American Buy Hybrids for Power

Here in Seattle just about every liberal in the city
is driving around contentedly in a Toyota Prius saving oodles of
gasoline with Toyota’s Hybrid Synergy Drive®. They have the same conceited look
on their faces as shoppers at PCC Natural Markets while they watch their groceries being
bagged into their own bags that they bring to the market. Not for them the evils of non-recyclable plastic sacks.

But all is not well in the hybrid car business. Most Americans buy hybrids not
for the gas mileage or to save the environment. They buy them for the extra power. That is what
Matthew L. Wald reports
in The New York Times.

Mark Buford just bought a hybrid Honda Accord. It’s the top of the line V6 Accord
and it gets about the same gas mileage as the four cylinder Accord costing $10,000 less.
Buford “liked the way that the electric motor on his new car kicked in early during acceleration.”
He

got just what he wanted from the Accord, a hybrid
with no sacrifices. “I wasn’t prepared to give up anything to `go green’ -
not performance, amenities, or space,” he said.

But guess what. Mark still gets the tax subsidy for buying hybrid. The national
nannies are not amused.

“The new ones are all being used for power,” said Kateri Callahan,
the president of the Alliance to Save Energy, a nonprofit advocacy group
based here.

Hybrids should be encouraged, Ms. Callahan said, because their
electric components some day could be useful in an all-electric car,
perhaps running on a fuel cell. But she added that the government
should be careful
about which hybrids it subsidizes through tax benefits.

Don’t you just love these activists that care so much about us, and only
want to force us to conform to their agenda in our own best interest?

A word to nonprofit advocate Kateri Callahan. If you want to be “careful” about something, the last thing
you’d do if you had any sense would be to get the government involved.
Let’s just call it
the “precautionary principle.”