The Civic Hybrid.

After the information I've casually gathered over the past few months, the Honda Civic Hybrid has become my car of choice. For one, Honda is the only auto company that hasn't fought government emissions regulations. And look at all the new technology that Honda has pioneered, like ASIMO, the walking robot. This company is not only on the forefront of technology, but they seem to be interested in using it for good! Furthermore, according to HybridCars.com it has one of the top fuel economies of any of the hybrids available, and personally I think it looks terrific.

Well yesterday I had some time to kill and decided to stop by our local Honda dealership and see what questions I could get answered. Turned out I didn't have a lot of questions at the moment (I'm the type of person to quietly gather my own information and make my own choice), but Dan, the salesman, was friendly and mostly helpful. He was a little older than I would have preferred my salesman to be. Not that I'm an agist or anything, but I'm young and naturally I would feel more comfortable with someone near my own age, whom I relate to on a certain level and whom would perhaps share certain sensibilities with me. Dan was a little gruff, a little old-school, and simultaneously a little too slick. He honestly didn't seem to know a whole lot about hybrids in particular, and my guess is he had been selling cars for possibly a couple of decades already. Oh well, we're still months away from even being able to afford another new car. Plenty of time for Dan and I to drift apart, and for me to maybe talk to some other dealerships.

The important thing is that I walked away having picked up a brochure and having sat in one of the cars myself. These are little steps towards a larger goal, and as you probably realize by now I'm a big proponent of little steps and large goals. Though a Civic Hybrid is a little out of our price range now, especially since we just took on a mortgage for the first time, it's not an unreachable goal. Right now my wife has an older Accord (paid off) and I have a Scion xB. Ultimately, I'd like to replace both of them with more eco-friendly choices (though the Scion is pretty efficient already). Actually, I'd like to get down to being a one-car family if possible, and rely on my electric bike or some other electric vehicle for transportation. Don't know how practical that would be, as long as my wife and I are both working, but it's a goal.

I'll keep you all up to date on my plans and how they are coming together, and I'd encourage any of you who are working on perfecting your own green lifestyle to post comments here or send me a message and share how it's going. If we're going to succeed as a society we have to create a sense of community, and a sense of how each of our decisions can affect the whole. Why not start by posting a comment on this blog? Good luck, and keep checking back.

In the meantime, remember that you may own the house, but you're only renting the land.