Hybrid Gas Electric Vehicles

Honda's Prius-killer is looking a lot like road kill. When it debuted in March, Honda Motor Corp.'s retooled Insight hybrid looked to be the first serious challenger to the Prius, Toyota Motor Corp.'s ecological wunder-car. Graced with a low price, 40-mpg-plus fuel economy and the Japanese automaker's reputation for quality, the Insight even looked like the Prius.

Toyota Motor Corp. has joined the growing ranks of automakers planning to bring advanced battery-powered vehicles to showrooms in the near future. The Japanese automaker said it planned to have a plug-in version of its popular Prius hybrid for sale in the U.S. in three years. "The target is 2012 to be coming to market with them," Irving Miller, a group vice president for Toyota's U.S. sales unit, said at a Los Angeles conference on climate change, Bloomberg News reported. Before that, "we're going to study the challenges of consumer demand," he said.

The Ford and Honda hybrids due out this month are among dozens planned for the coming years as automakers try to meet new fuel-efficiency standards and please politicians overseeing the industry's multibillion-dollar bailout. Unfortunately for the automakers, hybrids are a tough sell these days. Americans have cut back on buying vehicles of all types as the economy continues its slide. But the slowdown has been particularly brutal for hybrids, which use electricity and gasoline as power sources.

The days may be numbered for hybrid car owners who have enjoyed traveling solo in California's carpool lanes. The stickers granting that privilege to 85,000 hybrid owners are set to expire Jan. 1, 2011. There are proposals in Sacramento to extend the deadline, but they would exclude most of the vehicles that originally qualified for the program, such as the Toyota Prius, the Honda Civic hybrid and the original Honda Insight. "We're bummed," said Cathy Margolin, president of the 250-member Orange County Prius Club.

Honda Motor Co.'s much-anticipated Prius fighter may double as a recession fighter. The Japanese automaker said Tuesday that when the 2010 Honda Insight hybrid hits dealer lots in two weeks, it will carry a base price of $19,800. That put an end to months of speculation over just how much less expensive the new Honda would be than the Toyota Prius, currently the top-selling hybrid in the U.S.

Even here, in the capital of true believers in one thing or another, Paul Gillespie stands out. The veteran cabby and former president of the San Francisco Taxicab Commission is one of the reasons this city's taxi fleet is vying to be the most environmentally correct in the country. After years of advocating for hybrid taxis, Gillespie, who says he has "the carbon footprint of an Ethiopian child," now has proof that they are green in more ways than one.