I timed that well, didn't I?" says a gratified Lynne Hannach.
Ms. Hannach, a social worker, took delivery of her Toyota Prius within about 48 hours of the fire that broke out at the Imperial Oil refinery in Nanticoke just over two weeks ago, throwing Toronto into a gas crisis. She's filled it up once since she bought it, and doesn't figure she'll need to again before the current shortage has resolved itself.
"You're driving by the gas stations and it's 'Out,' 'Out,' 'Out,' 'Out,' " says Ms. Hannach of the 200 Esso, Petro-Canada and Sunoco gas stations that had run dry across the province by the middle of this week, "but since I'm not needing to fill up, I'm really not thinking about it."
Ms. Hannach refuses to be overtly self-satisfied with her newfound ability to ignore escalating gas prices. The Prius runs at 4 litres per 100 kilometres in the city; a Honda Civic Coupe, for instance, uses 8.2 litres to travel the same distance. As the gas prices climbed to $1.10 in some locations of Toronto, the owners of hybrids, Smart cars and other fuel-efficient automobiles were sailing serenely by SUVs, pickups and other gas-guzzlers with their V-8 engines left high and dry.
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Call it the revenge of the early adopters. According to J.D. Power and Associates, Toronto has a higher "penetration" of hybrids than four other markets in the country (Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver). Nick Sabouri, at Scarborough Lexus Toyota, says, "We get two kinds of people coming in looking for hybrids. One: environmental people. For them, price is no problem, they'll pay for the hybrid. Two: people concerned about the gas."
"A friend was asking me this morning, how did I get into work, with the gas shortage, was it a problem?" says Kyla Eaglesham.
"And I said, 'Not for me . . .' "
Ms. Eaglesham, a proud Smart Fortwo owner, bought "Thor" ("It sounds tougher like that," says her equally chuffed brother, Dustin) 2½ years ago, about the same time she opened her café, Madeleines, Cherry Pie and Ice Cream, on Bathurst Street just south of Dupont Street.
"I drive 40 minutes every day, and I spend under $40 a month on gas," she says. The Fortwo, which is not a hybrid, goes 100 km on 4.6 litres of diesel (about the same price as regular fuel). On her way to work, Ms. Eaglesham drives past an Esso station around Avenue Road and Eglinton Avenue that has been out of gas. "My first thought," she says, "is all these poor people and their SUVs." She grins the grin of the vindicated.
Peter Lewis, vice-dean of research at the University of Toronto's medical school, has discovered that the winter mileage he gets on his Toyota Camry Hybrid is about half what it was in the summer when he bought it. ("It's reproducible," he says of his findings. "I'm a scientist.") Even so, Mr. Lewis says, it puts him in a different class from his non-hybridized friends and colleagues. Asked if he's been affected by the shortage, he says, "Not yet, because I haven't gone to a gas station yet."
According to Franz Hartmann, co-executive director of the Toronto Environmental Alliance, "People who bought hybrids now have yet another reason for having done that. It shows that if you've got a hybrid, you're using a lot less gasoline . . ."
"I had half a tank of gas when this started, and I still have a third of a tank," says hybrid owner Suzanna Scorsone (as spokeswoman for the Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto, she's not allowed to name the brand). She doesn't think she'll have to fill up again for another week, by which time Imperial Oil has said the problems, which also involved an earlier fire at another of the oil giant's refineries in Sarnia, will be over. (The shortage was compounded by the CN Rail strike and a frozen St. Lawrence Seaway.)
Ms. Scorsone feels that the current mini-crisis provides something of a teaching moment. "It illustrates the degree to which we are dependent upon the technology we've created," she says. "Finding the most constructive and least destructive technology for any given task is part of responsible stewardship," she says.
The hybrid car hasn't reached the tipping point yet. According to David Adams, president of the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers of Canada, there are 3,473 hybrid vehicles registered in Ontario.
But Ms. Scorsone resists the urge to feel self-righteous: "It's less like being smug," she says, "and more like feeling as though you're at the front of the wave."
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