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by Bill Carey

Visitors to the 1982 World's Fair got to ride in a solar-powered car and a charcoal-powered bus. Since then, Americans have been waiting anxiously (and skeptically) for an affordable alternative to a car that operates solely on an internal-combustion engine.

It's here, though most people don't know much about it.

Honda and Toyota dealerships across the country—even in East Tennessee—have begun selling vehicles known as hybrids. Not a typical car, not an electric car, a hybrid combines an internal combustion engine with an electric motor that is powered by a battery to produce a vehicle that gets better fuel mileage and produces less pollution than a normal car.

Hybrids were first introduced to the American public in 1999. Only 17 were sold that year, but 20,000 were sold in 2000 and 40,000 in 2001. Today, the best selling hybrids on the market are the Honda Insight, the Honda Civic Hybrid, and the Toyota Prius.

West Side Honda and Toyota of Knoxville report that hybrids aren't exactly setting sales records, at least yet; each dealership says it's selling between three and six per month. However, the numbers may reflect the fact that hybrids have gotten little promotion so far. "The reason sales haven't been that strong so far is that there hasn't really been a serious focus on the car," says Doug White, general manager of Toyota/Lexus of Knoxville. "But I think that will start to change in the fall, with the release of the Toyota Highlander Hybrid (an SUV). At that point I think hybrids in general will start selling in mass numbers."

John Patty, general sales manager at West Side Honda, gives a similar prognosis. "As they adapt the technology to other types of vehicles and lessen the cost to consumers, the sales volume will go up," he says. Hybrid models currently cost between $2,000 and $5,000 more than non-hybrids. But the federal government allows new hybrid buyers to take a $2,000 income tax deduction as an incentive to help hybrids along. At this stage in hybrid vehicle development, their owners tend to be affluent, educated, and environmentally conscious. Take Virginia Cone of Oak Ridge, for instance. Cone, a retired biologist, bought a Honda Civic Hybrid about six months ago and says she's pretty happy with it. "I think it's a great little car, and I recommend it highly," she says. "It feels a lot like a normal Civic when you drive it, but the only difference is that there are a couple of indicators that you don't have on a regular car," she says. Cone says she gets about 40 miles per gallon in the city and 50 on the highway. She says she's pleased with the fact that it gives off little pollution. "I'm in favor of the environmental part, but I also think we need to use less energy," she says.

Another recent hybrid buyer is Pellissippi State English and political science professor Gay Lyons, who drove her new Toyota Prius home last week and couldn't stop talking about it the next day. "I'm tremendously interested in the fuel economy," she says. "I'm looking forward to buying a tank of gas per month. And it's cleaner for the environment."

Lyons says she knew nothing about hybrids until a few weeks ago. "When I first got to the dealership, I was asking all the stupid questions that people are now asking me, such as whether I have to plug it in when I get home," she says. (The answer, by the way, is no.) "But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. To me, this is a no-brainer. I want to know why all cars aren't being made this way."

Clinical worker and Prius owner Judy Hurley has the most emotional reason for having bought a hybrid. "My son is in the army, and he's getting ready to go to the Middle East," she says. "I wanted to do my part, even if it's a small part, to make us less dependent on petroleum."

With both Honda and Toyota hybrids, the battery is recharged by the internal combustion engine and by the process of braking. But the internal mechanics of the hybrids are not the same. With the Toyota Prius, the electric motor takes over at low speeds; with the Honda Civic Hybrid, the electric motor assists when the car is accelerating sharply.

Hybrid owners say they can't tell the difference between a hybrid and a regular car at most speeds. But they can tell the difference when the car is stopped in traffic, because in that situation the vehicle operates entirely on battery power. "It's so quiet at a red light that you think the car died," Lyons says. "But in terms of handling it feels just like any other car."

According to the trade publication Automotive News, American car companies are woefully behind their Japanese-based competitors when it comes to making hybrids. Only recently, Ford and General Motors announced plans to develop several hybrid vehicles. But marketing information firm J.D. Power and Associates estimates that Toyota and Honda will have sold more than 150,000 hybrids before the first domestic-brand hybrid debuts next year.

Hybrids represent only the latest generation of "alternative fuel" vehicles. No one in the industry is sure whether they will take hold, whether they will fail like the electric car experiments of the late 1990s, or whether they will be overshadowed by what some people believe to be the next generation of cars—those powered by liquid hydrogen.

Hydrogen vehicles would theoretically produce no pollution at all, which is why President Bush mentioned them in his recent State of the Union Address and asked for $1.2 billion in federal research dollars to help them along. "With a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom, so that the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free," Bush said.

However, car manufacturers have many technological hurdles to overcome before they can mass-produce hydrogen cars (which are also known as "fuel cell" cars). In order to be stored in liquid form, for instance, the gas must be kept at temperatures below -253 degrees Celsius. And right now, hydrogen cars are prohibitively expensive to manufacture; the head of Nissan recently estimated the manufacturing price at more than $700,000.