Giving the hammer to the pious for their pure snobbery

EMISSIONS: With attacks on the eco-friendly Prius in California, maybe we should worry about an eco-backlash

MY INTEREST was piqued recently about a spate of attacks on Toyota Prius hybrids in California earlier this year. Seven were vandalised in a few weeks in the town of Petaluma. In most cases a brick, hammer or rock was thrown through a window.

One woman's Prius was attacked twice, as was the Prius she rented while hers was in for repairs. More recently, a Prius was burned out in Los Angeles in an arson attack.

While some commentators have tried to paint these attacks as evidence of an organised eco-backlash, I'm inclined to think that the fact the Petaluma attacks were contained within one small town points to it being the work of a lone Prius-hating nutjob.

Perhaps the vandal is a blind dude who lost the plot after being crept up on by a silent Prius once too often? Or a Hummer owner wreaking great vengeance on random hybrids after having his tyres slashed by militant ecowarriors?

Or even a frazzled commuter fed up of watching hybrid cars tootling along in the Californian carpool lanes their eco-status allows them to use, even if they're only carrying one starlet and her Pomeranian?

Who knows? The police certainly don't. I wonder, if they do work out who the Petulama Petulant is and arrest him, will he be charged with assault on a battery? Conspiracy or not, the attacks do raise a wider question: Are Prii and their ilk victims of their own success? Or, more correctly, the victims of their owners' success?

For some people, Prii, driven as many are by smuppies (smug urban professionals) and hypocritical holier-than-thou Hollywood schmoozers, are a symbol of misplaced piety. Not for nothing has the Prius been dubbed the Pious.

There are only so many times the average motorist can listen to a self-satisfied sanctimonious superstar prattling on about how green their Pious is - neatly ignoring the fact that it's parked outside a mansion equipped with a perma-heated swimming pool, massive air-conditioning system and landing strip for a private jet - before wanting to reach for the hammer.

Another factor is that Prii aren't cheap. Being green costs money. Most people can't afford one, and resent being preached at by people who can, especially if they are doing the best they can with the resources available to them. The irony is that the poor chap who either can't or won't buy a new car, opting instead to keep his 10-year-old diesel running, is being more environmentally friendly than the eco-snob queueing up to replace his car with the latest hybrid.

Until the day the penniless chump's friend, depreciation, makes second-hand Prii affordable, they are out of reach of most.

Around 80 per cent of a car's total emissions are produced during the manufacturing process. So even if it spouts out way less gunk than a normal car during daily use, the green gains of a hybrid are wiped out by the energy required to build it in the first place.

Personally, I only know one Prius driver, and he's a gent. But even if some hybrideers are eco-snobs, I'm prepared to forgive them. When you consider the type of pointless rubbish most people are snobby about - money, addresses, accents, schools, clothes - being stuck-up about something that is a driving force for good isn't too bad in the grand scale of things, is it?

Truth is, I have quite a fondness for the Prius. Granted, it's hideously ugly, slower than a glacier and nowhere near as fuel-efficient as its owners would have us believe. But that doesn't stop it from being cool.

I realise this is a bit rich coming from someone who owns a classic car with the emissions rating of a smelting plant, but I like the Prius precisely because, while flawed, it is leading the way to a future where eco-friendly cars will be the norm rather than mere status symbols.