Before Electric Vehicles Became Political, There Was the Toyota Prius | The political polarization of battery-powered cars may have started when Toyota released its first hybrid model 25 years ago.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/27/business/electric-vehicles-poilitics-republicans-conservatives.html?unlocked_article_code=1._08.0wbs.r1hLTM5Ax5X_

by silence7

8 comments

  1. And many of them are still on the road. 300k miles is not unheard of. Very reliable cars

  2. “May have” really undersells it. The vitriol against the Prius was so strong that a lot of the talking points against it are still being used against EVs to this day.

  3. I’m 79 years old and, as a Prius driver, I’ve had some experience with anti-Prius backlash and on-the-road harassment. The funny thing is, I was a VW Beetle driver back in the late sixties and that sort of bad behavior was non-existent then, even though the Beetle was substantially slower than average, which the Prius is not.

  4. The politicization of climate change is a huge accomplishment for the fossil fuel industry.

  5. Lol in 1992 Clinton challenged the big three to make a fuel efficient electric car by 2000 and gave them funds to do it. Unsurprisingly, they spent the money and didnt do anything. Toyota took the challenge seriously and had the Prius waiting post 9/11. You had your chance Detroit and colluded to fail together.

  6. I still find it curious that being “pro destroying the environment” is such a popular political stance among American conservatives. Like it makes sense why R politicians who take bags of oil money are anti-environment, but don’t quite understand why Joe pickup truck hates the environment so much beyond mindless tribalism.

  7. They’re plenty of conservatives who changed from anti-hybrid to pro-hybrid because they believe EVs aren’t the answer. Too late.

  8. This Times article makes a big mistake. It assumes there’s an ideology to the resistance against EVs that goes beyond a weaponized “who moved my cheese?”

    There are some parallels to the American cultural resistance to the Japanese economy-car invasion that came after the 1970s OPEC oil shocks.

    A half century from now all this anti EV stuff is going to make as much sense as 6-7 and skibidi toilet. To most of the world it already makes less sense than those things.

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