It’s Sunday on the Toyota lot in Santa Monica, and there’s not a single hybrid car to be had.  The only two Priuses there are long bespoke, big red SOLD tags on their dashes, and there’s no Camry gas/electrics at all. These days, the time a Toyota hybrid remains on the lot is measured in minutes. This latest round of escalating gas prices have caught the car companies unprepared, and there is a distressing shortage of efficient cars available this summer.

The Toyota Prius is the biggest game-changer in automobilia since the Volkswagen Beetle, so huge a hit that Toyota announced this week that they’re going to begin building them in Mississippi year after next. But cars are what advertising people call an “emotional buy” – a choice based less on reason than feelings. The Prius has an interior that’s exactly as big as a Camry’s, and more cargo space, but it looks and feels small and there’s been some grumbling about how hard it is to see out the back of it. Yes, it’s a amazing car, but try getting one these days. Elsewhere for sale on Santa Monica Boulevard, there’s Honda’s Civic Hybrid, but buyers are being wait-listed for it too, and it has one-tenth less room than a Prius; Ford’s Escape is an SUV, making it a non-choice for a lot of people; Saturn’s Aura uses a cheap controlling technology that drags its mileage well under thirty MPG.  If what you want is a hybrid that has the room and performance of a standard sedan, and you want it now, there’s Nissan’s Altima Hybrid.