Beyond the Prius
They're not just for tree-huggers anymore.
Up till now, if you wanted a hybrid, you had two choices: the alien-looking Toyota Prius or the plain old Honda Civic. And chances are you'd have to wait for weeks, maybe even months, to get either one. Robust demand has now produced Phase 2 of the hybrid experiment: cars that are fun, luxurious, even fast--and also happen to get great gas mileage.
The Honda Accord hybrid, going on sale in December for about $30,000, will be the slickest sedan in Honda's lineup. The combined gas-electric engine is a 255-horsepower barnburner that makes the Prius seem like a Pinewood Derby entrant. It's even a tad more powerful than Honda's top-line conventional V-6; instead of milking the electric engine strictly for mileage, Honda's engineers have diverted some of that extra power to performance. And the Accord hybrid still registers a combined city/highway fuel economy rating of 33 miles per gallon, better than most economy cars that sputter along as though they're missing a couple of cylinders.
Ford has also turned a corner with a hybrid version of its popular Escape SUV. Like the Accord, the ecofriendly Escape comes in at the top of the model line, starting at about $27,000. The 155-horsepower gas-electric engine is nearly as potent as the V-6 that's available, with an average mileage rating of 33 mpg--a 50 percent improvement over the V-6. Next year Lexus will start selling a hybrid version of its RX330 SUV with a 270-horsepower engine and mileage of around 30 mpg. Toyota plans a Highlander hybrid and perhaps a Camry. If all of these catch on, others are sure to follow. Most would probably fall short of the Prius's mileage rating--over 50 mpg on average--but they'd still offer dramatic improvements over current models.
Sound of silence. All the high-end hybrids have one unique feature that Americans may eventually take for granted: engines that conserve energy by completely shutting down at stops, like a golf cart, then starting back up when your foot comes off the brake. In the Accord and Escape hybrids, the constant fluctuations in the power-sharing arrangement between the gas and electric engines are imperceptible to the driver.
Since the new models are aimed at exacting consumers, other noticeable differences are minor. In the Accord, the back seat doesn't fold down for storage, because there's a rack of batteries back there. In the Escape, the battery pack takes up the storage nook beneath the floor of the cargo area. Otherwise, both are as refined as any of their brethren, sometimes more so. Suddenly, it's easy being green.
This story appears in the November 22, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.