When Jane Jordan of Macon bought a hybrid vehicle three years ago, gas prices were at an all time high of about $4 a gallon.
She said she purchased the car for all the right reasons.
“Really and truly for environmental and costs reasons,” she said. “At the time, the EPA said the Prius was the most environmentally friendly car. I checked on hybrids and non-hybrids, and at that time by far the Prius got the best mileage.”
Some are surprised at what Jordan traded in for her Prius.
“I said I was going to write a book ‘From a Porsche to a Prius,’ ’’ she said laughing.
She traded in a blue 1998 convertible Porsche Boxster, which averages about 20 miles per gallon or less. She bought a gray four-door, automatic Prius.
“I said ‘this is the end of my mid-life crisis,’ ’’ Jordan said. “I loved (the Porsche) when I had it but I’m glad I’ve got what I’ve got now. Everything has a time and season.”
The Prius, which has been around for 10 years, has a lot of company now, but it still gets the best fuel economy -- 44 mpg overall, according to Consumer Reports.
The demand for better mileage vehicles may be on the rise.
On March 7, for the first time since October 2008, oil began trading above $100 per barrel, according to the AAA Fuel Gauge Report overview.
With gasoline prices now about $3.50 a gallon in Middle Georgia -- and possibly heading above $4 again -- car dealers that sell hybrids are having a hard time keeping them in stock.
The high price of gasoline is the driver of hybrid sales, local car dealers say.
“At one point when gas was $2.85 (a gallon), I had 20 of them here and now I’m down to having one or two,” said Leven Holliman, general manager of Butler Toyota in Macon. “When gas hits $4, I will go back to having a waiting list with people fighting over them.”
Jordan said she drives her Prius mostly in the city.
“I fill up maybe once a month and use regular gasoline,” she said. “I was using the top grade gas (in the Porsche). I just feel like I’m being a little pro-active environmentally by driving it.”
Other than the Prius, Toyota also makes the Camry Hybrid and Highlander Hybrid. While Holliman has had both these vehicles on the lot, he said buyers of those are doing it more for environmental reasons than based on gas savings because there is not as much difference in the mileage from the regular models.
Driving hybrids has become more common, Holliman said.
“I would say it’s pretty well accepted that every neighborhood, every country club, every socioeconomic group out there is open and accepting to it,” he said.
“We had a customer the other day who saw a Prius on the back of a truck going down I-75,” he said. “The customer followed the truck into the dealership parking lot and waited for them to unload it,” Holliman said. “They looked at the window sticker and they said, ‘Yeah, I’ll take that one right there.’ ’’
Hybrids are now being sold by several different car makers and they are making full-size sedans, SUVs, pickup trucks and high-end vehicles. City-driving gas mileage in hybrids runs from 51 mpg for the four-cylinder Prius that uses regular gas to 17 mpg for an eight-cylinder BMW that uses premium gas, according to a list of 2011 hybrid vehicles by www. fueleconomy.gov.
Jackson Automotive, a Mercedes Volvo Subaru dealership in north Bibb County, had one 2010 Mercedes-Benz S400 Hybrid it got in late 2009, said General Manager Ken Grinstead. It was sold last summer to a person living in Michigan who found it online.
“Mercedes just kind of stuck their toe in the water (with hybrids),” Grinstead said. “They haven’t built a lot of them, but I think they are planning to have more. I think that’s the wave of the future.”
Mercedes also makes a ML450 Hybrid, but the car maker only allows it to be leased for five years, he said. That model is even harder to find than the S400.
“We don’t have one and never have, and to be honest, we haven’t had anybody ask for it,” Grinstead said.
Volvo and Subaru hybrids are on the drawing board and are expected to be available in the next few years, he said.
Ford’s hybrids, Fusion and Escape, have sold well, said Terry Tiller, CEO and general manager of Riverside Ford Lincoln. Tiller agrees that sales are tied to fuel prices.
“When (gas) was down to $2.50 to $2.80, we couldn’t give them away,” he said. “They just sat. But as gas creeps up higher and higher, they’ve become more of a hot commodity. Not just hybrids but other four cylinder cars.”
The dealership has had about five hybrids on the lot at one time and while it has two now, more are on the way, Tiller said.
