My Garage Balancing Act: One Hybrid, One S.U.V.

The week we got our "seaside pearl" Prius, I learned that the message it was sending to the neighborhood was not just "look at us saving the planet." It was, according to an anthropologist quoted in The New York Times on June 13: "I'm more intelligent than the next guy."

What a trajectory, I thought — from environmental pariah to environmental penitent to environmental snob in one weekend.

And I didn't even hear it coming. The new car, that is. When Kit pulled up in the driveway, I thought, is the car on? Well, yes and no.

Luckily we weren't the only ones in the neighborhood to have a new Prius in the driveway. That's why there was a waiting list. But we were a bit surprised to find them all waving at us. Hybrid solidarity, I guess. Hey, welcome to the team!

It was certainly better than the dirty looks the S.U.V. sometimes got. And it felt as if we were part of an experiment, sometimes even a movement. At our daughter's first practice, Kit discovered that the Prius is a magnet for soccer dads. They crowded around and quizzed her about the car's performance.

The car is fun to drive, not so much on the highway, where it cranks away like other small cars, although it feels stable and pleasant, even for a tall guy riding in the back seat. But the Prius is really at home tooling around the suburbs.

When I am driving, I cannot help but press the touch screen on the dashboard to display the cartoonlike graphic showing the flow of energy from the electric motor and the gas engine. I want to figure out how to move while emitting no pollution.

I also discovered that I can start slowly and drive the quiet streets in our immediate neighborhood up to about 15 miles an hour just using the electric motor — a stealthy whisper the only sound coming from the car.

There is no beating the first law of thermodynamics, however, and eventually the gas engine has to kick in to speed up and gain momentum on the busy streets around town.

But then, at just over the 35-mile-an-hour speed limit, if I let up on the gas, coast for just a second and lightly press the accelerator, I can cruise on battery alone. I feel liberated from fossil fuels. It doesn't last long. But it's a great feeling.

And when I get home and silently slip into the space next to the S.U.V. in our driveway it is like yin and yang. I cannot quite put my finger on the feeling, but the other day a young friend, who was visiting from Wyoming, looked at our driveway and said: "That's so weird. My parents have the same two cars."

I realized then that one car says, "I'm not going to give up my American dream of freedom and the open road."

And the other car says, "I'm going to be a good suburban citizen and enjoy it, too."

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