I wish I could find some link between this and today's news, or last week's news. But I can't. Because the subject of this diary concerns the total absence of news.
In spring 2006, my husband and I reluctantly gave up our Honda Civic hatchback, which had given us 11 years, driven us over 100,000 miles including some of the most challenging roads in America (including the Alacan Highway and the dirt road to Chaco Canyon), and sat contentedly parked on the streets of Brooklyn where it endured a gunshot wound (!) without ever giving us any trouble, and bought a Sienna Minivan. I was pretty devastated because I had been lobbying my husband for years that when (if ever) we gave up the Civic, we should buy a Prius. But that all changed when we found out we were expecting not one but two more children, and we realized that with 3 childseats we really would need a third row of seats. I had never considered owning a minivan, but fate surprised us with a large (for NYC) family and so there we were.
Of course, there was no hybrid minivan to be found. I had spent too many years spewing vitriol about SUV's to seriously consider the Highlander Hybrid, although I gave it about 2 minutes of thought -- but the price was prohibitive. (I am fine with paying a price premium for a more environmentally responsible vehicle. Unfortunately, if we got a Highlander Hybrid, the price premium was going to be about $15,000, and most of the premium was attributable to the difference between the Sienna and the Highlander, not to the hybrid engine. I couldn't justify, to my husband or myself, paying $11,000 for a more upmarket vehicle than we really wanted in order that we could then pay yet another $4,000 to get the hybrid version of same, particularly since we would then find ourselves driving the sort of excessively heavy and tall SUV I had been complaining about for years from the passenger seat of the Civic.)
But I took comfort in the idea that the next generation of twin parents would be able to get hybrid minivans, and as NYC residents we drive so little that our horrible fuel efficiency still doesn't actually add up to much gas use. (In about 2 years, we've just about hit 10,000 miles, and that's even though the twins (whom I love with all my heart) combined with the TSA (which I don't love with all my heart) have made air travel so very painful that we have basically given up vacations by plane in favor of roadtripping. Please don't tell me that's still too much and we should take mass transit everywhere, unless you personally have mastered the art of taking a twin stroller up and down the stairs of a New York subway station single-handedly while your 5-year-old runs in a different direction. (You haven't? I didn't think so.))
But here we are, two years later, and when I google "hybrid minivans", I just find the same groundless rumors from 2 years ago. Everyone thinks Toyota will be first, but Toyota isn't confirming anything. The crazy thing about all this is that Toyota already sells a hybrid minivan, the Estima, in Japan, but has declined to bring it to market in the U.S.
Given what has happened with fuel prices in the past 2 years, I am flummoxed by this. I genuinely don't get it. Minivan buyers are, at bottom, practical people who are looking for efficiency, of a sort. We are not looking for size for its owns sake -- we need basic transportation for relatively large numbers of passengers. We don't take pride in guzzling gas like, say, Hummer buyers. It causes me real pain, in my wallet but even more in my conscience, when I look at the display that says the lifetime mileage of my vehicle is under 18 mpg (and it's only close to 18 because our recent roadtrip to Ohio brought the number up -- driving in the NYC region generally causes us to average even lower).
At a time when significant numbers of people are finally starting to get it that there are links between our car addiction and (a) our national security and (b) the health of our planet, I do not understand why a whole demographic, particularly one made out of practical, cost-conscious folks, is being left out of the movement toward hybrid vehicles.
I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks for reading!
[Edit: There is an error in the poll but I don't think I can fix it. The first choice should have referenced a typical price premium over a normal "minivan", not a normal "hybrid". Oh, well.]