Very economical vehicles available right now. Well, next year. Or the year after maybe.

I keep wanting to upgrade or sidegrade my busted Dodge pickup, and let me tell you, it’s not a great time for someone who thinks like me to buy a car. It’s really hard to find a family vehicle of any shape or size that gets even 30mpg on the highway; I haven’t actually kept a tally, but there probably aren’t even 10 vehicles on the market these days that can do it. When I was 17 years old, 30 or 35mpg was considered decent highway mileage, and the Chevy Sprint was getting close to 50 on the highway even then. So today, a very economical car (if you believe Kia and Toyota commercials) gets, well, 30mpg. 2 decades later, no improvement at all. My pickup has been averaging 15mpg, and there are still people out there who consider that pretty damned good for a truck. And to get close to 1988 Chevy Sprint mileage, you’ve got to cough up thousands of extra dollars for a hybrid and take on the added complexity of maintaining 2 separate drivetrains and whatever long-term liability the batteries impose. To be fair, there hasn’t been much drama about Prius or Civic Hybrid reliability, and to be even more fair, when the new diesel VWs come out this year, they’re rumored to get well into the 50s with just a normal diesel powertrain. But as fast as everything else in the world in every other area of technology is changing, fuel economy remains basically static in the US.

It’s pretty hard to believe; supposedly here in this opportunistic and capitalist environment, not a single entrepreneur has pounced on that fear that many Americans have had since 2001 and created even a niche product for us conspiracy enthusiasts. Lots of people figured that any tampering we do in the middle East, right or wrong, will somehow wreak havoc with gas prices, and here we are 7 years later, and the Prius is the best anyone can do? I mean the Prius is OK, but hybrids seem needlessly complex, and the supply-and-demand games Toyota plays with them means that you’re not only paying a premium for the technology and complexity, but in many markets you’ll even have to pay a premium over MSRP to get one.

This might be changing. I read a couple cool articles lately that sound really hopeful. I like the Tesla Motors concept and everything, but a $90,000 car is probably not going to solve our fuel dependencies overnight, if real people can’t buy it and use it like a real car, it’s not going to be anything more than an expensive badge for conspicuous non-consumption like the EV1 used to be.

One of the companies is Aptera. They have a Jetsons-looking 2.5 seater that will be available this year in California as either a plug-in electric or a plug-in hybrid. It’s a little knotty to calculate the gas efficiency of a car that can run in all-electric mode, but their best guess is in the 120mpg range. The vehicle itself is a 2 seater with a smaller rear shelf that could hold a baby seat or a toddler, and the trunk seems pretty capacious from the pictures. (2 bags of golf clubs or even a single 7-foot surfboard is a pretty impressive point of reference.) The car will start in the mid $20s and top out at an estimated $30k. Not dirt-cheap, but not a terrible price of entry for something that looks totally new. (No other commercially available electric vehicles yet; until one really hits the streets, the title’s up for grabs.) And the anti-Prius argument that “you can’t hardly drive enough to make up for the added expense” is a little harder to prove here.

To just complain for a second, this also embodies a couple peeves of mine. First, why would anyone be anti-fuel efficiency? I don’t mean complaining about being forced to drive a hybrid or import or small car or something – that hasn’t actually happened – I mean the hysterical, angry reaction that some people have to the very existence of an economical car. And second, people buy boat-hauling SUVs without owning boats, and they buy 4-wheel-drives without ever going anywhere but Starbucks and soccer games – that’s all fine for them and nobody can say anything because it’s their right and their destiny, but then if someone wants to put their money into extra efficiency rather than extra and unused power or features, somehow that is flawed thinking if it doesn’t generate a gigantic and instant return on their investment?

Anyway… The other one was a little far-fetched, but the people involved seem impressive and credible. It’s an air-powered car. To refill it, an compressor mashes air into a tank for a couple hours into pretty dangerous densities, and the air is then used to power an onboard generator. 1,000 mile range, 2-hour refills, and a top speed close to 100mpg all make it sound pretty usable. 6 passengers and a starting price of a little over $17k make it sound almost unreal. 0 emissions, too. The American distributor-to-be is in New Paltz, NY, but the mothership is based in France. Due in 2009, we’ll see. There have been a lot of vaporware vehicles like this, but with an engineering team with pedigrees from Bugatti and Formula 1 racing, this could be one to watch. The NY Daily News story is pretty cool.

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