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What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate

Last week our car died. It was 10 years old, so it wasn't a big shocker, but needless to say it was a real bummer. We needed a car, and sinking $3,000 into a car worth less than that didn't make a lot of sense, so we decided that now was the time for a new car. The choice was fairly easy because we'd already decided that we want a hybrid, and there are really only a couple choices, one of which has a long waiting list in our area. So, 48 hours later we drove off the lot with a new Honda Civic Hybrid.

Soon after I started to realize just how misunderstood hybrids really are. Just about everyone I talked to about the new car asked some variation of at least one of two questions:

1) Don't you have to plug it in?
2) Isn't it really slow?

Perhaps its my inner geek, but I never thought hybrids needed to be plugged in -- that's why it's a hybrid and NOT an electric car. But, Honda has found it necessary to spend big bucks on an advertisement just to spread that basic message: you never have to plug it in. And no, it's not really slow. It's still a Civic with a 4 cylinder engine, so it's no sports car, but if it didn't have the extra gauge on the dash that shows battery charge I would venture to say nobody driving it would ever guess it's anything other than a normal car.

Thankfully, we have been getting good mileage thus far (about 40 mpg, on average), unlike some other hybrid owners.