Prius Envy or Hybrid Hatred? Something Is Fueling Attacks on Toyota's Mileage Star

Prius Envy or Hybrid Hatred? Something Is Fueling Attacks on Toyota's Mileage Star

By Scott Doggett, Contributor

EcoNazis vandalizing Hummers ain't nothing new. Scorn for the gas-guzzlers is extreme. There's even a Website devoted to photos of people giving the finger to Hummer drivers.

But there is also no shortage of disdain for Toyota Prius owners, and that disdain appears to be reaching new heights with more and more Websites spouting hatred against them.

A relative newcomer, priusdrivers, gleefully reports fatal traffic accidents involving Priuses. Its banner -- "I Hate Prius Drivers: 'I'm better than you are! I drive a Prius.' " -- doesn't mince words.

Unfortunately, some of the hatred directed against Prius drivers doesn't end with words. In the most brutal of a spate of violent attacks against the hybrids and their owners this year, someone torched a six-month-old Prius parked on a residential street in Los Angeles seven weeks ago.

The extent of the damage is evident in the photo above.

The car's owner said she heard an explosion at about 7 one Friday morning in July, quickly followed by the screaming sirens of fire engines.

"I went outside to see what was going on and saw it was my car," she said.

Fire investigators concluded that the blaze was the work of an arsonist. No other vehicles in the area were torched.

Attacks on Priuses in the U.S. aren't new. There was a spate of Priuses being "keyed" in Las Vegas in 2004.

But until this year, the violence against them hadn't been so brutal.

In Petaluma, California, a fairly quiet city of 55,000 north of San Francisco, at least seven Priuses were damaged during a two-week rampage in April.

All of the attacks happened at night while the cars were parked and unoccupied, police Lt. Joe Edwards said. Weapons included large rocks, bricks, and a vehicle used to ram a Prius.

One of the Prius owners, Nina Perkins, awoke in the middle of the night to a banging in front of her home. She discovered that someone had taken a hammer to the body and windshield of her car.

Vandals damaged the Prius (pictured) of another woman twice -- two weeks apart. Then, while it was in the shop being repaired, someone hurled a large rock at the Prius she was renting, causing hundreds of dollars' worth of damage to it.

As of last week, no arrests had been made in those or the other Prius attacks in Petaluma.

Toyota spokesman John Hanson wonders if the incidence of vandalism against Priuses isn't any worse than vandalism against other vehicles, but because of the Prius's high profile, vandalism against them generates more media attention.

That said, Hanson acknowledged a Prius might be more prone to attacks than other vehicles.

A Prius, he said, makes a very strong environmental statement, and if you are a person who might be perturbed by the whole environmental movement, you might feel justified in taking out your anger on a Prius. "I have a neighbor like that," he said.

Another possible motive, he said, is the envy/disdain Prius drivers incite in other drivers. In California, many hybrid drivers can legally drive in carpool lanes without any passengers.

"For people who are sitting in traffic in an SUV, to see a Prius go by with just a driver in it -- maybe there's some resentment there as well," he said.

That's probably a good assumption. And bumper stickers like the one shown here also likely don't go over really well with motorists who own gasoline-chugging vehicles that have plunged in value as dramatically as gas prices have risen in recent years.

For a look at Prius envy from another angle, click here to check out "Are Prius Owners Really Eco-Snobs?" recently posted on the Edmunds Strategies For Smart Car Buyerrs blog.

Scott Doggett:  is an AutoObserver.com Associate Editor.