I wasn't surprised to learn that there is growing dislike for hybrid drivers in LA. It wasn't just the usual roll of the eyes when some starlet or celebrity is spied driving a Toyota Prius to The Ivy for lunch. It wasn't the disgust you feel when a Parking Nazi, armed with a Prius or Honda Civic Hybrid, slithers up in stealth (electric) mode behind by your car to give you a parking ticket for the one minute you run into a store to pick something up. Instead, tempers finally boiled over when the State of California decided to give certain hybrid owners the privilege of driving solo in the carpool or High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes on the freeways.

According to a front page article in the Los Angeles Times last Monday (10 April 2006), California has issued a staggering 50,000 permits to hybrid owners since the law went into effect in 2005. In order to qualify for the sticker, the hybrid has to get at least 45 mpg on the EPA highway test ratings. The only consumer hybrids that qualify for this privilege are:

1. Toyota Prius
2. Honda Civic Hybrid
3. Honda Insight

A few other consumer-available cars do qualify for the stickers like the Honda Civic GX (running on compressed natural gas) or the Honda FCX (running on a fuel cell), but the number of these cars are extremely small.

What aggravates the average LA commuter is that the drivers of these cars appear to be so smug about their greenness that they almost deliberately drive slowly in the HOV lane which, if nothing else, will piss off just about everyone else around you. In LA, when you have a lane of the 405 freeway that is actually moving above 12 mph (like the HOV lane), it's your moral obligation to go as fast as possible to take advantage of that rare opportunity for as long as it lasts.

Posted speed limits, concern for safety or even just common courtesy don't apply in these situations. There is nothing more annoying than when you finally qualify get to use the carpool lane to drive somewhere with the family or a friend when you have to slow to a crawl (below 70 mph) because the person in front of you is plodding along at a leisurely 55 mph with not a car in front of them. And it's even more irritating when it's a single person, in their Prius, chatting on their phone, oblivious to things like the rear view mirror or the flow of traffic, who appears to be driving at a snail's pace just to see if they can reach that illusive 50 to 60 mpg figure.

To put the hybrid issue into perspective, it's important to look at total sales for the cars that qualify for the permit. Total nationwide sales of the Prius for 2005 were 107,897. Total sales of Honda Insight for 2005 were 666. Total sales of the Civic Hybrid in 2005 were 25,864. That means that in 2005, nationwide sales of these three cars - the ones that qualify for the HOV lane permit, were 134,427. The sales figures aren't broken down by state, but I read somewhere that there are some 70,000 hybrids eligible to get the HOV stickers in California and as The Times reported, over 50,000 stickers have already been issued.

What that tells us is that California accounts for more than 50% of all hybrid sales in the nation. It also explains why we see so many here in LA. On my last trip to San Francisco in January 2006, I saw hybrid refrigerators everywhere there. So when you look at the superficial green needs of LA coupled with the more militant green needs of SF, our two congested urban areas probably account for 80 to 90% of the California hybrid sales. Now that is market power!

But I'd like to talk about the difference between a Prius and Civic Hybrid driver. For years, I've made mental notes about drivers of the Honda Civic. It's usually the slowest car driving in front of me because the driver is usually a young SWF who only drives the Civic because it's a maintenance-free refrigerator. There are many things of more concern to this driver including, but not limited to, cell phone calls, chatting with girlfriend passengers, make up, wedding planning, writing in a journal, and other non-driving-related activities. It only gets worse if this same driver is driving her Civic with out-of-state plates.

I find that a Prius driver tends to be trendier with a deep need to flash the green credentials. The Prius was specifically designed to be instantly identifiable as a "futuristic" car - a hybrid. Other Toyota vehicles like the new Camry and Highlander hybrids are much more subtle as they only have a few cosmetic changes and a small badge on the back. Prius drivers, in general, are more aggressive drivers than Civic drivers.

