I know this doesn't seem to relate to hybrid autos, but the fact is I wasn't what you could call a strong proponent of the Internet when it first started to hit the headlines in the early 1990's. I was still living back in D.C. at the time and I think my folks would attest to the probably 100 times that I moaned to them about the Internet; I'd say:
"Geez, I graduated college a year ago and always used the computer labs to do papers etc. Now I gotta drop 3 grand for a home computer, then I have to get "a connection" from something called an "ISP" and pay 30 bucks a month for that, then I have to "download" something called a friggin "browser" from this born-yesterday company called Netscape, and all this, all this, just so I could buy a few books I didn't have time to read off of another born-yesterday company called "Amazon.com?" What a pile of horses**t! "If I need a book, I think I'll just spend 10 minutes and drive down to the Borders or the Barnes and Noble and buy it there!. If I want it delivered, I'll order one of those catalogues out of the back of a magazine and just order the book by phone! Spend $3000+ and then screw with the time and hassle of this slow-ass computer crap is just not worth the money so I can start ordering crap online!? Online...BFD!!!"
Anyway, this was the logic with which I approached the Internet in the early and mid-90's. For some reason, the few baby boomers or contemporaries that I mentioned my views about the Internet and World Wide Web to just kind laughed me off. And, nothing brought me around to their way of thinking. My Mom got me to take a class in 1994, one year out of college, that showed me how to use the World Wide Web; didn't bring me around. Netscape went public in 1995 and shot up in price; I was working a short term job with NBC news at the time and saw a Tom Brokaw who was at the U.S. Capitol and happy as a clam because his broker was able to hook him up with 1000 Netscape IPO shares; still didn't bring me around. I was in Denver in 1997 and at the huge Tattered Cover bookstore looking at the magazine rack where I see a big smiley face on a Wired Magazine cover with a title underneath saying, "The Long Boom;" still didn't bring me around; also while in Denver, I was busy having some web designers in Va email me graphics attachments to a local computer cafe for a decal design in a side business that I was doing; still did not bring me around to thinking that the internet was worth the personal investment. Finally, 1999, the shares of .Com and tech companies are starting to peak, I finally break down and buy some URLs, including the one for this site and my own name for personalized email. Only then, 5-6 years after my first exposure to them, the Internet and the World Wide Web had finally gotten to the point where I said, "enough people are using it and the variety of goods and services online is better than the old, real world; you know, this is worth the money and, yes, it does make life more efficient."
Article comments
1 - Dave Nalle
I'm a different kind of 'hybrid' holdout. I refuse to buy a new vehicle until one of the models I'm interested in is available with a hybrid engine. The incredibly frustrating thing is that all the vehicles I'm looking at are ones for which hybrid versions have been developed, but for reasons I just don't get, those hybrid versions are not generally available. For example, I'd like to get a Dodge RAM pickup. A hybrid has been available for a year, but only for fleet sales in California. You can't get it anywhere else. Ridiculous. So I'm not buying out of protest.
Dave
2 - chris franklin
Yeah, that's a good point. Obviously a parody needs to be done of auto manufacturers' ignorance of public demand: "Department of Energy" ;) (dotcom)today issued a public order demanding that the nations's auto manufacturer's distribute hybrid pickups nationally or worldwide or something!
I dunno, I'm just fooling around, but a lightweight "action" could probably lean things enough in that direction to get that it done.
3 - Dave Nalle
I just don't understand how slow the manufacturers are to produce larger vehicles with hybrid engines. It's the SUVs and Pickups which are really popular with those who do a lot of driving because (like me) they live in the country and drive into town, so they need a pickup or an SUV or a mini-van to carry lots of stuff and lots of kids. They pay more for gas than anyone else, and could benefit from the gas savings of a hybrid much more than an urban dweller who drives a compact car. They're the real market for fuel efficiency, but yet no one is doing anything about it.
There are currently no hybrid pickups in the consumer market despite the fact that every major manufacturer has a completed design in some sort of limited production, and there are no hybrid minivans at all, and the only two hybrid SUVs are the Toyota Highlander which is insanely expensive and painfully cramped and the Ford Escape which is a turd with wheels.
It just doesn't make any sense at all.
Dave