY
New Mainstream Hybrids Offer Comfort With a Clearer Conscience
By DANNY HAKIM
Published: October 27, 2004
DETROIT -- The hybrid is about to enter the latte generation's comfort zone.
By April, Toyota will start selling the Lexus RX400h, a sport utility vehicle that gets compact-car gas mileage.
The RX400h is a far cry from the Honda Insight, the tiny aluminum two-seater that was the first hybrid electric vehicle sold in the United States. Heated leather seats? Check. Navigation system? Check. Gasoline engine? Check. Electric motor? Check. Waiting list? Check, and then some....
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When Toyota and Honda first introduced hybrids a half-decade ago, the buyers were often committed environmentalists or technophiles, in either case taking a chance on an unproven technology that could increase fuel economy by 40 percent or more.
Now, though, the hybrid market is entering a second, more mainstream phase, expanding beyond Toyota and Honda and just small cars. A variety of pressures are encouraging the trend: gas prices that have soared and seem likely to stay high; new regulations in California that may be copied by other states, with tough new emissions standards; and glimmers of a change from the ever-bigger mind-set of consumers that produced such behemoths as the three-to-four-ton Ford Excursion in the 90's....
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/27/automobiles/27HAKI.html