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By Bob Schwarz Imagine 10 cars sitting at a stop sign on a cold winter morning, all waiting for the traffic to let up so they can turn onto Corridor G. Imagine that all 10 of those cars are silent, and that no cloud of exhaust fumes comes out of any. Now imagine all those cars are hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius, which stopped Sunday morning at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Kanawha Valley. “I think it’s a dandy little thing which, if it does everything they say it does, would be a very useful car for someone,” said Kathryn Stone, who invited Bert Wolfe Toyota to send over the Prius. Stone is a member of the West Virginia Interfaith Global Climate Change Committee, which hosted Prius visits Sunday. Lutheran and Presbyterian churches in Morgantown, a Presbyterian church in Shepherdstown and a Catholic church in Webster Springs also hosted visits Sunday by the Prius or by Honda’s two-seat Insight or five-seat hybrid Civic. “If a lot of us drove those cars, it would save a lot of foreign fuel and make us less dependent on foreign oil,” said Stone, who with husband Jim, owns two Toyotas, a Camry and an Avalon. “We got the Avalon for big trips, which we don’t take anymore. We shouldn’t have two big cars. I’m considering trading in one and getting the hybrid.” The California Air Resources Board has rated the Prius a Super Ultra Low Emission Vehicle. The Prius is not a plug-in vehicle like the Volkswagen that Unitarian Ted Duncan’s grandfather modified into an all-electric vehicle for Duncan in the mid-1970s. Duncan drove it back and forth to college in the Charlotte, N.C., area, but it would only run 30 miles on a charge. “Even then it would get pretty lame on the way home, and the headlights would grow weak,” he said. “So it was pretty much a daylight car.” The Prius car burns no gasoline to start, none to idle, and none to coast downhill. Hybrids burn gasoline only part of the time as they drive between one stop sign and the next. When the driver hits the brakes to bring the car to a stop, the normally wasted kinetic energy is partially recaptured to recharge the battery. Toyota introduced the Prius locally two years ago, but until recently the dealer only kept one car on the lot for test drives. Anyone wanting one had to order online directly from Toyota. Now the dealer has four on the lot, and sells one or two a month. Worldwide, Toyota has sold 100,000 Prius cars. In the United States, hybrid vehicles are most popular so far in California, which has the strictest emission rules in the country. The Prius is a quiet thing. It seats five people and has a stubby little front end where a 44-horsepower electric motor sits beside a 70-horsepower gasoline motor. It has a stubby little rear end too, which holds a big battery that powers the electric motor and a small battery that powers the electric windows and such. The car stretches slightly more than 14 feet, shorter than the Corolla, slightly longer than the new Echo. It has a relatively small 12-cubic-feet trunk capacity. Drive the Prius 15 minutes and the power shifts many times back and forth from the electric motor to the gasoline engine. Take it on the highway and put the car up to 65 or 70 miles per hour, and the gasoline engine runs continuously — but the electric motor helps out, too. Where gasoline-powered cars get their best mileage on the open road, the hybrid performs most efficiently in stop-and-go in-town driving, where it gets 52 miles per gallon. On the highway, that fuel efficiency drops to 45 miles per gallon. “You can’t tell the Prius is a hybrid when you drive it or ride in it, said Allan Tweddle, an engineer and member of the Global Climate Change Committee. Federal Express wants to have 25 percent of its truck fleet powered by hybrid systems by 2004, Tweddle said. One of the cities where those hybrids will run is San Francisco, which has steeper hills than Charleston. Hybrid vehicles are an intermediate technology that fuel cells could replace in as little as 10 to 15 years, Tweddle said. A fuel cell, Tweddle explained, is a chemical device that gets excited when a fuel is introduced into it. The space station uses a combination of fuel cells and solar panels to provide power. The Prius lists for $21,300, although depending on options that price can go up or down, salesman Jason Deskins said Sunday. The federal government allows hybrid buyers a $2,000 tax deduction, which will save $540 for a couple with a joint income more than $60,000. The state gives a tax credit — that’s a dollar-for-dollar reduction in state taxes — of $3,750 spread over three years. “If you’re at all interested in making the world a better place environmentally, the Prius is a wonderful vehicle,” Deskins said. “It’s a normal car except that it has technology 10 years ahead of its time.” To contact staff writer Bob Schwarz, use e-mail or call 348-1249. Write a letter to the editor. Search here for related stories
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