Warning to all who drive gas guzzlers while fretting about the melting ice cap and the diminished rain forest: Your bluff is called. Finally. Just as the U.S. is grappling with the problem of how to meet its international promise to reduce global warming, the first hybrid gasoline-electric cars are hitting the U.S. market. Though these green machines, a major advance in automobile engineering, are getting off to a slow start, down the road they may yet compete bumper to bumper with gas-only cars.
Honda's peppy two-seat Insight travels 600 miles on a tiny tank, a boon to the greenhouse-gassed...