New Mainstream Hybrids Offer Comfort With Clearer Conscience

New Mainstream Hybrids Offer Comfort With a Clearer Conscience

The hybrid is about to enter the latte generation's comfort zone.

By April, Toyota will start selling the Lexus RX400h, a sport utility vehicle that gets compact-car gas mileage.

The RX400h is a far cry from the Honda Insight, the tiny aluminum two-seater that was the first hybrid electric vehicle sold in the United States. Heated leather seats? Check. Navigation system? Check. Gasoline engine? Check. Electric motor? Check. Waiting list? Check, and then some.

It took three weeks for Lawrence Chestnut, a consultant who travels the world installing software for telephone networks, including a recent stint in Baghdad, to find a Lexus dealer in the Baltimore area who would even let him add his name to a list.

It is not that Mr. Chestnut, who is 50, sees himself as an ardent environmentalist or even as a hybrid kind of guy. He's a Lexus person, who wouldn't mind visiting the gas station less often.

"I'm, let's say, halfway successful, but I can say, `Don't blame me for having a luxury car because it also saves more miles,' " Mr. Chestnut said. "Now I can have my cake and eat it, too, and I like that."

If he can get a Lexus RX400h, that is. The line is getting longer, with 9,000 people having already deposited $1,000 to reserve the car. Given that Toyota is expected to build about 20,000 to 30,000 of the Lexus hybrids annually, waiting lists could pile up further, as they have for the company's original hybrid, the Prius, which now takes about six months to get to many buyers.

When Toyota and Honda first introduced hybrids a half-decade ago, the buyers were often committed environmentalists or technophiles, in either case taking a chance on an unproven technology that could increase fuel economy by 40 percent or more.

Now, though, the hybrid market is entering a second, more mainstream phase, expanding beyond Toyota and Honda and just small cars. A variety of pressures are encouraging the trend: gas prices that have soared and seem likely to stay high; new regulations in California that may be copied by other states, with tough new emissions standards; and glimmers of a change from the ever-bigger mind-set of consumers that produced such behemoths as the three-to-four-ton Ford Excursion in the 90's.

Add those heated leather seats, and the combination of comfort and conscience may not be that tough a sell, especially for people who want to spend Lexus money.

"I think the 400h will be the beginning of taking the hybrid and plotting it all over the demographic map versus what we've seen so far," said Lindsay Brooke, senior analyst of CSM Worldwide, adding that automakers have planned 20 new hybrid models by the 2007 model year.

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