"As the Ford Motor Company scaled back expectations this week for its first hybrid-powered vehicle and backpedaled on a pledge to improve the fuel economy of its sport utility vehicles, Toyota was introducing its latest Prius, which will get about 55 miles a gallon and be the first midsize vehicle with hybrid technology. For environmentalists, the contrasting developments
reinforced the sense that only foreign carmakers care about
curbing America's swelling appetite for oil. ... But the picture is also more complicated - and bleak, from the perspective of reducing oil consumption. Toyota, Honda and Nissan are are flooding the American market with S.U.V.'s of all sizes; Toyota and Nissan are redoubling efforts to take on the last largely unchallenged stronghold of Detroit, the pickup truck. And sales of new- model S.U.V.'s from Japan far outnumber gas-sipping hybrids."