Hybrid Vehicles - a car buff seeking automotive redemption

I sat down this morning and looked over my last 14 posts. Universally positive, feel-good hybrid vibes oozing from every pore. I started to feel a little bit easy - saccharine worked for Disney - but had I lost the hard hitting edge that first gave me the impetus to investigate hybrids?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a paid up member of the hybrid vehicle obsessives. I’ve got the bumper sticker, and the fluffy hybrid dangle for my front mirror, and the last 12 months of Green Car Magazine on the passenger seat.

But I started to think that I was guilty of one of the sins that I’ve blamed on many other hybrid vehicle pundits - universally positive doesn’t sell. We pretty much only have one chance to achieve the deep-seated cultural change that will make Hybrid Vehicle ownership a fact of life for Americans. If we create false expectations - we are going to end up with a pull of dissatisfied, negative ambassadors for the Hybrid Car movement.

We need to be realistic about the limitations of Hybrid cars - and I intend to do that in our very next post.

My name is Mark Kitchener and for most of my life I’ve been inspired, made passionate, obsessed about, driven, brought and lingered over the classic automobiles of the 1960s and 1970s.

There was something about their raw power, sitting in the front seat and feeling the throb of the engine in every fibre of your body. I loved the intricate mechanics, the painstaking search for new parts, and the innovative and slightly dangerous stop-gap measures when you found that something was no longer stocked.

I was a card-carrying member of automotive clubs. I attended conventions, and built websites. I liked their growl and I didn’t care that they were walking pollution time-bombs, almost revelling in their ability to chew through petrol.

At the end of 2005 - everything changed for me. It wasn’t a startling revelation - the first time I drove in a hybrid I wanted to laugh at the feeble way it responded to my foot on the accelerator. But sometime during that year - I started to see:

I saw:

1. On a trip overseas I was able to see the devastating affect of our impact on some of the most beautiful places on this earth.

2. The violence and conflict fueled by oil.

3. The incredibly real impact of spiralling oil prices on millions around the world.

I will never stop loving the classic muscle cars - but I have accepted the new fundamental truth - hybrid vehicles offer us the only hope.

They are not a plaything for "liberal celebrities", they are not a passing fad. They are the future, a solution, a last vain attempt to dial  back the clock.