LOS ANGELES – It was one of those glittering Hollywood fundraisers for a noble cause, the environment. Tom Hanks was hosting. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was speaking. Former president Bill Clinton was pumping flesh.
But the real news on that evening last month was in the parking lot. Celebrity after celebrity rolled up to the valet stand in small, snub-nosed, rather dowdy little cars. Director Rob Reiner, "Seinfeld" co-creator Larry David, superagent Arie Emanuel all arrived in Hollywood's latest politically correct status symbol: the half-electric, half-gasoline hybrid car.
Larry David owns three hybrids, including one for the character he plays on his HBO show.
(Stephani Diani - for The Washington Post)
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The Toyota Prius: 50 miles to the gallon, nearly emission-free and only about $20,000. Not too sexy, maybe, but definitely very hot.
"Five Priuses drove up in a row," says Gail Reuderman Feuer, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, who drove her own hybrid to the fundraiser. "I said to my husband, 'I don't know if we're going to be able to find our car afterward.' They were all lined up. It was very exciting."
With gas prices rising, global warming ongoing, and resentment toward some oil-rich Arab countries and fear over Middle East violence at a peak, the latest automotive trend among L.A.'s conspicuously wealthy is conspicuous frugality.
"It's the hot car," says Feuer. "People look at the Prius like they looked at a Jaguar a few years ago."
Chalk up another one for the New Normal. Emanuel put away his Ferrari. David sold his Lexus. Reiner traded in his BMW.
They're not alone. The list of Hollywood's hybrid-come-lately car owners reads like the table of contents of People magazine: Cameron Diaz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Carole King, Billy Joel, David Duchovny and Bill Maher, to name-drop a few. Patricia Arquette bought one recently; so did rocker Jackson Browne. Larry David bought three, including one so that his character, "Larry David," could drive one on his HBO series, "Curb Your Enthusiasm."
"It works on every level," says David, who is married to a staunch environmentalist. "I'm doing something good, and my wife has sex with me more often."
Asked about his car, DiCaprio responded with an e-mail, writing, "This is the most radical mass-produced car in the world and I can't find any downside. My family and I own a total of four, and we drive them all over Los Angeles."
The Prius (pronounced PREE-us) isn't the only hybrid car on the market. Honda makes the two-seater Insight, which gets 68 miles per gallon, and just started mass-producing a hybrid Civic. But Toyota's version, with its computerized display showing fuel consumption, has captured the imagination of Hollywood buzzmakers.
Larry David first got a hybrid because his wife, Laurie, has strong views about big, gas-guzzling SUVs, which are hugely popular in Los Angeles and hugely annoying to her.
"Those cars should just have 'pig' spray-painted on them," says Laurie David, apparently not one for understatement. The Prius, she says, is the antidote. "I got involved because of global warming, but hello! It's national security now. Shouldn't we be reducing our dependence on foreign oil?"
The Davids started something of a chain reaction among their friends. "I have one because I found out they existed," says Reiner. "Larry David had one; he told me there's this hybrid car . . . I thought, 'Here's something I could actually do that would save on gas, save the environment, protect us from global warming.'"
Commentator Arianna Huffington bought one last week. "I got a little tired of hearing how we're at war, and we're being asked to do nothing about it but go shopping, go to Disneyland and the mall," she says. Huffington gave up her SUV in November, then sold her Lexus when she recently saw the Davids' hybrid.
"It is very much a little peer pressure," she says. "Positive peer pressure."
And it's a conversation piece. The day Huffington got the car, she drove it to lunch at the Bel Air mansion of Selim Zilka, a former oil baron who is now a leading proponent of wind power. Within minutes a dozen people had filed out to gawk at the little motor that could run on gas or electrical power.
"The parking lot was full of Jaguars and Bentleys," she recalls, "and my host . . . brought everyone out to the driveway to look at Arianna's car. It became this point of attraction."
Tree-hugging celebrities like Ed Begley Jr. and Woody Harrelson have long embraced experiments like the electric car, an expensive trial that GM recently abandoned (the car can't go long distances without being plugged in for a recharge). What's unusual about the hybrid is that it's easy for less dedicated activists to love; you fill it up at any gas station, about half as often as a regular car. All it requires is a willingness to be seen in a ride that looks like those driven by most Los Angeles nannies.
Huffington says she doesn't care: "I'm not a car person, really."
Reiner, a hefty guy, is not bothered either: "I don't care, I just want to get from one place to the next. To me it's just an automobile."
The principle of the hybrid is simple but ingenious. In addition to a downsized, traditional gasoline engine, the hybrid has an electric motor and a battery pack that is recharged by the gas engine while the car is on.
A computer under the hood decides whether, at any given moment, the car would run more efficiently on gas or electrical power. To save gas, the engine turns off completely when the car comes to a full stop, then restarts imperceptibly when the driver hits the accelerator; energy normally wasted in braking is stored in the batteries. Because of the electric motor, the Prius makes very little, and sometimes no, noise.
As a concept and as a car, it works, says Csaba Csere, editor in chief of Car and Driver magazine. With the hybrids, "you can have your cake and eat it too; you get the energy benefit of a small engine without the shortcoming of a lack of power, which is quite ingenious," he says.
The gas mileage, though impressive, is not quite as high as Toyota and Honda claim, says Csere, and the hybrids are a little pricey when compared with similar high-mileage, gas-only sedans like the Accord or the Focus, about $3,000 to $4,000 more. That's unlikely to change, Csere says, since the hybrids will always have a lot more going on under the hood.
For the moment, Toyota and Honda claim still to be losing money on every hybrid car they sell. "Part of the reason they make it is to get brownie points for being green," says Csere. "They're limited-production cars. Toyota barely sends 2,000 Priuses a month. Honda's goal for the Civic hybrid is 2,000 units a month."
A Toyota spokeswoman, Holly Ferris, explained: "It's a new technology for buyers. We did increase production for the United States because of the demand, and we'll continue to monitor that demand. But we're kind of meeting demand right now."
The Santa Monica Toyota dealer, which claims to sell more Priuses than any other dealership in America, has seen an upward trend in both supply and demand. Salesmen say they peddle 10 to 12 Priuses a month, but have only had the car available on the lot for a couple of months; before that, it was a special order.
"For a lot of people it's not practical, since it's a small sedan," says manager Rhett Butler (that's his real name). But celebrities? "People here care for the environment. They love them," he says, mentioning that Harrison Ford came by to test-drive one the other day, as did "Bionic Woman" Lindsay Wagner – who, by the way, is a spokeswoman for Ford.
With the fervor of the converted, celebrities driving hybrid cars argue that they don't miss their Beemers and Jags (though agent Emanuel has been seen lapsing back into his Ferrari). And they say they are anxiously awaiting the next hybrid model, an SUV by Ford, expected to start production in a year and a half.
That's way too slow for Reiner. "There's no reason why every car, every SUV, doesn't have the hybrid technology," he argues.
Says David: "When they come out with a hybrid station wagon, I'll buy it. A lot of people are just waiting for a big family car to be a hybrid. I think the market will go crazy."
Reiner agrees. "If it was made clear to people that we could win the war on terrorism by driving a hybrid car, that we could stop global warming by driving a hybrid, I think people would do it," he says. "But people haven't made those kind of connections."
