Just try forcasting a hurricane. Go ahead, give it a try.
Speaking of global warming etc. Robert J. Samuelson has quite the snarky column about Prius owners today. He contends that people buy the Prius so they can show off their environmental credentials.
Toyota says that typical buyers are 54 and have incomes of $99,800; 81 percent are college graduates. But, like hippies, they’re making a loud lifestyle statement: We’re saving the planet; what are you doing?
This helps explain why the Prius so outsells the rival Honda Civic Hybrid. Both have similar base prices, about $22,000, and fuel economy (Prius, 60 miles per gallon city/51 highway; Civic, 49 mpg city/51 highway). But Prius sales in the first half of 2007 totaled 94,503, nearly equal to all of 2006. Civic sales were only 17,141, up 7.4 percent from 2006. The Prius’s advantage is its distinct design, which announces its owners as environmentally virtuous. It’s a fashion statement. Meanwhile, the Civic hybrid can’t be distinguished by appearance from the polluting, gas-guzzling mob.
The Prius gets 10mpg more in the city than the Civic. 10!! For the same price. And he contends that the reason people by them is for fashion? That’s cracked. If you’re looking to save gas and you need a sedan and you’d like to do something to personally get out of our reliance on foreign oil, why wouldn’t you choose a Prius over a Civic with those stats?
No, Mr. Samuelson is just going to point fingers at your fashion sense and instead insist that nothing is going to work short of government requirements on everything. He ends with this:
Meanwhile, Prius politics is a delusional exercise in public relations that, while not helping the environment, might hurt the economy.
without ever describing how buying a Prius “hurts the economy”.
He certainly made me laugh today.
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