“It’s harder to get them and they are much more expensive than regular gasoline four-cylinder cars, except for the Lincoln MKZ Hybrid,” he said.
The Lincoln hybrid is the same price whether it’s a hybrid or not, and the dealer has sold two of them in the past six months.
Terry Moore, general manager of Five Star Ford Lincoln in Warner Robins had about eight hybrids a couple of weeks ago.
“We’re sold out completely,” Moore said. “I guess it was when those pumps started going north.”
Moore said he had a waiting list of customers who wanted hybrids. He wasn’t sure how many names were on it or when Ford would be able to get more to his dealership.
“They are working on it,” he said.
Lock Wilford, general manager of Dublin Chevrolet Nissan Buck GMC, said he has not carried any hybrids at his business. Nissan, GMC and Chevrolet have hybrids on the market.
The Chevy Volt -- called a plug-in hybrid -- is in limited markets right now.
Georgia, “especially in Dublin,” is not going to be the front runners of the hybrid market, Wilford said.
“They are not going to be the ones rushing this through,” he said. “It’s going to be in the heavily populated areas. It’s going to be awhile before we get them.”
But Wilford agreed “there is a lot of interest” in hybrids because of gas prices.
Some dealers that don’t have any or many hybrids now may be seeing changes ahead.
“Obviously, we’ve got to figure out a way to cut back on oil prices, because it’s crippling our country,” Wilford said.
“Little weird” at first
Tiller recently drove the Fusion Hybrid around town during a weekend and “thought it was pretty cool” to get 30 mpg.
The car took a little while to get use to, he said.
“Initially, it’s a little weird,” he said. “When you turn the key, the instruments all move like a traditional car, but there is no noise -- there is no engine noise. It is strange.”
He is a self-professed “truck man” and commonly hears a significant amount of engine noise.
“You are used to hearing the starter turn over and the engine kind of firing and you can feel it in the steering wheel,” Tiller said. “But there’s just nothing, and you step on the gas and it starts moving.”
Jordan, who went from the Porsche to the Prius, agrees.
“From a regular car, it is very quiet,” she said. “I will be sitting there talking to people and the engine will shut off and go back to the battery and people will say ‘I’m sorry your car shut down.’ There is absolutely no sound when you are running off (the battery). ... It was a little eerie at first, but when you put on the gas and accelerate and switch over to the gas it sounds basically like a normal car.”
She said the car’s get-up-and-go particularly during interstate driving is fine, and she’s less concerned about big trucks blowing her off the road than when she was in the Porsche.
She has put about 30,000 miles on her car and besides some work on the brakes, she has only had regular service on the Prius. A friend of Jordan’s has put 120,000 miles on a Prius “and has never had any repairs done on it,” Jordan said.
And even though the cost to replace the massive battery is about $2,000, Jordan said there are repair concerns with any car, but she feels the gas savings outweigh the cost.
“I hope I don’t have to for a long time, but I would certainly buy another one,” she said. “It has a very good feel to it and it still does after driving it for three years.”
Even though some think hybrids are all small, cramped cars, that’s not true, Holliman said.
“(The Prius) has the same interior space as a Camry does,” he said. “I’m a 6-foot-2, 230-pound man and I am telling you it is easier for me to get in and out of and drive a Prius -- it is more comfortable -- than almost any other mid-size car on the market.”
The regular service of hybrids is the same as for other cars, such as oil changes, brake work and tire rotation. Most of the batteries come with 10-year or 100,000-mile warranties.
“We have yet to replace a battery at this dealership,” Holliman said.
Riverside Ford has sold hybrids for about five years and hasn’t had any major problems with them, Tiller said. His dealership hasn’t replaced a battery either.
A Ford hybrid was in the shop recently. The cooling fans on the battery had to be replaced and the battery had to be taken out.
“It’s a pretty massive thing,” he said. “It’s very, very heavy.”
Tiller said he’s got a dozen more hybrids on the way and expects to get them on the lot in the next 30-45 days.
Jordan would like to see more people drive hybrids.
“I wish we would all go to hybrid cars and lessen our dependence on overseas oil,” she said. “Friends in California say you can see hundreds of them in a parking lot. I think we are little slower to get onboard.”