There is also the height of the driver relationship. When you can't see the driver's head over the seat headrest, it usually means a very slow driver. This applies to almost any car made, let alone hybrids.

Then there are the senior citizen drivers who really shouldn't be driving. This is a tough one in Southern California where there are no real viable options for people with eyesight impairment. I totally understand the fear of losing your driver's license in LA. How would you conduct life? If you can't afford a private driver or expensive taxi cab rides, how do you get around to the market, errands, doctor appointments, etc? The problem is that there is no good alternative so some senior drivers continue to drive when they could be a danger.

However, it's been my experience that both the SWF and senior citizen Honda Civic drivers are both prime candidates to drive hybrid vehicles slowly. One thinks she is saving the world and the other is just saving gas. Both are slow drivers in the HOV lane on the freeways. Both should consider moving to the right lane on the freeways.

What is even scarier is that issuing 50,000 permits for three hybrid models to use the HOV lane is enough to noticeably slow traffic in that lane. You have to believe that only a small percentage of hybrid owners will be using that lane at any given time; however, the freeways are so jammed and the numbers of hybrid owners are so high here that it actually is enough to crowd the lane with "smug" hybrid drivers. The solution, of course, is to do a study of hybrid traffic on the 405, 210 and 105 freeways. Great - more government bureaucracy and wasted taxpayer money to study what any daily commuter could tell Caltrans.

While I applaud the California legislature for encouraging drivers to drive more fuel efficient cars, I don't think the HOV incentive was necessary or wise. The federal tax credits were very nice for the few hybrid buyers who qualified for the credits. But the best use of gas/electric hybrid vehicles is in city traffic, not highway driving. In normal congested city driving like that found in LA and SF, most gas/electric hybrids can operate in electric mode and that is when they are most efficient. When these hybrids run at highway speeds, the gasoline engines are always on and therefore aren't running in their most efficient electric-only mode. There are still waiting lists for the Prius and Civic Hybrid in the LA area. While overall hybrid demand seems to be down in 2006, we haven't experienced that trend in LA as gas prices have already "normalized" at $3.00 per gallon.

The State could have done something different like reduce or eliminate the sales tax on ALL new cars that get over, say, 40 mpg on the highway. The program could be extended to used cars that are unaltered from factory specs and that qualified for the original reduction or exemption.

That would give manufacturers incentives to make more fuel efficient gasoline engines and find cleaner ways to bring high mileage diesel cars to California. It would also reward customers for choosing new, more economical, cleaner vehicles.

Mercedes-Benz, BMW and VW all plan on bringing 50-state legal, high mileage diesel powered cars to the US. They might even be able to bring sophisticated diesel/electric hybrids to market that get over 50 mpg. Right now, a diesel Smart (a division of Mercedes) ForTwo city car, on sale now in Canada, gets upwards of 70 mpg on the highway with its tiny 3-cylinder turbo-diesel engine.

The Japanese manufacturers are ready with high-mileage, low pollution diesel engines as well, but both Toyota and Honda have bet big on gas/electric hybrids for the present time. GM has its new Saturn Vue Green Line coming to market in a few months and Ford has its Escape and Mariner gas/electric hybrids on the market now. Chrysler will have something, eventually, but it couldn't be soon enough to give dealers (and the company) a needed boost.

But in general, hybrid cars are merely an expensive bandage to get the industry through the loss of oil and gas fossil fuels to the point when an electric car can run on a fuel cell or an internal combustion engine can be powered by hydrogen. We don't know the long-term cost of battery replacement for hybrids nor do we know the real risk of fire and injury caused by accidents that breach the battery packs of a hybrid.

While I think it's good public policy to encourage high mileage, alternative fuel vehicles, I also think that public transportation should be a top priority. Putting smug, green-loving, light-foot hybrid and alternative fuel drivers into the HOV lane isn't good public policy when we don't give weary commuters any real public transportation alternatives. For now, leave the HOV lane to real carpools and multi-passenger vehicles.