MARISA O'NEIL
When I heard that gas prices at some Southern California stations are
edging toward $3 a gallon, I laughed.
When I read Friday morning that Orange County gas prices had
reached an all-time high of over $2.50 a gallon, I smiled and
shrugged.
Getting 50 miles to the gallon has that affect on a girl.
This week, I joined the hybrid revolution. I bought a Toyota
Prius, which uses technology that combines an electric motor with a
gas-powered engine to scoot some 50 miles on one gallon of gas.
That's nearly five times further than the same gallon can take the
average behemoth sport-utility vehicle. And, no, my Prius doesn't
have to be plugged in.
Rising gas prices have spurred many folks, like Costa Mesa City
Councilwoman Katrina Foley, to go hybrid. Foley, a mother of two,
passed her minivan along to her husband and bought a fuel-efficient,
environmentally-friendly Honda Civic Hybrid for herself.
"I want to support this kind of technology, so that more cars will
be made that are fuel efficient or not reliant on fuel and are better
for the environment," she said.
And her sport-utility-vehicle- driving friends are jealous. She
recently took a round-trip drive to Las Vegas in her hybrid on a
tank-and-a-half of gas. Her friends spent hundreds on plane tickets.
Cost to fill her tank? About $30.
"All my friends drive SUVs, and they are actually anxious for the
hybrid SUVs to come out," she said. "Even die-hard SUV friends are
going to switch over."
But those friends will have to wait.
The Ford Escape Hybrid already has lengthy waiting lists at
dealerships. The hybrid versions of the Toyota Highlander and a Lexus
sport-utility vehicle have yet to be released.
And soaring gas prices have sparked a feeding-frenzy on the Toyota
Prius.
Virtually the only Prius cars in stock at Toyota dealers are ones
ordered by other people who gave up waiting and bought another car.
Ordering a Prius means you might get one in four to six months.
Or, like me, you could get lucky.
I checked some local dealers last weekend and found a scant few
Priuses -- all the top-dollar, fully-loaded models -- in stock.
Other prospective buyers were already eyeing them.
So I ordered the most basic, stripped-down, cheapest model --
which still has plenty of bells and whistles -- and hoped I'd see it
before Christmas.
Three days later, a salesman from the dealership called to tell me
they had just unloaded that exact car, same color and all, off a
truck. The person who had ordered it opted not to buy, and it was up
