Mine is a multi-Prius clan. I drive one of that first batch of 2,000 that came in in 2001, courtesy of my Dad, who promptly traded up for the new body model. My brother has one of those, too.

So when I say that it seems like years since rumor first had it that PHEV (plug-in hybrid engine vehicle) upgrades were just around the corner, I mean really . I’ve read innumerable profiles of little Mom-and-Pop shops (invariably in CA) performing the conversions, and enough predictions that similar conversion services were coming soon to a garage near me that I put off the road trip. The Canadians are doing it

& the kids are doing it, but the rest of us are just waiting around getting bothered, apparently.

Our best hope might just be with the DIY crowd, which is hard at work developing an open-source conversion guide and launch a fleet of “100+MPG Hybrids”–with the ultimate goal of pressuring the auto industry to do it Bettah.